The Imaginary Lovers

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I need to take it easy today, so the bulk of the heavy lifting for this post will be done by someone else. Here is an idea I like a lot from supporter Irénée “the Rabid Walrus” Martre. Why do they call him the Rabid Walrus? They don’t. I just put that there, so this site won’t show up in a Google search for his name.

In his own words, here’s his idea called…

The Imaginary Lovers

You and your friend Louise are sitting at a café terrace in the 8th arrondissement of Paris on a July evening. You told her that you wanted to try something with her, and she asks what it is. "You know, this is one of the most romantic places in the world, and sometimes I think we forget about it because we live here. There's something I've always wanted to do about it, do you want to try it with me?”

She agrees. You pay the bill and start walking.

"What I had in mind was a guided tour about two lovers of the neighbourhood, but we're going to create their story together." You point to the fourth floor of a building: "This is where our first lover lives. What’s his name?" She decides that Achilles would suit him. You walk around a bit and point to another one, for the second lover. She hesitates for a few seconds then settles on Léa.

Now the tour begins, in the footsteps of Achille and Léa. You decide on their character, their age, their friends, their family, etc. While wandering through the streets, you gradually bring them to life.

Then, it’s time for them to meet. Louise decides that April is the most romantic month to fall in love.

As you pass in front of a laundromat, she suggests that they met there. Then, you see the café where they often used to go, the bench where they had their first kiss, their favourite cinema, and so on.

You continue until you reach the Debilly footbridge. You turn to Louise. "You know, neither of them live in Paris anymore. They moved abroad. But before leaving, they decided to leave something behind, because this place was very important to them. It might sound silly, but they bought some markers and a big padlock. They wrote their initials on it, and they hung it on this bridge. And you know what? The padlock is still here."

You walk on the bridge, and there are hundreds of padlocks hanging from the railings. You arrive at one of them, where Louise can read a half-faded inscription: "A+L". It also has a combination lock.

You turn to her. "You said that they met in April, but you didn't say which day. What was it?" She answers twenty-fourth. "Maybe try 24/04 then." She takes the padlock, and enters the numbers 2, 4, 0, and 4. The lock opens.

Explanation

Deadlock by Michael Murray + accomplice who writes the initials on the padlock + bit of sandpaper to make the writing look old. The combination of the two methods cancel each other out, which is quite nice.

One clarification: it's better to ask for a Season first and then a month. It's less common to get Winter so you don't get October, November or December (which you don't want with Deadlock). If she insists on Winter, then you can steer it so that the date corresponds to their first kiss, or when they moved in together, etc.

What a fun idea! You don’t have to be in Paris to do the trick. Talk about a pair of young lovers who lived wherever you are at the moment who were inspired by reading about other such bridges, and it inspired them to do something similar wherever you are.

You’ll need some way to signal to your accomplice what the needed initials are. You could have them on the other end of the phone in your pocket. Or go old school and signal to them the letters in sign language while they spy on you through binoculars.

Those of you with Dead Lock will understand the limitations of that method as mentioned in the explanation. I think Irénée’s suggestion on how to get around that is a good one.

Thanks to the Rabid Walrus for sharing this idea.

Virtual Focus Group Testing

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A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned we would be convening a particularly large virtual focus group and I asked if there were any tricks people wanted us to put in front of them. Unlike the normal focus group testing we do, the virtual focus groups are done… well, virtually. I mean, that’s why I used that adjective.

The individuals that comprised the group are non-magicians from all over the United States.

In the past, we’ve just put out a general call for people to answer a one-hour paid “survey” on places like Craigslist and gathered people that way. For this round of testing, reader Brandon L., who helps conduct similar testing professionally at his job in California, offered to put together a group for us and took care of that as a gift to the site.

In this type of testing, the people will watch a series of videos (in their home) and answer some questions on them. The videos are usually taken from the demos but edited to show just the trick itself. The questions are usually pretty general. Things like, “Describe the trick you just saw.” “Do you have any idea how that trick could have been accomplished?” Sometimes we’ll ask if there was anything that felt unusual or suspicious.

So they’ll watch a video and then answer usually 2–4 questions about the trick in the video.

The Numbers

For this round of testing, we sent the “survey” out to 50 people. 47 completed it. They watched 9 videos and read one trick description.

Here is some of the feedback we got on three of the tricks we had them look at.

My Poker Collection by Martin Braessas

This is a nice packet trick where 10s of Spades change into a royal flush.

Now, here’s the question… out of 47 people, how many of them mentioned “trick cards” or “special cards” or suggested they were suspicious about the cards?

All of them.

Did this surprise me? No, not really. Here’s the deal… If an object changes, if an object floats, if an object appears or disappears, almost everyone will suspect there’s something “tricky” about the object itself. When we accept this truth, then we can seek ways to combat it. But when we say stuff like, “People only suspect the props if you’re a bad magician,” then we just bury our heads in the sand and delude ourselves.

Does that mean this is a bad trick? Not necessarily. It’s bad for some of you.

The truth is, I’m sure none of those 47 people could actually describe how the trick was done beyond just saying “trick cards.” So then it’s a question of how fooling do you need your tricks to be? Are you okay if people have a general idea, but don’t know specifically how it’s done? Or do you want them to not even have any concept of how it could be done? I’m somewhere in between, but definitely more towards the latter.

I’ve never had a situation where a trick really devastated people AND they knew generally how it was done. But I’ve done stuff people have found entertaining, and still had a good idea how it was done. So it’s not like tricks like this are completely useless. But I think they’re ultimately of a more limited impact.

People Power by Andi Gladwin

This was requested by reader, MS. He wanted to know what percentage of the people who watched the trick (starting around 1:20) would know how the winner was predicted.

The participants were asked to watch the video and were given three questions:

  1. Do you know how the magician knew the man would stand behind the red balloon?

  2. Do you know how the magician predicted the winner of the game?

  3. Do you know how the magician knew what prize the winner would want?

The real question we were curious about was #2.

Of the 47 people questioned, 10 of them clued into the general method in regard to how he predicted the winner. I was somewhat surprised it was that low. I thought it was a little more obvious. I think 20% having the general idea is actually a workable number for a stage/parlor routine.

Interestingly, almost twice as many people, 19, guessed that the woman was in on it. That Andi had told her what to do to win the game, and that they had planned what the prize would be.

So if you’re going to do this trick, I suggest having a genuinely random selection of the participants. Bounce ping-pong balls into the audience or something like that. You won’t be able to pre-show the “winner” but you don’t need to. Have each participant randomly select a “prize envelope” and then just force the person who takes the envelope containing the prize you’re set to reveal.

Total Control by Hiroshi Magic

A friend of the site asked us to put Total Control in front of the Virtual Focus Group. He had performed it a few times and wasn’t getting the reactions he expected. In the trick, you control your phone without touching it.

Because we didn’t have access to a full performance video of an uncut performance, we gave them a chopped down version of this video along with a simple written description of the trick. “Without any apps open or Bluetooth connected, the magician is able to control his phone without touching it. He can make music play from nowhere, change the volume, take pictures and post them to Instagram, turn on the flashlight, and more.”

Now, I’m not sure if all of that can actually be accomplished without the Bluetooth on, but I figured it would be better to oversell the effect than undersell it.

After watching the video, the participants were asked if they had any idea how it might be accomplished. Seven of the people stated they didn’t know how this could be done. The other 40 said, essentially, that the phone has been set up to do these things. People mentioned remote controls, NFC tags, Shortcuts, voice recognition, and a couple of people suggested the screen was actually a video. But most often the word they used was “programmed.” As in, “the phone was programmed to do these things.”

In a way, this is similar to the first trick mentioned. People are going to know the general idea, but not exactly how you did it. When it comes to technology-based magic, I don’t know how effective that’s going to be for people. When a card changes, they can say “gimmicked card” but still be kind of amazed because they think they understand the nature of playing cards. But if they say, “You programmed your phone,” that might be more than enough of an explanation. They don’t have to know exactly how it was programmed because most people don’t really understand shit about how their phone works anyway.

I have no doubt people are entertained by this trick, but I don’t think they’re fooled by it (I could be wrong).

To me, it’s sort of like doing this.

You’re taking credit for something that was set up to happen. Most people probably understand that. That can still be kind of fun, but I don’t if it seems that amazing.

We have access to this focus group for almost three more weeks. If there’s a video you’d like us to show them and get their opinion on, pass it my way for consideration.

Mailbag #94

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I enjoyed reading your “Expansion” post of June 20. I agree with your premise totally.   In fact, I characterize it as “expanding the time and space continuum”.   In other words, by expanding either the time and/or space of the evolvement of a trick the more impactful it can be.  

For example, I regularly perform “The Missing Mentalist” first created by Marvin Kaye in 1975 (with credit to Burling Hull) in which I hand a spectator a deck of cards, leave the room, instruct him to cut the deck into two, shuffle both, pick one pack and select a card and stick it in the other pack, place either pack into and envelope and carry home.   In the course of two days or so I call him, tell him I am struggling but will figure out his card.  Then BAM, the third day I call him with the name of his card.   

What this method accomplishes is expand the trick from a few minutes to reveal to 3 days to build the suspense and then expand the space by distancing me from the spectator where the “magic” happens in his house with him holding half the cards.

Voila!   Much more impressive and memorable than a quick reveal in person. —A

I’m not familiar with that specific trick, but in my experience, the logic behind what you’re suggesting is sound.

Obviously, you don’t want every trick you do to take days to wrap up, but it can be a powerful tool when used sparingly.

It can also make tricks more deceptive, as I wrote in this post on how I use an impression pad. If I have you draw something on a pad, then I pick up the pad and duplicate your drawing, that’s going to put a lot of heat on the pad itself. It has to, because the whole interaction has been very “pad-centric.” But if I have you draw something, tear out the drawing, put the pad away, and then, over the course of the evening, I engage in a handful of different interactions with you where I try different approaches to learn your drawing, then it becomes not all about the pad.

(For those of you who have the next book coming to you this October, you’ll find a fun example of “expansion” in action in a trick called Going On A Trip. It’s a trick I use when going on vacation or out of town with someone. It starts at home before we leave, climaxes days later when we’re on our trip, and a sort of kicker ending that happens when we get home. It’s a variation on a classic card trick that normally takes 75 seconds to perform.)

So, I'm having a bit of trouble with thumb writing. Specifically on the timing to write. I mean, I feel the moment you have to write the information is the worst moment to do so, because it's precisely the time between the moment they tell you the information and the moment of the reveal. I barely got away with it the last time I did it. There's some heat at the moment and I feel spectators are suspicious about why it takes me longer than what would be "normal" to reveal what I wrote.

I don't think it's the writing itself I'm having trouble with. I'm not super proficient, but I feel I can write at a good pace with legible writing. But hey, maybe I'm wrong and I need to get a lot better at this. I don't know.

Do you have any tips on this? Or maybe could you point me in the right direction? A book or even a video from a performance could be helpful. —RD

I don’t think I’ve had this issue when it comes to thumbwriting. But I do have some ideas that might be able to help.

First, you’ll want to decide if this is just a general technique or pacing issue. Most of the time when I’m doing any kind of thumbwriting, I’m just doing two numbers or letters. Maybe three. I can get this done in the time it takes me to say, “You’ve got to be kidding me,” or, “You’re not going to believe this.” And saying something like that makes perfect sense in that space after they tell you the number, but before you turn around the card.

Does that feel right to you? Or does that feel like not enough time. It probably should be enough time if you’re writing just a couple characters. So that might be a technique issue.

You can easily triple that amount of time if you don’t ask for the information directly. For example, if instead of asking for a single two-digit number, I ask two people each for a two-digit number, then add them together in my head. I then have these beats in which to write the number down.

  • “Okay, so the total of those two numbers would be?”

  • A moment for them to answer.

  • “You’re not going to believe this.”

You can do the same thing with initials. If I’m performing for someone named Julie Dietrich, and I’m going to predict the initials of her first crush, I can write this on the card:

JD
❤️’s

And leave a space on the bottom to write her crush’s initials. But instead of asking for their initials, I can ask for his first name (write initial), ask if she remembers his last name, get the last name, then write in his last initial while I say, “So his initials would be…?” And wait for her to answer.

What I don’t like as a means to buy time is when magicians do this. “Name any two-digit number… 44? Oh, why did you name that number?” Then it just seems like stalling because it’s a question that takes the momentum away from the revelation. Whereas, a simple statement like, “I can’t believe this happened again,” is building anticipation toward the revelation.

Another technique you can use if you need to buy more time sounds like this:

“I want you to imagine opening a dictionary and flipping to any page and finding a simple one syllable word there. What word are you looking at in your imagination. Door? Seriously? Did you look at what I wrote down here?”

Accusing someone of something is great misdirection. People’s natural instinct is to defend themselves. And it’s psychologically very convincing because in the process of defending themselves they’re cementing in the notion that there was something on the other side for them to see in the first place.

Ultimately, it’s going to depend on what the routine is, but those are some of the ideas/techniques I use when building in the necessary delay with secret writing.

Until July...

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Waddup, ding-dongs?

This is the final post for June. Regular posting resumes Monday, July 3rd. The next issue of the subscriber newsletter comes out on July 1st. If you’re a supporter at the $25 level and you have an ad you’d like to get in for this month, try to get it to me within the next week.

One evening, I was standing outside a bar with some friends on the sidewalk in NYC. I borrowed my friend’s cigarette and pushed it through my fist. When it came out the other side, I said that it had gone back in time one puff. It was a little longer now, could he see? Then I pushed it through my other hand and it disappeared completely.

“Now it’s gone back in time five minutes, to the point when it was unsmoked, and it’s now back in your pack. Check it out.”

My friend opened his pack. “No, it’s not,” he said. “I still have three in here.”

Uh-oh, he knew how many cigarettes he had in his pack before I made that one disappear.

The funny thing about cigarettes is they’re not very expensive, but if you take one out of your friend’s mouth and toss it in a puddle, they get really mad at you.

So vanishing my friend’s cigarette without his permission had him annoyed with me. How to rectify this situation?

“I had to do it,” I said. “That cigarette was the one that was going to give you lung cancer. I mean… not that one cigarette will give you cancer. But there’s a certain amount that will. And then there’s one less than that amount which won’t. And I had a vision that in your life you would be right over that line by one cigarette. And so I needed to make one vanish. I did it for you.”

“Oh well,” he said, and borrowed a cigarette from another friend of ours to make up for the one that was lost.

A few months later, he stopped smoking for good. One of the reasons he told me was that I’d poisoned his mind with the notion that there is some dividing line between having lung cancer and not having lung cancer, and one cigarette could push you over that edge. And he would think about that each time he had a cigarette.

This is the story about the time I may have saved someone’s life with a cigarette pull.

In other vice-magic news, a couple of people wrote in to ask how I vanished the condom in the story I mention in my 5 Things To Make Vanish post.

I don’t really know what the technique is called. I think I might have learned it in the Klutz Book of Magic, or something like that, when I was a kid.

You toss the item back and forth between your hands, and then you palm it or hold it back on the last toss.

There are better vanishes in the world. But for a spur of the moment vanishing condom trick, this worked well. The nice thing about this vanish is they’re being taken in by the rhythm of the vanish. This means you can do it with bigger items in low-light situations (e.g., a condom in a candle-lit bedroom) because what they need to pick up on to sense the vanish can still be seen in those situations. And even if the object isn’t hidden fully in your hand, it’s usually fine, so long as you can ditch it before the vanish because they won’t be able to catch a casual glimpse of the object in the dim room.

In this case, in the process of shifting my body positioning on the bed so my girlfriend could put her hands around my fist, I left the condom on top of the headboard.

I’ll see all your asses back here on July 3rd for National Eat Beans Day.

Expansion

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One of the most reliable ways to increase the impact of a trick is to “expand” the trick by bringing in elements from beyond the room you’re in and the time you’re performing.

I’ll give you a theoretical example.

Imagine a magic show where the magician requests four people to help him. Each person secretly places an item they have on them into a separate small cloth bag. Let’s say they put in a Chapstick, a quarter, a pair of earbuds, and a lighter. Without opening the bags, the magician is able to tell them what’s inside and after that he reveals to whom each item belongs.

Now imagine the trick performed a different way. This time, people are reached out to before the performance and asked to bring a small item of personal importance with them to the show. In this version of the trick, the items placed in the bags are a small teddy bear, a bookmark someone’s first boyfriend made them, a ticket stub to the first movie and man went to with his future wife, and a baby’s pacifier.

Beyond that, the trick is the same.

The trick would probably not be particularly more fooling this way, but you can see how it would likely be significantly stronger. It would be stronger because the process of identifying and bringing with them a personal item is just more interesting than tossing whatever random item they have in their pockets in a bag. And it’s stronger because it’s playing off a connection they have with that object that goes back potentially years or decades. And you’re pulling some of that vitality into the trick itself.

Here’s a different type of example of expanding a trick beyond the boundaries of the performing situation…

In this post, I wrote about a particularly strong reaction I got from the Trick that Fooled Einstein—a version where the prediction was on a fortune from a fortune cookie. After I got such a strong reaction that one time, I tried out the trick a bunch more. It always got a good reaction, and sometimes a great reaction.

I noticed one element that seemed to correlate with the strength of the reaction.

If you don’t know the trick, it’s essentially a prediction of the freely chosen amount of change a spectator has in their hand.

If I had a little bowl of change on the table and asked someone to take a small group of coins, and then I revealed my prediction, it tended to get a good reaction.

But if I called the person earlier in the day and asked them to go to where they keep their loose change, and to grab a few coins for something I wanted to try later, then it tended to get a much stronger response.

Why? Because the trick was no longer about what happened in just these two minutes sitting around the table together.

Unlike the first example, a handful of change has no emotional meaning to it. But having them bring their own change from home still led to a stronger reaction. Probably for two reasons.

First, there is a sense of anticipation created. Why am I asking her to grab some change and bring it with her? This is an unusual request. What’s going to happen later?

Second, it blurs the lines of when the trick starts. “Did the trick start when we sat down together? Or did it somehow start hours ago when I grabbed those coins from my dresser? Or—considering he went straight into the trick when I got here—did something happen between the time I got the coins and now that allowed for the trick to work? Maybe… who knows…maybe he hired someone who followed me into the gas station and he saw the outline of the coins in my pocket? And that’s how he could have this printed prediction? No, no, no. That’s a crazy idea.”

Yes. It’s a crazy idea. But by expanding the boundaries of the effect, you give the person’s mind a chance to consider more crazy ideas. And that’s a good thing.

This isn’t just something you can do with physical objects. You can also do a similar thing with thoughts.

It’s one thing if I read your mind and tell you the “random” word you’re thinking of.

But imagine you’re visiting your parents for Christmas. I send you a text asking you to do me a favor. Go find a book that meant something to you as a kid. Open the book and find any word that jumps out at you and remember that word until the next time I see you. I reach out to you a couple of times in the ensuing weeks to make sure you still remember the word. And then when we meet up, I’m able to tell you the word you’ve been carrying with you from this beloved book from your youth.

Yes. That moment’s going to carry a much different weight than just naming some meaningless word that just came to your mind 6 seconds earlier.

This is why, whenever possible, I try to bring in elements from outside of the current space and time.

The greatest strength of magic is its ability to make everything else fall away and pull the people watching solidly into the present moment. So it may seem antithetical to that idea to be reaching for outside elements during your performance. But when you can give more weight to the props and premises, and more resonance to the concepts used when you perform, you give your magic more impact. And that greater impact is precisely what’s going to jolt them so intensely into the here and now.

Mailbag #93

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You asked for suggestions for the Virtual Focus Group.

I'd be kind of interested in how audiences perceive various sneak thief performances. I wholeheartedly agree with your analysis that while the standard stage and close up versions "fool" the spectators (in terms of them not seeing the peek) they fail to convince them (as looking back they rightly feel a peek was quite possible).

You already published a close up version (using a switch in the spectators hand) adressing the problem.

Question to be answered:

How much is the enjoyment and decptiveness of the plot increased when using a handling that seems to exclude the possibility of a peek?

(Personally I'm more interested in stage versions, as these tend to introduce more "props" like envelopes or clipboards and more "process", but close-up results are fine, too). —FH

While we haven’t specifically tested sneak thief, we have tested enough other peeks with peek wallets, business cards, and playing cards that I feel confident that the results would be similar.

There are three things that can happen with a peek:

  1. The spectator catches you looking at the information.

  2. The spectator doesn’t catch you looking at the information.

  3. The spectator doesn’t catch you looking at the information and is convinced you couldn’t have seen the information.

Most magicians are happy with #2. But #2 is just about as useless as #1, in my opinion. To me, there’s not much difference in the spectator’s mind between, “I saw him look at the word I wrote down,” and, “He must have somehow seen the word I wrote down.”

It’s not enough that the spectator doesn’t see you look at the information. The spectator has to see that you couldn’t have looked at the information. When the item is being held in your hands, uncovered, the only way you can ensure they feel that you couldn’t have looked at the information is to put them on notice from the start to make sure you don’t get a peek at what they wrote. Only with that forewarning could they feel confident they knew what to look for enough to guard against it.

Could you give that warning and then still to do the sneak thief peek? Probably, and you’d likely still get away with it sometimes. Maybe the majority of the time. But at that point you’d just be hoping that they didn’t notice. Without some other layer of deception on top of the technique, I wouldn’t feel confident using it with the spectator specifically being on the lookout for a peek.

And while we haven’t looked at the sneak thief peek in particular, with every other peek, if the participant is specifically told to be vigilant that the performer doesn’t look at what they wrote down, this always gets higher ratings for enjoyment and impossibility than when that isn’t mentioned. So I don’t see any reason why that peek would be any different.

I loved your 5 Things to Make Vanish post. [See last Wednesday.] In the part about vanishing trash you said that once every couple of months a stranger will walk over to you and say “I’m sorry… what just happened to your cocktail napkin?”

So what do you say at that point? —BA

I’ve never really thought this out too much, but I generally do the same thing every time I vanish some little piece of trash—a napkin, a straw wrapper, a sugar packet—and someone comments on it.

Let’s say I vanish a cocktail napkin.

They say, “I’m sorry… what just happened to your cocktail napkin?”

Step One: Confusion

I don’t want them to feel like I was waiting for this response. So my first reaction is always confusion. I act as if I think they’re asking me for that object. “You need a napkin?” I respond, somewhat confusedly. Like, I don’t understand why they’d be asking me for a napkin.

Step Two: Clarification

After a beat, I understand that they’re talking about my napkin. Apparently they want my napkin for some reason? I look around for it as if I set it down somewhere. “I don’t think I have it actually.”

Step Three: Understanding

“Oh, wait. Did I do something with it? Did I make it go?” I don’t use the word “vanish” at this point. I still want it to sound like I’m not quite understanding what they’re saying.

Step Four: Explanation

“Yeah, that must have seemed weird. I used to have a big interest in magic years ago. And one of the ways I practiced was to make garbage vanish. I’ve done it ever since. It’s just like a muscle-memory reaction.”

Step Five: Obfuscation

That explanation sort of makes sense, but now I want to push it a little further. So I say something like, “At this point, it’s probably just laziness. It’s easier than getting up and throwing it out.” This makes it sound like the item is actually gone in some way, not just secreted out of view somehow. You can tell this kind of throws people off a little. If they ask, “Where did it go,” I will give one of two answers. I’ll either say, “Oh, it’s in the trash,” and point across the room at the trash can; or I’ll just sort of shake my head and shrug my shoulders and be like, “I have no idea.”

Obviously it doesn’t always play out this exact way, but that’s more or less the path in my head that I’m ready to go on. Sometimes, the interaction will end soon after this. But most of the time, the conversation continues. Either they used to be into magic, or they’ve always enjoyed magic, or they want to know if I still study it. If they’re the type of person who’s going to approach you after seeing something strange happen, then they’re usually the sort of person who wants to pursue this conversation.

Dustings #88

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I have a larger-than-usual Virtual Focus Group planned for this weekend. This is where I distribute videos of magic tricks to groups of non-magicians from across the (English-speaking) world (strangers-—not friends of mine) and get their feedback and first impressions on the tricks.

If there are any effects (new or old) you’d like me to get in front of their faces, let me know. And let me know what question you’re hoping to have answered by this testing. (Something other than, “Did you like the trick?”) We’re usually asking things like what their interpretation of the effect was, or looking to see if the method that is used is one of the first things they consider.

We have a group of 50 people lined up, which is our biggest Virtual Focus Group yet. We have them through the rest of the month. (It’s like a grand jury. They’re available for multiple sessions.) So if you have something you’d like tested, let me know.

Responding to this week’s mailbag and the subject of magic subscription services, I found myself thinking that Penguin should have a weekly Instant Download subscription. Maybe like $20/month and you receive their top new instant download each week.

I don’t have the business sense to know if this would be a good economic move or not, but it seems like it would work out for everyone. Most instant downloads are in the $10 range. So it would be a theoretical $40 value for $20 for the customer. And I’m guessing on average a Penguin customer is probably only buying one or two downloads a month, so it would likely be an increase in revenue for Penguin. It would probably build a little more buzz and reviews for those downloads, and since everyone who wasn’t subscribed would still be paying full price, that should help revenue long term. And as long Penguin was including their best downloads in the subscription, I think customers would be pretty happy with it even if not everything is in their wheelhouse.

Mark S. wrote in with this idea which I think could be a quite intriguing storyline for a trick…

Not sure if this is of interest to you or not, but I read recently about a premonitions bureau that was established in the UK in the 60's to take premonitions from the general public with a view to predicting and averting disasters. Sounds crazy, but it actually existed. It has the makings of an interesting premise for a trick.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Premonitions_Bureau