Twickle: The Little Man Who Knows
/Here’s an idea that came out of an email exchange with someone who wanted to perform the Mental Die effect but was looking for a more fantastical premise—something beyond a simple 1-in-6 prediction or “reading body language” to divine the number.
Now, this might be too whimsical for some of you—but I still think it’s worth exploring. It sets the stage for something I’ll talk more about on Thursday.
Picture this:
You hand your friend a die and ask her to shake it between her hands. You tell her to let it settle in her palm and, while keeping it covered with her other hand, to peek at the number on top.
You reach into your pocket and pull out your own die. You give it a shake and peek at the result.
“I got a three,” you say. “What did you get?”
Coincidentally, she also got a three.
You do it again. “I got a one,” you say. Oddly, that’s what she got, too.
You do it again and both end up with a four. “Strange,” you say.
You have her roll a number again and take a peek at it. You roll your die between your hands, then stop. “I’ll be honest with you. I don’t even have a die.” You open your hands to show they’re empty.
“Sorry. I should be honest. I thought it would be cool if you thought we had some sort of connection and were consistently rolling the same numbers.”
You then go on to tell her the “truth” of what happened.
There’s a little man who lives in your pocket. “He could be a troll, or a gnome. I’m not sure. I know that sounds racist if you can’t tell the difference.”
You explain how, as she peeked at her number, the little guy climbed out of your pocket, ran up the back of her pant leg, up her back, perched on her shoulder just long enough to peek at her die, then scurried back down—across the floor, up your leg, into your shirt, down your sleeve—and into your hands, where he flashed you the number she saw with his tiny fingers.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have lied to you before.”
You offer to show her exactly how it worked. “You have your last number in mind?” She does. You cup your hands and make a beckoning whistle sound. A small hand pops up with five fingers extended.
“You must have rolled a five,” you say.
Method
This uses Mental Die and—famous shipping box model—Michael Ammar’s Little Hand, which itself was based on an idea by Bob Farmer.
This feels like a weird combination, right? A relatively dry, 1-in-6 mentalism effect combined with Little Hand, which is often treated as a throwaway gag. But together, I think they create something genuinely intriguing.
With Little Hand, people will think, “Well, it’s just a doll’s arm.” That doesn’t mean they’re not charmed and amused by it, they are. In fact, I think the “gag” of this obviously fake arm popping out is part of the charm. But they’re not exactly astonished by it.
Here, though, you get the same silliness and novelty—the little hand popping out still gets a laugh—but now there’s something else for them to grapple with: the idea that the hand was actually flashing the number they rolled on the die which only they knew.
It has the structure and feel of a gag, but it lands like a genuine impossibility.
If you wanted to turn this into a true showpiece for a formal performance, you could take it a step further. Get multiple doll arms and simply modify each one—using heat or boiling water to soften the plastic and press down specific fingers—so you end up with hands showing 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 fingers.
Then, keep a small index in your pocket. After the final roll (assuming it’s not a 6), you’d casually retrieve the correct hand for the reveal. This gives you the freedom to build to that moment deliberately—choosing exactly when to introduce the little creature and let the impossibility land.
The more Carefree approach is to just keep a single hand in your pocket—the one showing five fingers—and wait for a 5 to come up naturally before “coming clean” about how the effect is really done.
If they roll a 5 on their first roll, tell them that’s their “secret roll” and to remember the number—we’ll come back to it later. Then, when you're ready for the reveal, you say, “You’ve had one number in your head since the beginning. Your secret number. But actually, Twickle saw it. Twickle, what number did she roll the first time?” And out pops the little hand (uh, Twickle’s hand) with five fingers extended.
If the 5 shows up on rolls two through five, that’s when you pivot and tell them about the little man in your pocket. It’s not perfect structure-wise if it happens on roll two, but that’s just the way it goes when you’re jazzing like this.
If they don’t roll a 5 even after five rolls, tell them: “Maybe you think it’s a special die and certain numbers come up more commonly or in a special order. So choose the next number yourself. Choose one we haven’t had yet.”
If they choose a 5, great—you finish with the expected reveal.
If they choose something other than 5, and 5 is the only number that hasn’t appeared yet, you continue the routine as normal with their chosen number. Then, introduce the gnome and ask, “What’s the only number we haven’t rolled?”—and the hand pops out showing five fingers.
If they choose something other than 5, and there are still multiple unrolled numbers, the finale shifts tone. You reveal that you never had your own die, you tell the story of the gnome, and when you call for him, the little hand just pops out to wave hello. He doesn’t reveal the number. It’s still a fun combination of effects. Just not as impenetrable a knot of methodologies as it might be otherwise.
If I were doing this regularly, I’d split the difference between the Carefree approach and the full index method. I’d keep two Little Hands—one showing a five, the other a two—each in a different pocket. With those two options, and getting them to roll the dice multiple times early on if the same number comes up (to show it’s “not weighted”) you would be able to have the gnome reveal the number pretty much 100% of the time.
I would not bother getting the little arm until the point where I’m talking about the “little gnome who lives in my pocket.” When I reach in there—as if casually gesturing—I’d snag the arm needed. Then in the process of describing what the gnome was doing, I’d get the hand in the position needed.
You could even use the moment when you step behind them and run your fingers up their back (demonstrating the gnome’s route) as cover for getting set. It’s a theatrical beat that justifies the movement and gives you all the time you need to get ready.
The Mental Die trick, on its own, can be forgettable because it’s kind of dull. Little Hand, by itself, is dismissible because it feels like just a gag. Tying the two together with the gnome story may seem ridiculous to you, but it’s also the sort of premise that people can’t forget.
Not because it’s believable—but because it’s absurdly vivid. A tiny man scrambling up someone’s back to peek at their die, then racing down your sleeve to flash the number with his little hand? That’s such a simple, strange, and compelling visual that it lodges itself in their memory.
I love any trick that leaves a preposterous story stuck in someone’s brain.
