Until August...

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This is the final post for July. Regular posting will resume Monday, August 4th. The newsletter for subscribers will be sent out Sunday, August 3rd. And a new playlist will be sent out to those who signed up for The Juxe near the end of the month.

Thanks to those of you who wrote in to express your gratitude for the Will It Unfold? broadcast.

I take great pride in being able to put together something that actually raised the bar for magic video content.

You’re welcome.

Marc Kerstein just added a new functionality to the DFBX app that allows for something similar to the Damsel List Shortcut mentioned in The Box post.

Previously, DFB would insert your force item at the named number—so the list itself was static, and the app would just wedge your force item into the right spot. This is something I actually took advantage of in this trick.

This new option does something different.

Imagine your force item is already part of the list, at number 1. What the app does is “cut” the list (and complete the cut), so your force item lands at the named number. That means the items that were originally at positions 2 and 100 are now sandwiching your force item—everything stays in the same relative order.

Now, imagine your force item is already part of the list, sitting at position 1. What the app does is “cut” the list (and complete the cut), so your force item lands at the desired number. That means the items that were originally at positions 2 and 100 are now sandwiching your force item.

But it’s more than that. Now, everything in your list is in the same position relative to the force item as it was originally.

As mentioned, this allows you to do Damsel-style forcing, like in The Box effect.

This can also be used to boost the impossibility of any small multiple-out style of effect. Instead of saying, “Think of any one of these six items,” you tell them to roll a die in their head and remember the number. Then they call someone you don’t know, who names a random two-digit number. They add their imaginary roll to that number.

“We have a list you haven’t seen. A starting point named by someone I don’t know who’s not even in the room. And a final number that only exists in your head. It’s like a triple-blind experiment.”

Without ever saying their final number, they land in your bank of six outs—hidden inside a list of 100 items. It feels dramatically more impossible than, “Think of one of these six things.” But in the end, it’s functionally the same trick.

I mentioned Justin Flom’s Instagram posts where the premise is that his daughters are left alone to “explore” his tricks. I hadn’t seen this one, and it might be the best, primarily due to the reactions of people who thought… I’m not sure what they thought. Justin has a real guillotine in his home? That he really left his daughters with a real guillotine? That any of these skits they see on social media are real?

He should have done a follow-up video. “We took your advice and got her checked and got terrible news. Apparently, her head was in fact chopped off by that guillotine. The doctor’s say she won’t be able to wear scarves ever again.” Then do a scarf-thru-neck trick to show the terrible repercussions of his negligent parenting.

bye, bye. See you back here in August.

What's Your Failsafe?

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One rule I have when I perform is that I always do whatever the person I’m performing for asks.

For example, if they say, “Can I look at the coins?” I let them look at the coins.

But what if they’re gimmicked coins?

I’d still let them look at the coins.

To me, it would be less embarrassing to let someone examine gimmicked coins than to say, “No, you can’t look at my coins,” and then awkwardly stuff them in my pocket.

Now, it probably goes without saying that because I have this rule, I generally avoid tricks that would fall apart if someone casually asked to examine an item that has a lot of heat on it. So no, I’m not constantly handing out gimmicked coins. I just wouldn’t bother doing a trick that relies so heavily on the audience not asking questions.

That said, one way a spectator can screw me over—thanks to this rule—is by asking to shuffle a deck that’s set up for a particular trick.

This doesn’t happen a lot. But it does happen to me a few times a year, including last week.

I always let them shuffle. Sometimes you get lucky and their shuffle is so sloppy you can salvage the setup. Other times, you need to pivot.

In the past, I’d rely on my large repertoire to save me. While they shuffled, I’d flip through the tricks in my mind and pick a new one on the fly.

These days, I think it’s better to have a single go-to trick ready for exactly this situation. A failsafe trick. So now, the moment someone asks to shuffle (destroying whatever I had planned) I can shift immediately into my “Failsafe Trick” presentation as I hand them the deck.

There are two big benefits to this.

First, it gives you more confidence. You don’t need to scramble.

Second, the ease and comfort with which you pass over the deck makes the request feel inconsequential. That in itself may make people less likely to ask in the future—they’ll just see it as a pointless detour.

Of course, your Failsafe Trick has to work from a shuffled deck and ideally not require much mental energy, since you won’t be specifically prepared to do it when the moment arises.

I’ll share what I’ve been using in a future post on the subject. But I thought it might be interesting to collect others as well. So if you have a trick like this in your back pocket (or this post has inspired you to think of one), send me an email and let me know what it is.

What's the Worst Thing About: Invisible Miracle

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I would say, on average, at least once a week someone writes me and asks me to hype their product on the site. Do you even read the site? I think. When have I ever acted as a hype man for other people’s shit?

I’ve spent thousands of hours working on this site. You think I did all that just to torch my credibility by flooding it with posts praising your new egg bag, Joshua Jay?

(And honestly, Josh… you’ve been writing me, asking me to “praise your egg bag” for years, and it still hasn’t come out. 🤔 It kind of seems like something else is going on here. Especially when you're saying things like, “Tell everyone how soft and supple my egg bag is. How you can fit it in your mouth. How it begs to be crushed under your heel.”)

Yes, I occasionally write about other people’s stuff here (and I do it monthly in the newsletter) but those come organically from things I’m actually using.

Five years ago, I made an offer: I’ll advertise your product here, as long as you send it to me and let me tell everyone the worst aspects of your release. This has proven to be… not super popular. We’re currently averaging about one taker per year. And one of those was a guy selling his trick for a dollar.

Today, I’m going to tell you the worst thing about Invisible Miracle by Germán Dabat.

What is it?

(Ad copy)

You show a red deck of cards and leave it in plain sight. You hand the spectator a blue deck, and they can cut it as many times as they like. They choose either the top or bottom card and hide it in any pocket they want. Then, they hide another card in a different pocket and reverse one card in the deck.

Now, you reveal that you've predicted everything! Inside the red deck, there's one reversed card with a message written on its back. It reads: "Right pocket: 10 of Hearts, Left pocket: 4 of Spades." Finally, you turn over the reversed card and it matches the spectator's reversed card perfectly!

The Good

This is a very strong triple-prediction. It will almost certainly fool non-magicians.

And the price is right at $10.

The Bad

You have to put this together yourself. It’s not too difficult. Just a minor annoyance.

You need two decks dedicated to this trick. This is not something you would carry around with you casually. I mean… you could, I guess. I wouldn’t. Carrying around one deck is weird. Carrying around two decks makes you look like a sociopath.

The deck with the prediction in it can’t be examined. I don’t think there’s a ton of heat on that deck, but it’s still not ideal.

There isn’t much of a build to the effect. Essentially the same thing happens three times.

What’s the Worst Thing About Invisible Miracle?

This is one of the most card-centric tricks I’ve ever seen.

They make a selection from one deck of cards, there’s a reveal in another deck of cards, and the prediction is… written on a playing card!

It’s almost impossible to make this trick about anything other than playing cards. Which means, over time, it’s likely to blur into the background of every other card trick you’ve shown people.

Final Thought

I’ve listed a lot more negative than positive aspects to this trick—but that’s the purpose of these series of posts. When weighing the positives and negatives, I think this is easily worth the $10 investment.

I’ve come up with a few presentation tweaks that address some of the issues above and elevate the trick a few notches in my book. I’ll be sharing those in the next issue of the Love Letters newsletter.

Mailbag #143

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Announcement

  • If you downloaded the shortcut in last Thursday’s post, download it again. It’s been updated to fix a bug and to handle single digits.

How the hell did you lose the FISM award you were up for? 😆 You can say that didn’t bother you, but given the things you were up against, it has to gnaw at you.—CB

Well, I’m sure shitting on the awards the moment they were announced didn’t help. I also asked not to be considered. And as far as I know, none of the judges even follow the site.

But no, it didn’t “gnaw” at me. You have to understand, I feel zero connection to the broader magic world. I don’t resonate with what’s happening at FISM, at the Magic Castle, on message boards, or in most magic-related spaces. The style of magic and the skills they value are almost the opposite of what I care about.

I’ve long felt out of step with magicians. I used to chalk it up to magicians being dull dorks, but I don’t really believe that anymore. I think, as people, magicians are as interesting (or uninteresting) as any other group.

It’s really just the way most of them approach magic that I don’t vibe with at all. A five-minute ring and string routine? The cups and balls? A 20-minute card set that no one remembers any specific details of the next day? What’s the point?

If a trick doesn’t give people a story to tell or serve as a way to connect with others, I have no interest in it.

I recognize the skill and artistry that’s celebrated in places like FISM. It’s just not what I’m personally into.

I know there are people out there whose interest is much wider than my own, and they can appreciate this site as well as more traditional styles of magic. But I don’t have that ability. I only have a narrow focus of interest when it comes to magic, and it’s pretty much the stuff I write about here.

So it doesn’t bother me not to have won. It wouldn’t have registered with me in any meaningful way. I’m glad someone who cared more about it got it.

Here’s some feedback from recent posts that present some further options/info that you might find worthwhile, but don’t really need a response from me

I really like your “Fencing” concept. I’ve actually been using a similar idea in a few tricks without realizing it. One of the best examples of “Fencing” I can think of is a subtlety from Max Maven: In most Gilbreath tricks, you have to cut the deck into two piles and ask the spectator to do a riffle shuffle—which can feel a bit unnatural. What Max did was cut the deck and begin a riffle shuffle himself, saying, “Let’s shuffle the cards.” Then he paused mid-shuffle and added, “Or better yet, you shuffle the cards,” as he split the packets and moved them toward the spectator. 

It reminded me a bit of a concept from Darwin Ortiz called “False Progression”. It’s when a method is so fooling that you can repeat it multiple times. So to make the trick have a crescendo and not be boring, you start under seemingly worse conditions in the first phase,  then slightly better in the second phase and for the third phase you perform it using the full potential of the method.

There are tons of “Bi-Reveals” in magic literature. I had always thought of them as just multiple outs, but your distinction makes perfect sense—and they really are stronger than standard multiple outs. One of the most curious “Poly-Reveals” I’ve come across is in The Purloined Letters from The Essential Stewart James. In it, a poem by Edgar Allan Poe reveals three different cards:

The seven of clubs is revealed by taking the first letter in the first line, the second letter in the second line, and so on, to the twelfth letter in the twelfth line. The four of spades is revealed by taking the first letter in the last line, the second letter in the second-last line, and so on, to the twelfth letter in the first line. The five of hearts is revealed by taking the first letter in each line commencing with the last line and reading up. —GD

I really liked your post from yesterday: The Box: Grocery Delivery. The Damsel List Force is a really fantastic idea and I'll definitely been using it.

But I mostly wanted to suggest that you talk to Marc Kerstein and Albert Chang about this being added as an official feature to DFBX. I think being able to use this force with DFBX's input methods would take it to the next level. —AO

I reached out to Marc and he may have something planned that will work similarly in a forthcoming update to DFBX.

You’re on a generational run with your recent posts. Bi-Reveals, Fencing, Phantom Hits, and the Box are all things I would have expected you to save for your books.

One Bi-Reveal I’m surprised you didn’t mention is the “Switch” feature in the Jerx App. When sitting across from someone I will make my prediction then lean the phone against something on the table so it faces me. I’ll do a trick that whittles down their options to two, followed by a clearly free choice. Then by having them join me on my side of the table or having them take the phone and look at it themselves, I can control what outcome they see without touching anything. So clean. —GM

Dustings #128

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Florian K writes:

The forward thinking on the Savant Deck is indeed genius, however it is not original to Craig, Lloyd and Murphy‘s. Without proper credit being given, this is directly lifted from the Dani DaOrtiz Penguin release „The Ritual“. Here the master gives a detailed explanation of his original „Psilology of Numbers“ concept.

I hope the parties involved can work out a satisfactory solution.

How dare you come to my site and attack Craig Petty like that. Craig can’t release anything without someone hopping online to call it unoriginal or stupid.

Well, let me tell you… this premise:

“I do product packaging design for Murphy’s Magic. Also, I’m an idiot who can’t spell due to the brain power I need for incredible mathematical feats.”

is vastly different from this premise:

“I do video editing for Penguin Magic. Also, I’m an idiot who can’t spell, but that’s because I use my awesome brain power instead to place your chosen card at your chosen number.”

These are totally different premises. Get off your high horse.

Speaking of Craig Petty, he released a video tearing into Yigal Mesika that you may enjoy.

I haven’t watched it (it’s three hours, I have a life to lead), but if you like magic drama, there seems to be a lot here. (Although I have a feeling it probably didn’t need to be longer than The Godfather.)

I, too, tackled Yigal’s over-litigiousness more briefly (unless you’re a remarkably slow reader) back in 2016 with this post.

Hate Justin Flom as much as you like. (In fact, hate him even more than that, I don’t care.) But putting these shitty old tricks in this narrative structure is the only thing that makes them close to watchable…

The Box: Grocery Delivery

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I have a new tool to share with you today. But first, let’s put it in the context of a trick.

This is an expansion of an older trick I’ve written up somewhere before, but with some new tools and techniques involved.

Imagine

My friend Nataliya is visiting my apartment for a Taskmaster marathon.

At one point, I move some things on the coffee table and uncover a business card.

“Oh,” I say, pausing the TV, “you’ll find this fascinating. Wait… do I have one left?”

I turn the card over to show four checked boxes and on unchecked one.

“Okay, yeah I do. So, this is a grocery delivery service start-up that I’m part of the beta testing team for. It’s not like the typical grocery delivery service, because they only do one item at a time. But they do it in a kind of crazy way.”

I rub my chin. “Let me think what do I want…”

“Actually, I’ll let you choose. We’ll do it randomly, so you know it’s legit. We’ll pick something off my grocery list. I probably have 50 or 60 things on there—so let’s just say 50. Name a number between 1 and 50.”

She says 22.

I pick up my phone and open the list. “Okay, we’ll go with the 22nd item. Actually, I’ll give you some leeway—you can choose the 22nd item, the one above it, or the one below it.”

The 22nd item is beef jerky. Above it: granola. Below it: lentil soup.

“We can go with the item you chose. Or we can make it totally random—flip a coin to go up or down. Or just flip a coin in your head and tell me which one you land on. I’m harping on this because you’re going to think it’s some kind of trick. But clearly, everything on this list is different. If you’d picked a different number, you’d have landed on something else entirely, and different options.”

Eventually, she settles on the can of lentil soup.

“Here’s where it gets weird,” I say, leading her into the kitchen.

“This service delivers whatever single item you’re thinking of… right into the breadbox.”

I slide the card into the breadbox.

“It takes about a minute,” I say.

We awkwardly wait that minute out.

“Okay, check,” I tell her.

She opens the breadbox and pulls out two things:

A can of lentil soup.

And The Box delivery card—now with all five boxes checked on the back. (Sadly making the moment unrepeatable.)

Note

Keep this in mind…

  1. The number is freely named.

  2. The grocery list is a real note in your real Notes app.

  3. The choice between items is free.

  4. There is nothing else in the breadbox. Nothing is loaded into it at any point (other than sliding the card in).

  5. They can open every cupboard, the oven, the microwave, or anything else in your kitchen and not find a single other thing from the list anywhere else.

Method

Here are some of the techniques used to make this so strong.

Fencing

As discussed in yesterday’s post, we’re using a technique called Fencing—framing the conditions as more limiting than they actually are. Then, when we loosen those conditions just a little, it feels like real freedom, even though the outcome is still tightly controlled.

I start by implying I’m the one who will decide what to use the card for. Then I "concede" some control by letting them choose a random number. From there, I open it up even further: they can choose the item at that number, the one above, or the one below

This is clearly not as free as letting them just think of anything you can get in a grocery store. But it’s significantly more fair than what I initially lead them to believe which is that I’m going to be the one who chooses something “at random.”

Bi-Reveals

As I wrote about last week, Bi-Reveals let you force two (or more) items, giving them a free choice at the end, while still allowing you to name or imply the reveal location in advance. That’s what gives the reveal its power because it feels like you’re committed from the start.

In this case, the implication comes from the name of the delivery service: The Box Grocery Delivery.

So when the chosen item shows up in the breadbox—the only thing in the kitchen actually called a “box”—it makes perfect sense.

If she’d picked the granola, I would’ve taken her outside to show her how the service works: you drop the card in the mailbox and wait a minute

This too is perfectly logical. It’s The Box grocery delivery service. Things are delivered to your mailBOX. What could be more clear?

If she had picked beef jerky, I would have walked her over to my front door. On a table next to the door is a small cardboard box. I would drop the card on top of the box, wait a minute, then tell her to open it.

Again, a fully logical reveal tied right into the name of the delivery service.

And in no circumstance do the other locations occur to someone. If I reach into my pocket to reveal something, it naturally occurs to people to wonder what’s in my other pockets. But if something appears in the breadbox, no one’s thinking, “Hmm, but what’s in the mailbox?” The other locations don’t even register as options.

And the sealed box near the front door draws no attention to itself. It just looks like a random piece of mail on a table near the front door, where people keep pieces of mail.

You might be thinking, “I don’t have a breadbox,” or even, “I don’t have a mailbox.” I get it. But you’ll figure something out. The real point here isn’t the props—it’s the structure. And more specifically, it’s the tool I want to show you…

The Damsel List Force

“Damsel” forcing is a term I use for a type of force that contains elements of clear, unequivocal, free choices.

The Damsel List Force is a Shortcut you can put on your iPhone. When run, it prompts you to enter a number. Once you do, it creates a grocery list in your actual Notes app, with one item at the selected number, and two other force items just above and below it

(You obviously wouldn’t have a big solo button on your screen for this. That was just for the demonstration.)

This tool works particularly well with Bi-Reveals. If you have two potential options, you say, “Name any number, but before you do, I don’t want you to think, ‘Oh, everyone must name the same number.’ So name a number to decide a postilion on the list, and then we’ll flip a coin to decide if we go one up or one down from there. That way, no one can say for sure what we’ll end up on.”

If you’ve got three reveals, you can do what I did: let them stick with the one they “chose,” or allow a coin flip (real or imagined) to shift it up or down.

The shortcut was created by supporter Albert Chang, and can be found in the resources below. It’s currently set up for this trick, but it’s well annotated and easy to adapt for other routines.

You’ll need to figure out your own preferred way to trigger the shortcut, but otherwise, it’s ready to go.

Wrap Up

That’s it.

The only other detail is how the final checkbox gets marked off on the card. I just switch the card early on, swapping the one with four checked boxes for one with all five at any point when they’re not paying attention. After the switch, the card sits on the table, face-up. The other side is out-of-mind until the end, when the final box appears checked (and now you have a rationale for not doing it again).

Thanks again to Albert for creating the shortcut and letting me share it here.

Resources

Damsel List Force shortcut

Box logo

Printable business card pdf — For use with cards like these, which are pretty good for creating fake little businesses and institutions for magic premises.)