Muddy the Waters

Just wanted to share with you that I loved your coronavirus-inspired presentation for invisible deck. I’ve been performing tricks every day with my coworkers via WebEx to break up the day, and yours was the perfect presentation. Minds were blown. I think the reaction was better than when I do the classic ID presentation or a mentalism-based presentation. —DM

Yup. This has been my experience as well. It’s a real good thing.

And there is a more universally useful concept in there than just a presentation for the Invisible Deck. It’s something I want to experiment with more when I have the opportunity.

Basically the idea is to give people a method that you won’t actually be using to sort of distract their mind. In the case of the “Inverted Card” presentation, I talk about sleights and feeling the heat coming from the card a spectator handled. So when you do the trick and it clearly doesn’t use those techniques, I think they’re more fooled than they might be otherwise. Certainly anyone who has done the ID regularly has had someone suggest that you just turned the card over without them seeing it. If they don’t know what’s going to happen, they don’t know to make note of how cleanly you’re handling the deck. By bringing up the idea of sleight-of-hand and telling them where the trick is going from the start, you eliminate that Easy Answer.

I’m not suggesting all tricks should be framed this way, but I think it’s something that could be useful for certain effects.

Here’s a related idea. If I have someone write down a word on a business card and I put it in my wallet and then guess the word, a certain percentage of people will think I somehow saw the word, they may even suspect the wallet. But, what if I did this… what if I had someone write down a two digit number, under 50, with both digits being odd, and different from each other. And I put that card in my wallet and then I guess correctly that they thought of the number 37. After this I explain the general idea behind how it works. How there are much fewer options than there first appears, and how some numbers are more psychologically appealing, or whatever. Now I say, “I’m trying something similar with words. Write down any word on this card.” I put it away in my wallet and then guess what they’re thinking. I would bet, in that situation, less people would guess that I had somehow peeked the word.

I can’t say for certain that’s true. I’ve never tested it. Maybe I will someday. But I feel like people have a limited amount of processing power to consider how tricks are done. And if you offer up another method (whether you suggest it’s something you’re using or something you’re not using) a part of their mind becomes occupied considering that method and they will have a harder time deducing what’s actually being done.

I’ll let you know if I pursue this idea any further.