Mailbag: Enigma Thoughts

Hey Andy, there's a huge hype about this app. I don't have it yet, but I'm familiar with the method. I read the whole thread on the Magic Cafe.

And I believe you don't have it yet either, but when you do, I'd like to suggest a test, maybe between Enigma and Wikitest, that is: a thought-of word vs. a word searched + thought of.

Or perhaps Enigma vs. Billet Peek: A thought-of word vs. a word that was written down, but with good presentation like yours, it'll sound like a thought-of word after a week.

Or it can be whichever test you think makes more sense. Even in my country, they're discussing whether this is only amazing for magicians and that regular folks wouldn't notice a difference. —DM

It’s something I’ll consider. Because of the expense of testing (it’s $2000 for the smallest test size we do, and closer to $5000 on average) we try not to test just one trick against another, but more-so one concept against another. So if we’re lucky, we can come up with some conclusions that are more broadly useful.

Rather than comparing Enigma to Wikitest—which have enough differences that it would be difficult to necessarily pinpoint which specific difference is responsible for any measured change in spectator reaction—we might want to do something like comparing Enigma to Enigma. What I mean is, we might test Enigma in a standard way and then test it for a different cohort of people where they think of their word, write it down, it’s placed aside in a wallet, and then we perform Enigma on them with that word. So we’d be going through the steps of using a peek wallet, but doing so unnecessarily. This could give us some data about how much (or how little) the act of having them write a word down diminishes the impact of a mind-reading effect.

We could do it the other way as well. Perform a peek wallet routine for a group, then for a different group perform a peek wallet routine, but unnecessarily put the Enigma restrictions on that performance: the magician knows the type of the word, the general length of the word, where vowels are in the word, and potentially other details about letters in the word.

We could then determine what is more destructive to the impact of a mind-reading routine—the spectator having to write the word down or having limitations to the type of word they’re thinking of and having to elicit other details about the word?

This is more theoretical at this point. Because we’re now talking about four different groups of test subjects. Each would have to be at least 40 members per group to draw some good conclusions. And mind-reading routines are best tested one-on-one—so now we’re talking many days of testing, closer to $7,000 for test subjects alone, and most magicians would still shrug their shoulders.

One thing I can say without testing is that if you haven’t been able to pull off impressive mindreading with some kind of peek, that’s a flaw with your abilities and performance, not with the concept of peeking. Buy Enigma because it’s another tool that gives you alternative ways of performing and presenting mindreading. But if you buy it thinking, “Well this is the thing that will finally get me good reactions with my mindreading,” you’re going to be disappointed. You’re just going to fumble around and fuck this up too.

Don’t forget the Green Grass Test when looking at a new method to achieve an old effect. What if Enigma was the way we had been reading minds for 50 years? What if peeks didn’t exist? Then one day someone said, “Guess what guys, I’ve come up with a way to allow the spectator to think of ANY word, large or small. It can even be something personal, a nickname, or a made-up word. You don’t have to know how long it is or where any vowels are. Or anything about any of the letters. In fact, you can do it with a full name or phrase or even a picture. There’s no fishing. And you don’t need a phone. All they have to do is write the thing down to cement it in their mind and you can tell them what it is.” That technique (the one we all pooh-pooh as tired and dull) would be the exciting one. So just keep perspective on these things.

I’m going to get Enigma, and I’m going to use the shit out of it, I’m sure, but I’ll note one final thing… I have two friends who got in on the pre-sale of this and have been using it. In discussing it with them, I was saying how one of the reasons it’s so powerful to magicians is because we’re not used to this sort of mindreading where nothing is written down. But laypeople (if they haven’t seen much mindreading) won’t appreciate that difference. So maybe it would make sense to use Enigma as a follow-up to a traditional peek.

Both of my friends started doing that. And both independently came to the same conclusion: it’s the wrong way around. You do Enigma first. Then, maybe immediately after, or maybe some days later you try a “more advanced” version of the idea. Here they can think of any word, or movie title, or friend from grade school or whatever your presentation is. Now you can go into a process that is much less “letter-focused” than Enigma is, you can dip into emotions and visuals related to the thing they're thinking of. Because now the process is just smoke.

That’s likely how I will use Enigma in the future. Not instead of a peek. But as a layer of a larger “story” about mindreading.

You also might want to save it as an “out” for a peek. If someone says to you, “You must have seen what I wrote down.” You insist you didn’t.

“You think I saw what you wrote down? You think that mindreading is about secretly just looking at what someone wrote? Wow. That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard. Okay, sure, we can do it without writing anything down. But the process takes a little longer. Especially with someone whose mind is as jumbled as yours. If you don’t have something concrete to focus on—like the word you wrote down—I’m going to need to have you focus in other ways. But sure, let’s try it….”