Glossolalia

Here’s a good idea from reader Cadence L.

I created a new presentation of Alphablocks/Ideomotor-by-Proxy, the premise being: certain Christian denominations practice glossolalia (aka speaking in tongues). From a religious perspective it’s a miraculous angelic language. From a neuroscientific perspective it’s a learned behavior mostly consisting of repetitive syllables. Now the story goes, you read a paper by a hokey professor who theorized that, for instance, if someone speaking in tongues is thinking about a concept like “God” they tend to make lots of “g” “o” and “d” sounds, and other people will get an impression of “God” (or whatever they were thinking of). That’s why people find glossolalia so meaningful. Everyone thinks this theory is BS but you decide to test it anyway. You get your friend to suggest a hymn, Bible verse, inspirational Pinterest quote, Katy Perry song, or anything like that which resonates with them. You listen to it together to get in the correct mental state. Then you tell your friend to concentrate on one of the words in the text which stuck with them in some way and start trying to speak in tongues. Tell them NOT to consciously use the sounds in their chosen word. Try to pick out the letters you “heard emphasized” in their utterance. If the letters you have to name are obviously not the ones they emphasized, chalk it up to English spelling quirks or sound shifts induced by low-level trance states.... You can fill in the rest.

Hope you get something out of this. I like how this distances the effect from “mind-reading.” It’s slightly too believable coming from a religious studies nerd like me, but for most people that wouldn't be a problem.

I like this a lot, whether used with the Alphablocks concept or with traditional Progressive Anagrams.

I think everyone agrees that when it comes to Progressive Anagrams, naming letters is at best kind of bland, and at worst, sort of transparent.

It doesn’t make a ton of sense as far as mindreading goes. If you’re thinking of a Lamborghini, you’re either picturing it in your mind or imagining being in one. Those should be the elements that would be easy to pick up via mindreading.

No one is ever thinking of the spelling of the word. (Well, other than me when I was just trying to spell it in the last paragraph.) No one is ever like, Ah, yes, let me try to send you the thought of a Lamborghini. Well… there’s that H, of course. And that beautiful B. An I. Two I's, actually. Those lines with a dot on top that we all love so much. That O… so round.

It’s just the least interesting thing about the thought in their head, so focusing on that aspect (if you’re a “mindreader”) feels pretty bizarre.

When it comes to Anagrams, Alphablocks, Squared Anagrams, etc. It’s almost always best to get the letters in play through some other channel besides their “thoughts.” This glossolalia premise is a good way. Another one would be to pick out letters you find in some “automatic writing” scribbles. A Ouija board works beautifully, of course. Alphabet blocks. Imagining typing on a keyboard. Or, my favorite which appears here: A trick where they chew on random letters from Alphabits cereal that happen to appear in the word they’re thinking, they then spit in your mouth and you can tell them what the word they’re thinking of is. (That uses the Alphablocks methodology I came up with, which means they never have to tell you the letters in their word.)