The Magician Name Generator

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I’ve got a couple of ideas for how this might work.

You tell someone you want them to generate their own Magician Name. To do that, all they need to do is name two 2-digit numbers.

You show them two lists:

  • The first list contains the first half of their name

  • The second list contains the second half

So for example, the first list might look like this:

  1. The Amazing…

  2. The Astonishing…

  3. The Incredible…

And so on, until 100.

And the second list might look like:

  1. …Spellbinder

  2. …Man of Mystery

  3. …King of Cards

Etc.

They decide which number goes with which list, and voilà—they've got their name.

The Stupendous Spellbinder

“Eh… not bad,” you say. “Although, I probably should have known.”
You point to their shoulder—where a name tag has been stuck this whole time:

Method

DFB X

And, as you're greeting the participant, you surreptitiously stick the name tag to their arm or shoulder.

A list of 100 first and second halves of a name can be found here.

Alternative Ideas

Walkaround Version

Here’s a variation that works well in situations where you can’t plant the sticker ahead of time.

This time, you tell them you’re in the market for a new magician name—and you want their help choosing it.

You go through the same process with the two lists, and end up with something underwhelming, like:

The Astonishing Astonisher

You give it a beat.
“Hmm, that’s awfully weak. I’ve hardly gotten any gigs with that branding.”

And you open your jacket to show that name tag, or pull a business card with that name out of your wallet, or flip over your close-up pad to show the name embroidered in big, sad letters.

Silent Version

Instead of having them name the numbers out loud, you hand them a deck of cards with the face cards removed. (“We don’t need them for this.”)

They shuffle freely, then cut the deck into four packets and rearrange them how they like.

With a marked deck, you know what cards are on top. Now you can bring up the lists before the numbers are “revealed,” creating a super clean and disarming structure.

This version would be nearly impossible to backtrack. Especially with the way DFBX allows you to switch which number is used in which list.

No DFB Version

You could do the same thing with one static list and either force the numbers (perhaps using an Ace-cutting procedure). Or force two cards. Maybe red cards are the first half of the name and black cards are the second.

Stats

The stats here are easily understandable and worth mentioning. “With 100 beginnings and endings of names, there are 10,000 possible combinations.” That’s more variety than most people who are bad at math might expect, and it adds a little extra sense of impossibility to the reveal.

Carefree Version

Anytime, anywhere, once you’ve done a one-time set-up (assuming you have your phone with you).

They name numbers to pick their Magician Name.

They end up with something like: The Tremendous Mind Master.

You frown.

“No. That’s not cool, man. I’m not going to let you infringe on my work and the name I’ve made for myself.”

Then you pull out a business card with that name on it…

Or show them a screenshot on your phone of you filling out the LLC paperwork under that name…

Or (the best idea) you have them go to tremendousmindmaster.com on their phone, and they see you in a cheap suit, with a frozen grin and dead eyes, proudly holding a fan of jumbo cards. Or it’s a photo of you in an oversized sparkly vest, holding a rose, with your eyebrow cocked at an angle that’s gone far beyond seductive into the realm of genuinely unsettling.

Bonus points if the site looks like it was built in 2003.

Bonus bonus points if there’s a Guestbook on the site that still works.

The Time I "Stole" That Picture

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Every few days, someone sends me this Facebook post and asks… “Uhm, what?”

And then he attached an image of the box in question.

I admit, it doesn’t make me look very good…

But honestly, I was thrilled when it first went up a month ago—I’ve been itching to tell this story for a while. Talking shit is one of life’s purest joys, and for once, I had an idiot worth dragging. It felt like the glory days of The Magic Circle Jerk again.

But every time I sat down to write, I’d end up rereading this guy’s old emails to me and scrolling through his social media and… man. It was bleak. Everything just radiated this low, aching sadness. And I realized I couldn’t go full scorched earth on someone whose entire issue with me felt less like anger and more like a cry for attention from someone who felt unloved and unseen.

So I gave him a few weeks—to see if maybe he’d take the post down.

Here’s the thing: he knows he’s lying here. And he knows that I know he’s lying. And he knows I have the emails to prove it.

And yet… the post remains. Which means he must want me to comment on it. Well… okay. 🤷‍♂️

Even so, I won’t be too mean. I’m not even going to name him—because I don’t want this post becoming the first thing someone sees when they Google him.

That said, I’m also not going to let some dope just invent things about me in a desperate attempt to draw attention to himself. So now I guess it’s time for me—“the mysterious and controversial Andy The Jerx”—to help clarify things.

Some time ago, a certain "Andy The Jerx" – a mysterious and controversial publisher well known in the magic world – released a book that came in a cardboard box.

First, my name is just Andy. This site is called The Jerx. It’s just a play on The Jinx. It’s not my name or a persona. It would be like calling Stan Allen, “Stan The MAGIC Magazine.”

Second, I’m just a writer. Not a publisher. The site has a publisher. That publisher is not me.

Third, I didn’t “release a book that came in a cardboard box,” as if the packaging was some avant-garde part of the artistic statement. I wrote a book. People who support the site at the highest level received that book as a gift. And in order for them to receive it—brace yourself—it had to be mailed. And when things get mailed, they often go in boxes. Cardboard boxes. The box wasn’t some integral part of the book. It was a logistical part of getting the book to people.

What shocked me? The bottom of this box contained a photo of Michael Ammar that I took… and that I had never published!

Well, technically, it was the top of the box.

The shipping box looked something like this:

It was a shirtless picture of Michael Ammar with that caption added. The “YOU” was under the book itself. So it came off as a little surprise joke.

This was my publisher’s idea. I thought it was funny.

Not only was this photo used without my permission, but it was also altered to be presented in a “sexy” or even “sexual” way – an interpretation that does not align with my artistic vision nor with Michael Ammar’s, who immediately supported me.

“altered to be presented in a sexy or even sexual way”

Just to be clear here, I didn’t caption the picture, “Choke on my fat cock, you dumb bitch.”

I wrote: “Someone sexy got a book in the mail.”

This is the terrible “sexual” alteration I made to his precious masterpiece.

“an interpretation that does not align with my artistic vision”

Well, I hate to be the one to say it—certainly not at the expense of your artistic vision—but Michael Ammar looks hot as hell in that photo.

And this photographer—whose entire aesthetic is lifted from film noir—apparently missed the part where film noir is supposed to be drenched in sensuality. If you genuinely didn’t notice the sexiness in Ammar’s shirtless picture, I don’t know what to tell you. Check your pants for genitals—you might be missing them.

Do I think he truly didn’t see the “sexy” aspect of that image?
For his sake, I hope not. No one would ever hire a photographer so artistically oblivious he couldn’t recognize the most obvious, surface-level quality of his own work.

No, he didn’t miss the sexiness. What he saw was an opportunity. An opportunity to act more victimized. And that’s the thread that ran through all my interactions with him: a hunger for injury, for indignation.

(Also, just a friendly tip: if you’re trying to make a copyright case, maybe don’t open with “They completely altered my artistic vision.” That’s actually… kind of the opposite of what you want to say.)

After investigating, it turns out that this image was likely stolen during my major photo exhibition in Quebec at FISM 2022.

Let’s pause there.

There was no “investigating.” I told him directly—in my first message—exactly how I got the image.

And the image wasn’t “stolen.” (Get used to this kind of overwrought grandiosity.)

Nobody dressed in black rappelled through a skylight in the dead of night to snap a photo of the image with a camera hidden inside a hollowed-out cigarette pack.

The image was on display. Someone took a picture of it.

That’s not a heist—it’s what happens when you put things in front of people.

According to Andy The Jerx, someone took a photo of my work and sent it to him… Which, in his view, gave him the right to use it without my consent and without Michael Ammar’s approval.

“According to me”? What happened to that investigation?

Okay, here’s what actually happened.

At FISM 2022, a few different people sent me that shirtless photo of Michael Ammar.

Not seeing it in any context, I thought it was a photoshop, or part of a gag image or meme. People send me that kind of thing from conventions all the time.

Nobody who sent it mentioned a photo exhibition.

Nobody included other images from the show.

Nobody said, “Hey, this is part of a curated art project.”

There was no talk online about this display.

I had no idea it was part of anything formal.

So when a few people sent me a shirtless Ammar photo saying things like, “Hubba hubba!” or “Should I make a tribute video to this?” I assumed—again, not seeing it in context—that it was part of a magic convention inside-joke of some sort.

I posted it on my site with a throwaway line about how hot Ammar looked. It stayed there for sixteen months. Not one person said, “Hey, that’s a copyrighted piece from a ‘major’ photo exhibit.”

So later, when my publisher suggested using it inside the shipping box as a fun little surprise, I said, “Sure.”

That’s it. That’s the entire extent of my malicious plan to “steal” this image.

Obviously, my ignorance of the situation doesn’t give me the right to use the image however I want. I’ve never suggested that. I’m just explaining my mindset—why it never occurred to me to try and track down where the image came from in the first place. At the time, it simply didn’t seem like that kind of thing.

If someone had sent me a picture of Andi Gladwin, stripped to the waist, riding a horse—with Joshua Jay, similarly attired, embracing him from behind—I would have made the same (mistaken) assumption. I would have been just as casual about using it. And just as surprised to learn it wasn’t some inside joke... but the featured image for November in the 2024 Calendar of The Best Erotic Imagery of Magic Shop Co-Owners.

This is the part the photographer just could never wrap his mind around.

He was convinced that I must have recognized his picture as a serious photographic work—been dazzled by its artistry—and thought to myself: "I must… simply must… have this achievement printed on the bottom of my shipping box! And I don’t care who I trample along the way. Consequences be damned!"

And anything I said that didn’t fit that fantasy was, in his mind, an “excuse” or an attempt to “downplay my actions.”

But here’s the thing: only I know what actually happened—and what was in my heart and mind when it did.

If I give you an honest account of the reality, and your takeaway is that this reality somehow "downplays" the seriousness of the grievance you've built up in your head, then you’re just proving my point:

Your reaction is overblown compared to what actually happened.

Does simply taking a photo of an exhibition piece erase copyright and allow someone to claim ownership of an artwork?

Why did he write that?

He wrote it to make it sound like that was my position. It’s not. It never was. And he knows that.

But he can’t quote what I actually said in our interactions—because if he did, he’d sound completely unhinged. So instead, he has to construct this fake argument, imply I suggeted it, and then bravely take a stand against the thing I never said.

Fortunately, with the support of two lawyer friends in Canada and the United States, we managed to compel Andy The Jerx to pay for the usage rights in order to avoid a lawsuit in the US – a country where the justice system takes copyright violations very seriously.

Right. Except... no.

For some reason, he’s decided to lie about this too.

I wasn’t “compelled” to do jack-shit.

The truth is: the moment I found out about the situation—on November 8th, 2023—I reached out to him to ask how I could make it right. This was before he contacted me. Before his “lawyer” contacted me. (I’m not naming that guy either, because many of you know him, and honestly… this whole thing is embarrassing for him.)

No one had to track me down. No one had to “compel” me to pay. That’s literally why I reached out in the first place.

But unfortunately, I was dealing with unserious people.

We couldn’t just agree on a reasonable fee and move on like adults. How would he get to perform his victimhood if this ended quickly and reasonably?

At first, they asked me to have all the boxes returned so they could be destroyed.

I told them, essentially, “Great news! These were just the shipping boxes. Very few people would hold onto them. They’re likely almost all in the garbage already.”

You’d think that would make him happy, right?

Apparently not, as this was his response:

“It deeply saddens me to see my FINE-WORK end up in a trash can.”

Yes, those are his caps.

And that’s when I knew I wasn’t dealing with someone acting in good faith. I was dealing with a performance.

He sent me hundreds of words describing how distressed and distraught he was over seeing his photograph “defaced” in this way.

Then my lawyer-friend—who was helping me navigate all this—asked a very reasonable question.

You see, back in 2023, instead of reaching out to me directly, the photographer had gone straight to Facebook—posting a photo of the inside of the box and staging a bit of grievance theater for the crowd.

And my friend asked:

“If this image was so upsetting to him, why did he share it in a Facebook group with over ten times the audience of the people who received your book?”

Huh. Good question.

Almost like the goal wasn’t privacy or artistic protection… but amplification.

I was happy to pay him a fair usage rate for the image. It’s not-easy to price the licensing of a photo for something like this—non-promotional, non-commercial, no revenue attached. I didn’t profit from the image. I lost money by having custom boxes printed. The image wasn’t used to sell anything. It wasn’t an ad. It wasn’t on a product. It was an Easter egg inside shipping packaging.

To be safe, I decided to treat the image as if it were used on actual customer-facing product packaging. I found standard rates for that kind of usage… and then offered him a significant multiple of that rate.

To make sure the offer was fair, I consulted with an IP attorney, two premier editorial photographers, and even reached out to the Helmut Newton Foundation and the Richard Avedon Foundation to talk with their licensing departments.

Eventually, we settled on a price and I gladly paid it.

I made other offers too. I told them from the start I wanted to turn this into a positive situation for him.

At one point, during the discussions, I went to the photographer’s Instagram and saw where he announced a book of his magic photography and saw this:

7 likes. No comments. Less than 1% of people who were actively following him were excited enough about the book announcement to even like the post. So I offered to help him promote it on my site. It could be a double win for him. He’d get paid a licensing fee, and more importantly, I would promote his work and try to help him sell his upcoming book. Even a small portion of my readership could be 1000s of dollars in book sales for an expensive art book. He declined. Which is fine. But do we now have to pretend I was acting in “bad faith” and was somehow unwilling to pay back for my mistake?

I got the distinct sense that he felt he needed to be really upset—just in case he wanted to sue and claim damages.

How else do you explain emails like this?

“The [licensing fee] will never cover the seriousness of the grievances. […] Andy must stop deluding himself because he is unaware of the gravity of his successive mistakes, which are unforgivable”

Unforgivable.

Remind yourself: we’re talking about putting an image of Michael Ammar—looking fantastic, by the way—inside a shipping box.

Although he eventually issued an apology, his bad faith was evident: excuses, weak justifications, and various attempts to downplay his actions.

Here’s what actually happened:

The photographer and his lawyer asked that I issue an apology. I was happy to—because I genuinely did make a mistake, and he deserved an apology. Here’s the wording the person acting as HIS LAWYER suggested to me:

“I inadvertently used an image without consulting the artist, and the subject - Michael Ammar - but once it was brought to my attention, I reached out and arranged for the appropriate license for having used it, etc. "

And here’s what I posted on the site:

In this season’s book mailing, I used a photo of Michael Ammar on the inside of the shipping box. What I didn’t realize at the time was that that picture was part of an as-yet-unrealized photography project by [the photographer]. When I learned that, I immediately reached out to him to make things right and work out a licensing fee for the pic.

In the magic community, the concept of “intellectual property” is often pooh-poohed (if not just outright poopoo’d) but paying for my use of the image was clearly the right thing to do.

It was, for all intents and purposes, exactly what was asked for—only in my own words. I acknowledged the mistake, clarified the timeline, and emphasized that paying for the image was the “right thing to do” and something I wanted to do as soon as I was aware of the issue. Clearly the words of someone who knows he was in the wrong.

Okay, end of story, right?

Nope. A month later, I get this email.

I am not satisfied with your apologies as they do not reflect sincerity. You downplay your serious mistake to your advantage {…}

I want to inform you that I will compile a dossier on the severity of this theft, which I will submit to the magical press in Germany, France, England, and the United States (web and magazine press). I have maintained good professional relationships with these media for over 20 years, and I believe it is necessary to bring this matter to their attention so that magicians understand the importance of photo theft in our magic industry.

I strongly encourage you to rephrase your apologies sincerely, explaining clearly what actually happened.

My commitment to moderating the content of my dossier in the magical press depends on the sincerity and appropriateness of your apologies.

Does this sound like a rational person?

After receiving my payment (the same day as we agreed on a price), my public apology (which was, again, literally based on the one they suggested), and an offer to promote his work on the most widely read magic site on the internet…

He waits a month.

Then tells me he’s compiling a “dossier on the severity of this theft.”

And if I don’t issue a more “sincere and appropriate apology,” he’s taking his dossier to the “magical press.”

At some point we went from “protecting artistic integrity” to “Liam Neeson from Taken,” but for cardboard boxes.

Of course, I begged him: “Oh no! Please don’t go to the magical press!”

I’m kidding. You’ll be glad to know I basically told him to fuck off and do whatever he wants. I’m done with this issue.

And still—until now—I never mentioned this situation publicly.

Then, over a year later, he writes the Facebook post at the top of this whole saga.

I get it. He’s a frustrated artist. There’s no buzz around his work. He wants to draw attention to himself. But if he just told the truth—"Someone accidentally used my image, we worked it out, I got paid"—people would shrug and say, “Who gives a shit? Move on with your life.”

So instead, he needs to make it sound dramatic.

That the photo was “stolen” (it was publicly displayed, and someone took a photo of it).
That there was an “investigation” (the investigation consisted of me writing him and telling him what happened).
That I had to be “compelled” to pay (I reached out before he or his lawyer contacted me).

My mistake was in assuming this photo was already an image people were having fun with, and I was just continuing in that spirit.

Obviously, I was wrong about that. And that’s why I did what I could to own it and make things right.

But now:

After he dragged out our original negotiations for weeks…
After he followed up a month later with his melodramatic-blackmail “dossier” email…
And after he waited over a year to publicly post this mess of fabrications…

I finally wrote to him and said, essentially: “Look, I don’t know why you’re dragging this up, but now I’ll have to respond to this on the site.”

His reaction?

He told me that my response “would not receive much support from magicians,” and that I should “measure the consequences of the next step” and avoid “ruining [my] reputation.”

Here’s the thing: he doesn’t know my reputation. He has no understanding of who I am or what this site is about.

A conservative estimate is that I’ve spent over 6,000 hours just on the writing—not the creation, just the writing—of the content I’ve been giving away for free on this site for a decade.

To this photographer I want to say: You’re going to have a hard time convincing even the most casual reader that I’m some “taker” who’s just out for himself.

The truth is, I was kind and apologetic to you—until you proved to be an unreasonable douchebag.

There’s an alternate universe where we made the best of an unfortunate situation together. One where you took my money, my support, maybe even my picture for your book. We could’ve turned a dumb misunderstanding into something cool. Something mutual. Something human.

But you were so committed to your hissy fit that there was never a path forward.

If you are as miserable as you seem, I genuinely hope you get help. Because this is no way to go through life—turning every minor slight into a moral catastrophe. It’s exhausting. For everyone, but especially for you

I’m not worried about my reputation. It’s safe from your horseshit story, poorly told.
And if anyone truly believes I poured this much time and energy into this site—and into the art of magic—just to cash it all in to steal your picture… then they’re fucking brain-dead and not the kind of person I’m here to connect with anyway.

Here’s one last glimpse into the personality at the center of all this…

This is how he ended his last email to me—the response to my email where I said that if he’s still going to be bringing this up, I would finally need to respond publicly.

This is what he wrote, after a year-and-a-half-long slow-motion tantrum on his part, capped off by his facebook post that he had just made earlier that day.

“Good luck Andy. I’m done with this dispute a long time ago. Just turn the page and move on.”

Oh god… choke on my fat cock, you dumb bitch.

Presenting Coincidences, Part 2

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When was Part 1? Back in 2018. But you don’t have to re-read that post. This is a separate idea for presenting coincidence effects. This ties into some of the ACAAN discussion from earlier posts.

Coincidence can be an intriguing premise for a magic effect—but not if it's offered as the explanation for what just happened.

“You named any card. He counted the change in his pocket and it was 14 cents. Wouldn't it be a crazy coincidence if the card you named just happened to be the 14th card in the deck?”

That doesn’t land as anything more than the lowest-effort framing you could offer for the trick.

The way I prefer to present coincidence effects is by focusing on whatever it is we’re doing to generate coincidences. Some ritual. Some substance. Some technique I heard about that supposedly causes coincidences to manifest.

This can be any sort of Imp you want to create.

For simplicity, let’s say it’s an incantation. You and your friend repeat this chant, then begin actively looking for signs of coincidence.

“Think of a number between 1 and 10,” you say. You both say yours aloud—but they don’t match.

“Name a song,” you suggest, flipping on the radio. Not even close.

“Hmm. Okay. Name a card,” you say, picking up a nearby deck. “Five of Spades. Alright... let’s try this. Got any change in your pocket? How much? Fourteen cents? Okay, count to the 14th card. What?! Seriously?!”

We can’t pretend that a card appearing at the position in a deck that matches the change in someone’s pocket is somehow meaningful. It’s not. And using it as your specific demonstration of the power of coincidence would be silly.

But if it happens after a ritual intended to generate coincidences? That’s different. It doesn’t matter what the coincidence is. What matters is that there was one. That’s enough for the moment to feel charged.

They might not remember the specifics—the card or the coins. But they'll remember the old Israeli incantation you taught them. Or the weird spray bottle filled with “coincidence serum.” Or the crystal with an alleged “coincidence radius” of eight feet.

If you focus on the coincidence itself, your trick lives or dies by whether that coincidence feels relevant enough to matter. And most coincidence tricks don’t.

But if you focus on the thing that generates the coincidence, then any coincidence becomes endowed with meaning. You don’t need something profound to happen. You just need something to happen. And the audience will fill in the rest.

They get to imagine a world where serendipity can be summoned. They won’t believe that premise—but their mind will still entertain it. “How else might this thing be influencing reality?”

By contrast, if you focus solely on the coincidence, there’s nowhere to go from there. No one is charmed by a world where a bill’s serial number happens to match the cards in a bridge hand.

The coincidence doesn’t carry the effect. The generator does.

That shift in framing unlocks a whole category of effects that might otherwise feel too slight or irrelevant to perform. It lets you take the meaningless—and make it matter.

Mailbag: Lucid ACAAN

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When I was a kid, I used to sleep with my schoolbooks under my pillow the night before a test. This is what I did instead of studying. My theory was the information would seep into my head by osmosis. I actually did pretty well in school, so we can’t definitively say this didn’t work.

This concept has infiltrated a few tricks I’ve created that happen overnight, similar to the Lucid ACAAN. And it is sometimes a little factoid I share to lead us into such a trick.

Below is some of the feedback I received since last week’s post.

I just wanted to take a moment to say how completely blown away I was by the Lucid ACAAN. There’s something magical, strange, almost mythological about it… and at the same time, it works in such an incredibly elegant way.

But what really struck me — and where I think you absolutely nailed it — is that, with this approach, you’ve finally created an ACAAN that laypeople will actually love. Like, genuinely. It’s not just “a coincidence”… it’s the kind of thing that makes someone stop, stare into space for a few seconds, and wonder if they just experienced a quiet little miracle. With this story, with this structure, the effect becomes absurd — in the best possible way. This is exactly why I’m such a fan of your work.

The whole thing is so well-constructed it feels... I don’t even know. Surreal!

I seriously can’t wait to try it out.

Thanks for creating something so unique, so theatrical, and so personal. —DM

Thank you 🙏

I know this isn’t the ultimate anytime-anywhere ACAAN, but even if you don’t use the full presentation, I think there are elements in it that can strengthen any version of the effect—especially in how it’s framed.

I’ve written more about my thinking on the ACAAN plot in a post called Fizzling ACAAN, but the core idea is this:

If you want the effect to stick, you have to weight the presentation more heavily than magicians typically do. The trick should feel fantastical—something that goes right against the edge of possibility.

Most performers lean into statistics: “It’s pretty unlikely your card would be at your number. And look—it is! How unlikely!” But coincidence, on its own, isn’t always that impactful. It only hits when it feels personal—like running into your college roommate while you’re both visiting Paris after not seeing or speaking to each other in a decade. That kind of coincidence lands because it’s yours.

But a random card at a random number? That doesn’t mean much.

So instead of emphasizing improbability, I try to offer the audience something impossible. Something strange. Something worth wondering about.

That’s at the heart of the Lucid ACAAN. But that general concept can be applied to any version of the effect you do.

Amazing!

To lay person, this would seem mind-blowing!

And the best part for me is ... I don't have to buy anything! I already have Xeno. But I don't use it.

I bought it a few months ago & once I got it, it just didn't resonate with me. Maybe I don't fully understand how to use it.

This Lucid ACAAN of yours will make me try to work with Xeno again. —MP


Bravo.

Lucid ACAAN elevates a mundane magician effect 100 fold with a solid hook and structure.

Xeno continues to be a powerhouse utility app.—LT

I’ve said it before, but I consider Xeno to be Marc Kerstein’s most underrated app. Perhaps the most underrated app in all of magic.

He’s mentioned to me that he’s likely going to give it an overhaul and update in the future to make it even better, which is something I’m definitely looking forward to. But it will probably be more expensive then, too. If you don’t have it, I’d get it now while it’s still relatively cheap.

Then use the search box on my site for Xeno to find the different uses I’ve talked about for that app.

Here are some alternative handling ideas that people sent in. Personally, I’m very happy with the methodology as I described it. There’s no sense that the order of the cards is ever changed, the spectator deals, the spectator turns over the card, it’s easy, and it’s invisible.

That being said, certain methods feel better for certain people, so here are some other ideas to consider:

Thanks for sharing Lucid Acaan, I had a thought which I wanted to share. The dealing process has some similarities to Andrew Gerard’s Extraordinary Proof on the Paul Harris TA dvds. Whilst Andrew's effect is definitely a table version. It has a couple of nice psychological touches that appear to prove  the fairness of the procedure. Combined with your presentation, it would remove any sleights other than the cull. You essentially end up with an image that all the card has come from centre of the deck.  —TB

I just wanted to share this with you, it's a way to position the top card to whatever number is needed in a very clean manner. You have to deal, but you can do it slower and cleaner than the way Paul does it in the video. 

Since in the original handling you need to touch the cards anyway, I think this is pretty darn good. —AFC

Re: The Lucid Cull Alternative

Another alternative would be to spread to the needed card, and then go one further, and put that down as if it's the card you think the person chose.  That card becomes the object of focus so you can do anything with the deck.  Then you can discard that choice however you want (decide to change your mind, fail then try something else, fail and do a top change, whatever).

In the attached video, the blue-backed card is the actual target card.—CC

And, lastly, a crediting note:

I first encountered the switching move used in Lucid ACAAN in “THE DUNBURY DELUSION IMPROVED” 

This effect is credited to Charlie Miller and appears in Alton Sharpe’s Expert Card Conjuring which was published in 1968.

The move is described on pages 50-51. Charlie also used a similar failure ruse as misdirection. The effect is classic.

The application of the sleight in Lucid ACAAN is well timed and appropriate.—RJ

Aloha 🌺

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Thank you for the site so far, it is, pound-for-pound the best writing about magic in the modern world. And it's one of the only resources for the non-professional performer.

I have to say, I have been surprised by the number of things that you've written that sound like something I wrote somewhere, or said to someone, just recently. Don't know what that means, exactly, but there it is.

—Curtis Kam, October 21st, 2015

This was Curtis Kam’s first email to me, sent about a decade ago. I think I joked with him afterward that saying, “Your writing is brilliant—it sounds like something I’d say,” is a bit like saying, “Your body is fantastic… and so similar to mine!”

Curtis was a regular reader and early supporter of the site. He would write to me a few times a year to give some insight into something I’d written about, or just to say he enjoyed a particular post. He was a bit of a rarity: known primarily as a coin magician, yet fully aware of how underwhelming and meaningless coin magic can often feel. That kind of self-awareness is uncommon (and valuable).

Curtis passed away just recently. Others are better positioned to speak to his contributions to the art—and to the kind of person he was. But I wanted to pause the regularly scheduled posts to take a moment and remember him.

Here’s a post inspired by one of his emails: The Curtis Kam Judo Switch

And below is my review of his final Penguin Live lecture, excerpted from an older issue of the Love Letters newsletter.

Dear Curtis Kam,

Hey, brother-man! How’s it hanging? Decent. Decent.

I wanted to write to you about your recent Penguin Live lecture. I have to be honest with you—I only begrudgingly watched it. I just really don’t like coin magic, generally. It’s like the worst parts of all magic tricks: long, multi-phase routines; the same thing happening over and over; no real purpose to any of it. It’s rare for coin magic to get the kind of reactions I’m looking for when I perform. But if you like polite applause, then buddy, you’ll love coin magic.

“This coin turns from silver to copper.”
<clap clap>
“Now this one does.”
<clap clap>
“And finally this one.”
<clap clap>

Mildly impressive tricks done repeatedly is almost the definition of a coin routine. Here’s the thing… if that first moment got a big response, that’s all you’d do. You wouldn’t repeat it four more times.

Then there’s this dumb thing people in magic say: “People like tricks with money because people care about money.” Like… okay. I guess it’s true that people care about money. But I don’t think they give a shit about your pocket change, dum-dum. The concept of money in general doesn’t automatically drive people crazy. How do you think anyone survives working in a bank? You think they’re just flipping out every time they deposit someone’s cash? “Oh my god! 140 dollars!”

People care about their own money. They don’t care too much about yours. Would you do cigarette magic with pregnancy tests just because pregnancy tests mean something to people? That would be weird.

Coin magic might benefit from being more of a novelty for some people. Other than pulling a coin from behind someone’s ear, coin magic isn’t something most non-magicians are familiar with—not the way they are with card magic. So that might win you some points the first time or two you show them a coin trick. But when we’re talking about performing long-term for friends and family, the novelty wears off, and quickly the effects all blend together in people’s minds. Which is exactly what we’re trying to avoid.

But you know all this. I feel like your work has evolved to address these issues. And your lecture had a number of tricks that break the typical coin magic pattern—and the ones that don’t are at least playing with the form.

There was one trick in particular that I really enjoyed. I’ve made a couple tweaks to it that I think make it cleaner—and maybe even a little more interesting. And that trick is…

Curtis Kam’s third Penguin Lecture is over two and a half hours long and contains 12 tricks.

Before I get to my favorite one, here are a few other effects in this lecture that I really enjoyed:

CoinRoll: This is a coins across routine, but instead of the coin traveling invisibly from hand to hand, it travels in the form of a small silver ball that rolls from one hand to the other. So, you start with three coins in your left hand, and an empty right hand. You close your hands and a little silver ball rolls out from your left hand, across the table, where you pick it up with your right hand.

Now you have two coins in your left and one in your right. (No silver ball is in sight.) This is repeated two more times until all the coins have gone across.

I was just bemoaning coin tricks where the same thing happens over and over. Well, for this trick, that might be necessary. It’s such an abstract idea that the first phase won’t be as appreciated as it should be. You need to give them some time to wrap their minds around the concept first.

I don’t know that I’ll ever perform this, but if so I would likely do it as a follow-up to a standard coins across. I might not even perform the standard coins across myself. I might show them a video of someone else doing it. Then as a “peek behind the curtain” I will perform this trick and say that either I’m “slowing down” the procedure so they can see how it’s really done.” Or that I might say that I’m working my way up to be able to do it as quickly as it’s done in the video so the silver ball is never seen.

The Lawyer’s Tale: This is a weird coin logic puzzle type thing with a finish that I think is magical. But I can’t be 100% sure. I don’t know how normal people will react to it. It’s a grower, not a shower. It’s a “thinker.” I think your audience has to be not too dumb, but also not too smart for this one to really hit home. I fall right in the sweet spot for this, so I found it weirdly intriguing.

You might watch this and say, “I don’t get it,” or, “That’s obvious,” depending on how much smarter or stupider you are than I am.

The impromptu version is better than the gimmicked version, in my opinion. Which is good, because while this isn’t the sort of trick I would prepare to perform, it’s the sort of bar-bet/trick/story that I could see myself performing when out with people and we have some time to kill.

Science Project: This is a vanish of 12 coins at once—6 quarters and 6 half dollars. It uses some additional “arbitrary” items. But the particular items he chose all have a kind of “romantic” element to them and I think it sort of adds to the magical-ness of the effect.

✿✿✿

The trick that I was drawn to most from the lecture is called The Impossible Is Now.

Here is how it’s described on Penguin’s site…

A coin, a ring, a dollar bill, and a trick in which the audience is told when the magic is happening, but they don't believe it until it's not happening anymore.

So now you know what the trick looks like.

Okay, no, you don’t.

But I’ll tell you what the trick looks like when I perform it, which is somewhat different from how Curtis does it.

When I’m out with someone, I tell them I want to give them a gift.

I pull out a little wrapped present from my bag. It’s about the length of a cigarette.

“Actually,” I say, “There are two gifts here. There’s the physical gift wrapped up here. And then there is the mystery of this gift.”

I have the person I’m performing for remove their ring (if it works for the trick), or I’ll take off one I’m wearing.

“This is the mystery part,” I say. And I thread the present through the ring and have them slide the ring back and forth along the present. “It might not seem like much of a mystery, but it will.”

I ask them to pinch one side of the present. I slide the ring off the other side and set it aside.

I make very clear my hands are empty, then I take the little present from them.

I rip off the two ends and let them drop to the table.

I hold one end of the wrapping paper, which starts to unroll. (It’s a piece of wrapping paper about the size of a dollar bill.) It unrolls and the object inside reveals itself. It’s a half dollar. (Something that, obviously, can’t fit through the ring.)

I then give them the half-dollar to keep. A “lucky” coin as the second part of their present.

✿✿✿

Okay, so when Curtis does this he takes a dollar, rolls it up, pushes it through the ring, then unrolls it to show a half dollar is now in the bill.

While I was taken by the trick when I first saw it, there was something about it that didn’t sit right with me. After a little thought, I realized what it was. If you’re making the half dollar “magically appear” in the dollar bill, then the part with the ring doesn’t really matter. Because you could have made it “magically appear” after it went through the ring. Does that make sense?

I think the reaction is less clean than it could be. “I saw him roll up the dollar and there was no coin in it. And that coin can’t fit through the ring.”

With this “Little Gift” presentation, you’re telling them there’s something inside the wrapping paper. In this case the reaction is a little more straightforward. “That thing in there couldn’t have been in there.”

Beyond that, I think the gift presentation is just generally a little more interesting.

And it feels cleaner to me. Your hands are absolutely empty. The present is sealed. They’re holding onto the gift. There’s nowhere for anything to be other than inside that present.

This trick requires a gimmick a lot of you already own. And you’ll need a regular ungimmicked coin to switch in.

I’ve been carrying this around in my computer bag while I’ve been testing it out. I roll the little present at home and seal up one of the ends with tape. When it looks like the opportunity to perform this might arise, I load the present and seal (or reseal) the other end.

Ideally I’d like to carry this ready to go at a moment’s notice, but I’m not sure that would be good for the gimmick. I’ll have to test if the gimmick still works as it should if it’s inside the package for a day or a week or whatever.

Curtis Kam’s Penguin Live 3 is available for $40 from Penguin Magic.

Lucid: Cull Alternative

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I love your Lucid ACAAN. I definitely want to try it soon but I don’t have a good cull. The thing that people sometimes recommend is to spread the deck then break the spread at their card, gesture, and then reassemble the deck with their card at the back. I sometimes get away with that but I’ve had people bust me on it too. Any thoughts? —IS

Yes, what you’re talking about is this…

As an alternative to the cull, people will spread, cut at the card they need, gesture, and then put the cards that were in front, behind the other cards.

This can look like you’re doing what you’re doing: cutting the deck.

A few years ago, I had a non-culling friend who had the same issue—getting busted on this cull alternative a couple of times. I gave him the advice I’ll give you below. I just texted him to ask if it’s been working for him, and he said he hasn’t had any issue since he started doing it this way. So, anecdotally at least, it works.

I have found that people have a much harder time tracking things if you change multiple aspects at once.

What I mean is, in the gif above, we’re just changing the position of the two packets. This is something that’s not too difficult for people to pick up on, even if they’re not truly paying that much attention.

But if you also change the orientation or the polarity of objects, it is much more difficult for people to casually pick up on the fact that something definitely changed.

So instead of spreading the cards and then putting them back just by reversing the motion with which you spread originally, change something else before you put the packets back.

Here, for example, the card are spread, there’s a gesture, then the packets go from vertical to horizontal before they’re reassembled.

You’ll want to do it in a way where it looks natural and flows with what you’re saying, of course. The idea is just that with more going on, it’s harder for people to discern the packets have shifted.

In the Lucid ACAAN, you would also be asking a question at this time, so I think they’re even less likely to notice anything.

That being said, this might be a good routine to practice your cull regardless as, ideally, they should be under the impression you couldn’t know what their card is. So the notion that you might be moving it around is something that should be less likely to occur to them.

"I Guess Everyone Thinks..."

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One of my least favorite responses in a mind-reading or prediction effect is: “Well, I guess everyone thinks of the number 59.”

I get it. For some spectators, it’s easier to assume everyone names the same random two-digit number than to believe the mystical premise I’ve set up. But it’s still annoying.

When asking someone to think of a card, many magicians say: “Think of any card in the deck.” Then they’ll amend their instructions by saying, “Now, a lot of people go for the Ace of Spades or the Queen of Hearts, so don’t pick those.”

What I don’t like about this language is:

  1. It feels restrictive—like I’m telling them what not to pick.

  2. If they were thinking of one of those cards, now they feel like I called them out for being a basic bitch.

  3. It makes it sound like I’ve been doing this a lot, when, in most circumstances, I want this to seem like something I’m just doing now with them for the first time.

Here’s the language I use instead…

With Playing Cards

“Think of any card in the deck. You can go with an obvious one like an Ace or Queen, or something totally obscure.”

With Numbers

“Think of any two-digit number. You can go with something obvious like 13. Or a ‘funny’ number—[I make air quotes]—like 69. Or something totally obscure.”

With Anything

“Think of a house pet. You could go with something obvious like a dog or cat—or something less common.”

Why This Language Works

First, it makes it sound like all the options are open to them.

Second, it doesn’t give them time to settle on something before I label that option as “obvious.”

Third, it nudges them away from the examples without saying “don’t pick this.”

Fourth, and most importantly, it kills the “everyone must think of that” explanation. You’ve told them what the obvious choices are. So now they’re going to dig for an obscure one. And because they’re actively prioritizing obscurity, they can’t then tell themselves, “I guess everyone thinks of that.”

And if someone does choose one of the options you name beforehand, it’s because they think it will trip you up. “Ah—he said everyone thinks of ‘Dog,’ which means he probably doesn’t want me to think of Dog. So I’m going to screw him up by thinking of Dog.”

So they can’t fall back on “everyone picks that”—you already said that, and clearly left the door open to pick something else.

Either way, it feels like their decision—whether they leaned into the obvious or deliberately swerved away from it. In this way, they're making a free choice of how to proceed before they even make their final choice. And that freedom reinforces the illusion of total unpredictability—even when you end up nailing it.