The Rewitching Hour

I was asked:

This year we have an extra hour of halloween due to daylight savings bullshittery! How would you use that as a premise and make the hour magical?

I thought about it for a while, but I wasn’t having any luck coming up with anything that didn’t sound corny and cartoonish. “This card is the mummy. This card is Dracula.” Okay, sure. Part of the problem is that Halloween is kind of corny and cartoonish. It’s not a genuinely scary holiday.

The closest thing I came to an actual Halloween-themed trick is to make a change bag from a pillowcase. Where I’m from, kids often trick-or-treated with pillowcases to collect the candy. So you could talk about how you’re jealous of kids these days because when you were growing up, Halloween night was never Daylight Savings as well, but since they shifted the date of DST, now it happens pretty regularly. “Now kids can get away with eating a lot more candy on Halloween night. I’ll show you.” You dump out a bunch of candy from a pillowcase and eat it with your friend. Then, just before the clocks tick back, you have them throw the empty wrappers in the pillowcase. When the hour goes back, you dump out the pillowcase, revealing all the candy, wrapped and uneaten again.

That’s the only specifically “Halloween” trick I could think of that incorporated the time change.

But what I would be more likely to do is just use it as a backdrop for any traditional seance-y or “haunted” effect. “Halloween night, leading into the Day of the Dead, is traditionally believed to be when the veil between the living and the dead is thinnest. Then, when the clocks go back, we put another hour’s worth of wear on it. Supposedly, that makes it easier for things to come through.” That sort of thing.

If you want to skip the Halloween aspect, DST is a good time to do any complex prediction effect. Shuffle-Bored, for example. Before the hour turns back, you have them go through the process and you record the results. We ended up with this many face-up cards, this many face-down, this many red cards, black cards, etc. Then you explain how you used to think that moving the clocks back was just changing what we called the time. It didn’t change anything about time itself. But you’ve learned of this weird phenomenon people experience that certainly seems to suggest that in some way we’re actually living the same hour over again.

Once the clock goes back, you repeat the Shuffle-Bored process and—impossibly—get the same results. “See? That’s crazy, right?”

The interesting part of this is that this is one version of Shuffle-Bored that can start from a genuinely borrowed, shuffled deck. The first time you go through the process, you’re actually just doing it. And you’ll end up with some random assortment. Then, after that, do a Red/Black shuffle to apparently mix the deck (really maintaining the two sections you just created). Then go into the trick again. This time, the apparently random process leads them right back to the same assortment they created earlier.

I wouldn’t worry too much about the trick itself. It’s the MacGuffin. The trick may feel like the payoff, but the experience really starts earlier, when you look at the clock and say, “Okay, we’ve just got a few hours to go.”

Ultimately, what’s going to make anything you do at this time exciting is that you and your friend stayed up waiting for something strange to happen at a specific time. You’ve given the night a little plot.

Until November (sort of)...

This is the not the final post for October. I’ll have one more post for you early next week. Then regular posting resumes on Tuesday, November 3rd. (So one of November’s posts is shifting to this month.) The next issue of Keepers comes out Sunday, November 1st.

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NOTE TO RICH UNCLE MILLIONAIRE LEVEL SUPPORTERS

The next book will ship over the course of the next month.

You will be getting an email very soon that will collect your most current shipping address.

I won’t ship a book to you until you do what that email says.

I don’t have a bunch of extra books floating around so I can’t afford to just send a book out to what I think might be your address, or what I got from you when you signed up 8 years ago.

So just keep an eye out for that email. I’ll put a trail of bigfoot emojis (bigfeets) in the subject line so it stands out.

🫈🫈🫈🫈🫈🫈🫈🫈

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Yesterday’s post has received some of the most enthusiastic feedback of any technique I’ve shared on this site. So if you skipped it, you might want to go back and give it a look.

And to be clear, I was just giving an example of how you could do it, and a routine it could work with. But the broader idea—seemingly anchoring the original (force) prediction on the table from the start so that you can build the the One Ahead routine in impossibility—is something that you could likely find a way to make work for most One Ahead effects.

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MC writes regarding Monday’s Mailbag post on Double Deception:

“Like… there are certain techniques that allow you to vanish a card. That's not easy, but it's something you can learn with practice. The really hard thing is controlling the magic so precisely that you can vanish one particular card out of an entire deck, while leaving all the others untouched. Does that make sense?”

This line reminds me of the scene from Bloodsport where Frank Dux (JCVD) has to prove himself worthy of entering the Kumite by smashing a stack of bricks using the Death Touch.

It’s actually a pretty solid reference point for any trick where you’re manipulating one object out of a group. The impressive part isn’t just what you’re able to do to that one object. It’s the precision involved in doing it to that object while leaving everything around it untouched.

In other words, the things you don’t affect become part of the impossibility.

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Herman Jonker, a former Dutch mayor who performed as magician Robert List (and was the Dutch national magic champion in 1978), has been kicked out of the GLOMM.

From what I can gather from the translated reporting, authorities found approximately 1,000 files of child sexual abuse material, along with explicit Snapchat conversations in which he fantasized about sexually abusing young children.

On July 7, 2026, a court sentenced him to one year in prison for possessing and distributing child sexual abuse material. Subsequently, several magicians publicly alleged that he had sent them inappropriate messages years earlier.

According to Wikipedia, his defense was that he hadn't put the child pornography on his computer himself. Other people had sent it to him.

Oh! Well, why didn't you say so? Case dismissed!

That's essentially the grown-up version of telling your parents the cigarettes they found in your backpack belonged to a friend.

He’s 78, by the way. I mean… don’t let age get in the way of your dreams and all of that. Unless your dreams involve molesting pre-schoolers. In which case it’s okay to let them rot like the rest of you.

And here he is, in case you're still looking for a truly hideous last-minute Halloween costume idea…

Worst Things First: A One-Ahead Variation

I have what I think is a pretty solid advancement of the one-ahead method.

As always, when I come up with something that feels like a genuine improvement on a classic technique, I naturally assume somebody else must have thought of it already. How could they not have?

But if they have, I haven’t heard about it. So here goes…

What’s the issue people most often point out with the one-ahead method?

The last thing you predict is usually a force—and therefore usually the weakest.

Name a number between one and a trillion.

Name any word in the English language.

Say stop while I riffle these cards.

That’s not exactly building to a climax.

If you mapped that onto a play with a three-act structure, Act Three would just be everybody deciding to turn in early.

This one-ahead construction lets you put the force first (sort of), so the revelations get progressively stronger. And it includes a small convincer that helps disguise the underlying method.

You start with three identical billets, business cards, or slips of paper.

Here’s an example of how it might play out. Obviously, the premise and the things you’re predicting will affect the exact language you use. But this should give you the general idea.

Let’s say you tell someone you’re going to build a scene together, starting with a single detail and gradually pulling back to reveal the bigger picture.

Start with the person you know the least.

“I think you might be the most difficult because we just met. So I’m going to give you the one I’m most comfortable with. Pick a card from the deck.”

Here you force a card. Or use a marked deck. Or whatever.

As they concentrate on their card, you pick up a business card to write something down. You struggle a little. Shake your head. Finally, you write something.

“Okay, don’t tell me what it is. Just tell me if I’m on the right track so far. Is it a 7?”

You show them what you wrote.

They tell you it’s not.

You shake your head. “I’ll get back to you.”

Leave the business card face-up on the table and pick up the next one.

On the second card, write another 7, exactly as you did on the first. Cross it out, as though you're correcting your earlier mistake. Then write the forced or known card below.

Then place the billet writing-side down on the table.

To person #2, you say, “Imagine that deck sitting on a blackjack table in a casino. Pan up from the cards to the dealer standing behind the table. Now zoom in on his name tag. What does it say?”

“Carlton,” they say.

“Okay, okay. Now we’re making progress.”

Pick up the remaining business card and turn to person #3.

“I want you to think of any word. This word is going to have a meaning in the scene we’re creating, but you don’t need to know what that is yet. It’ll only complicate things.”

As they think of a word, write down what person #2 said, or something close to it. (In this case, maybe you’d write “Carl” instead of “Carlton.”)

Place the card facedown on the table.

“You have a word in mind? Okay, when I point to you, say your word.”

“So, we pull back from the table, across the casino floor, through the hotel lobby, and out onto the street. We can see all the casinos along the Strip. There’s the Bellagio, the MGM Grand, and the…?”

You point to the third person.

“Infanticide.”

“That’s right. The Infanticide. The newest, classiest casino on the Strip. Good job.”

Turning back to the first person, you say, “Okay, let’s try again.”

You pick up the first billet and apparently cross out the 7 with your pen or pencil. In reality, you're only scratching across it with your fingernail. You then secretly turn the 7 into a T and complete the words The Infanticide. (Because I told the person the casino is called The something, I know I’ll be able to just add a bar to the top of the 7 turning it into a T.)

You now pick up the cards and redistribute them in front of the correct people, using whatever secret technique you prefer to get each card where it needs to be.

You can do this while saying to the first person, “I’m still not sure about this one. Can I see which card you picked?”

You then reveal what you wrote down for them, followed by the second and third people.

This makes perfect sense. You're revealing the items in the same order you originally asked for them. The card selection came first, so you reveal it first. And because the revelations now get progressively stronger, what would normally be the weakest moment becomes the opening act.

The key to all of this is that 7 you write down at the beginning. (Although it doesn’t have to be a 7. Just something you can write on the first billet that gets modified to be part of the final billet’s prediction.)

In a typical one-ahead routine, the audience never really knows what you're writing. That's what makes the method possible, but it's also the weakness someone might latch onto when trying to reconstruct the trick.

Here, you're apparently showing them exactly what you wrote on that first billet. They saw the 7. They know it was wrong. And they watched you leave it on the table.

That creates a false certainty about the contents of that billet because the 7 anchors it to the first person who is thinking of a card. If they accept that certainty, they have no reason to suspect that the first billet could eventually contain the final prediction.

And without that possibility, the entire one-ahead sequence becomes considerably harder to reconstruct.

Road Trick

Ended up on an unexpected road trip today, so this is just a quick post from the road.

I gave my friend a small envelope this morning to hold onto.

“It’s probably nothing,” I said. “I’ve just got a bad feeling, and if it turns out to be true, I want to have a record of this.”

I asked her to keep the envelope in her bag while we drove.

Eight hours later, we passed a car in a ditch on the side of the highway. I’m guessing some kid was texting while driving and just drove off the road. Because that’s just how kids are these days. And because I come dangerously close to doing the same thing at least once every trip.

“Oh good,” I said. “I was worried it would be more serious. What’s the mile marker?”

It was 316.

“Remember that,” I told her.

When we got to our next stop, I asked for the envelope, tore it open, and showed her the message I had written before we left.

Some kind of disturbance (accident?) at mile 316.

Method

I wrote out the message and left a blank space to nailwrite in the mile number.

I went with “disturbance” rather than just “accident” so I could use pretty much anything unusual we encountered along the way as the predicted event.

Simple. But it adds a little Nostradamus energy to what would otherwise be an ordinary car ride.

He Shoots, He Scores

Here’s a trick you can do with the NBA and college basketball seasons starting up.

Imagine

“Can I get your help with something?”

I hand my friend Nate a blank deck of cards and ask him to deal through it. He starts.

“Okay, slower,” I say.

After a few cards, I ask him to go slower, and then even slower, to the point where he’s dealing just one card every seven or eight seconds.

“Okay, cool. Thanks,” I say.

I have him look through the deck to see that it’s blank on both sides, then I take it from him.

I remove four cards from my pocket. Two say SCORE on them, and two have basketballs on both sides.

“So there’s this underground gambling club I go to a couple times a month downtown. It’s not a casino, because it’s not really legal. But it’s more organized than just, like, a home game or something. There are a bunch of different tables and games going on.

“There’s poker and other typical games, but then you have all sorts of atypical things. People betting on odd versions of tic-tac-toe and Candyland and made-up games.

“Weirdly, the one thing they don’t have is sports betting. Apparently, that’s the one thing that would definitely get them shut down. You can get away with a little underground gambling, but once you start cutting into the sports-betting industry’s money, you’ve got some very powerful people who suddenly give a shit about what you’re doing.

“But it’s a bunch of guys who like to watch sports, so they came up with this sort of workaround. It’s a betting game that you play while you’re watching the game.

“The bettor places the two SCORE cards anywhere he wants in the deck. Then the dealer deals through the deck at whatever speed he wants as the game goes on. Whenever the first basket is scored, the first basketball card is dropped in. The deck is reassembled, and they do it again for the second basket of the game.

“You get paid depending on how close the basketball cards are to the SCORE cards you placed in the deck. The odds of both basketball cards landing right next to the SCORE cards are over 1,300 to one. So the payout can be pretty substantial.

“If you put down $100 and hit both, you walk out with $100,000.

“Obviously, it’s completely random. You don’t know when the teams are going to score, and you don’t know how the dealer is going to deal.

“But… what if you had someone on the inside? Someone who could make sure the teams scored at a particular time? Now you’ve eliminated one of the random elements. And what if you could learn to anticipate the dealer’s rhythm, because people tend to fall into patterns even when they’re trying not to?

“That’s what I want to test out tonight. I know when these guys are going to score, so that’s one variable down. The hard part will be trying to anticipate how you’re going to deal.”

I take the blank deck and the SCORE cards and put them somewhere in the deck without Nate seeing.

When the game starts, I have him deal through the deck.

“You don’t have to deal evenly. You can mix up the pace. But give it a couple seconds at least between cards.”

Nate begins casually dealing through the deck.

Sixteen seconds into the game, Tyrese Maxey hits a 3-pointer for Philadelphia.

“Okay, good, good,” I say.

I have Nate place the first basketball card in the deck, reassemble it, and start dealing again.

After a missed 3, a block, and two steals, Maxey hits another 3-pointer.

I grimace a little.

“Okay, they did their part. I’m not sure about your dealing, though. I wasn’t paying close enough attention.”

I have him place the other basketball card where he stopped and reassemble the deck.

The deck is spread on the table. I gently poke aside the first basketball card. Beneath it is a SCORE card.

“Holy shit. Okay. That’s one.”

We spread through and I stare at the second basketball card for a moment.

“I can’t look. You do it.”

I have Nate move the second basketball card aside. Beneath it is the other SCORE card.

I pump my fist.

“Nice. Now I just need to get Tyrese, Jalen, and the boys on board to do it again, but for real this time.”

Method

It’s just Gemini Twins.

My one concern was that telling them exactly how the game worked beforehand would make them more cognizant of the orientation of the cards. But the basketball cards have basketballs on both sides (just stickers I got on Amazon). And the rest of the deck is blank on both sides, besides the SCORE cards.

So when I take the deck back, flip it over, and spread it, the orientation—and what should be where—becomes a bit confused. All they know is that the basketball cards are right near the target cards, and that’s all that matters.

[On a logistical note, I’m going to make this up again with either larger basketball images, or fully orange cards. The version shown in the images required a bit of digging in order to find the basketball cards. Which was fine for creating some mild tension. But I’d prefer they stand out more. On the other hand, I like the SCORE cards needing to be spread a bit to be identified.]

The nice thing about using a basketball game for this is that you can point out all the missed shots, blocks, turnovers, and fouls that delayed the baskets. Any one of those plays could have gone differently, changing the timing of the scores and where the basketball cards landed in the deck. It’s a great way to drive home just how unpredictable the whole sequence was, and how easily the cards could have ended up somewhere else entirely.

This is one of a number of variations I have of Gemini Twins where the person doesn’t just choose to stop dealing at random. This is an easy way to make the trick about more than “I knew where you’d stop dealing.”

The idea that I’ve somehow convinced two teams of millionaires to script out the opening of their game just so I could win this card game is completely absurd. But there’s just enough internal logic holding it together that people can indulge in the fantasy that it might actually be true.

Mailbag #185

I’ve been messing about with double deception (beautiful trick) but im really struggling to work out a good presentational angle. I’ve got the ‘I’m building up to being able to do this this a wooden table but so far I can only manage to do it through a piece of cloth’ or ‘I’ve been reading up on how to create a tiny black hole, which means I should be able to move these two coins a very short distance’ (due to the amount of power involved I can only move the one). I remember you mentioning that you’ve played with the effect, and wondered if you had any thoughts you might be happy to share?—TB

Double Deception is a great trick. The gimmick is so invisible that I’ve accidentally spent the coins twice already. So I’m out $200. Well, $199. I did get a dollar’s worth of stuff out of it.

The weak point of the trick, to me, is that it uses two coins for no apparent reason. If I’m going to pull one coin through your shirt, why do I need another coin sitting there doing nothing? Besides disguising the method, of course.

The way I address that is like this. First, I put an X on the primary gimmick like this.

You could also just put a smudge or some other mark on it if you want the trick to feel a little less planned out. (Marking one of the coins in some way also makes getting into the trick much more straightforward as you immediatley know which coin is which.)

The premise I use is that I’m practicing my ability to target the magic.

“Like… there are certain techniques that allow you to vanish a card. That's not easy, but it's something you can learn with practice. The really hard thing is controlling the magic so precisely that you can vanish one particular card out of an entire deck, while leaving all the others untouched. Does that make sense?”

To be clear, the way I present this isn’t “I’ve been carrying around these coins so I can show you a trick.”

Instead, at some point I “notice” the coins in my pocket, spot the X, and am reminded of what I was using them for.

“Oh, let me try something with you. I’ve been testing myself on this one particular aspect of magic…”

I explain that there’s a little exercise I’ve been practicing to develop this ability, and I show them the coins. They can examine each one individually.

I then say that I’m going to try to focus the magic on one of the coins while avoiding the other.

Once the coins are set up, I ask, “Which do you prefer? The one with the X or the one without?”

If they say With the X: “Okay, I’ll try to leave you with that one.” And I pull the other coin through.

If they say Without the X: “Okay, I’ll try it with that one, then.” And I pull that coin through.

(I don’t make a big deal about this “free choice.” It’s just a passing question before moving on to the effect.)

This makes the second coin—and the fact that it doesn’t pass through—seemingly part of the challenge, rather than some weird, unnecessary element of the trick.

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Subject: How Long Should They Be Fooled?

Just read recent posting - "A Long Question with an Unsatisfying Answer"

Years ago I started to ponder this. (Heck, over a quarter century now.) This was the result of working in a couple magic shops and having people come back to tell me what they figured out. More often than not they were right. I also started to experience this with friends, family and acquaintances.

I came up with a completely arbitrary rule at the time. One year. I wanted them to be able to remember the experience and still not know how it was done a year laer.

Now I have an additional requirement I got from Michael Close. I want them to tell the story to others without being able to say how it happened.

Ive followed up here and there and have noticed when the story is told many questions get asked about conditions around the effect. So this drives me all that much further to present effects that cant be reverse engineered. Not all my magic buddies agree with me.

[…]

To rephrase what Simon Aronson said, I dont want them to not know how it is done, I want them to know it cant be done but yet they saw it happen with their own eyes.

So a person surprised momentarily is hardly worth the effort for me.—RN

There are four things that can happen after someone sees a magic trick:

1. The spectator figures out how it was done.

2. The spectator thinks they’ve figured out how it was done, but they’re wrong.

3. The spectator figures out how it was done, but eventually forgets the explanation.

4. The spectator never figures it out.

For our purposes, numbers 1 and 2 are essentially the same. It doesn’t matter whether the spectator has correctly reconstructed the method or has come up with a completely wrong explanation. If they believe they know how it was done, the mystery is gone either way.

Number 3 is pretty much the same, too. Once you’ve figured out a trick, the mystery and wonder of that experience are gone. Even if you eventually forget the specifics of the method, you still remember that there was an explanation. I have no idea how my TV works, but I don't sit there every night marveling at the miracle of moving pictures appearing in a box. I don't need to understand the explanation to know there is one.

As far as I’m concerned, #4 is the only goal worth pursuing. I want to perform tricks that people remember but never figure out. That’s the goal, at least.

I think a lot of magicians would consider that a childish ambition. “Come on. People are going to figure out tricks. Just focus on being entertaining.”

But that strikes me as a defeatist mindset. Yes, of course people are going to figure out some tricks. But there's a difference between acknowledging that you won't always succeed and deciding that it doesn't really matter if you do. And I think that willingness to lower our ambitions is part of what has reduced magic to such a trivial pursuit in so many people's eyes.

A mystery that someone remembers for the rest of their life, without ever figuring out how it happened—that’s the romantic ideal I’m chasing when I perform.

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Re: Wrap It Up 2.0

Please tell me you've actually used this with someone.

I was pretty jazzed to mess around with this with someone I'm messing around with but then was put off by your follow up note that "trying to attach a lubed-up condom and an empty condom wrapper to a piece of elastic to make a pull is both disgusting and entirely fruitless."

And then thinking about it further, was also like...this seems like a much more logistically complex thing to pull off than at first glance. Like...assuming this is something you want to do after intercourse, you'd likely be naked so...not sure where the pull pulls off to. Unless you get fully dressed and set up first, and then pull this off? Hmm I guess that could work and not be too odd. But then there's the added wrinkle of the lubed up condom potentially being full of additional liquid. —JT

No, I never really did that shit. But here’s your solution to the pull problem. Instead of anchoring it to your clothes, you anchor the elastic to the inside of a plastic thumbtip. You can keep the whole set-up inside there. Then, when you’re ready to perform, shove the thumbtip up your naked butthole and slide out everything and drag the elastic around your body to the front. Easy.

Dustings #153

I was scrolling through YouTube and came across this video, which is apparently a tribute to the late David Regal.

I hadn't heard that David died, but certainly he must be dead, right? Craig wouldn't have used the past tense in both the thumbnail and the title if David were still alive.

By definition you can't use the past tense to describe someone who never stops doing something unless they're dead. Because until they die, they're still doing it. Which, if I remember correctly, is sort of the whole point of the present tense.

Anyway, sad news. Does anyone know where the family is asking people to send donations in his memory? And has anyone told David?

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Ooh, look. Luke Oseland has an actual version of the dumb idea I posted on Tuesday.

Which is good, because I can tell you from experience that trying to attach a lubed-up condom and an empty condom wrapper to a piece of elastic to make a pull is both disgusting and entirely fruitless.

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A lot of people say real magic doesn’t exist. Okay, then explain this video, which clearly shows what happened when Dani DaOrtiz and Mat Franco accidentally swapped bodies after touching a magical fortune-telling machine at a carnival.

There is literally no other explanation for this.

Seriously, what is going on there? It’s bonkers. You know how people say you should learn magic from books instead of videos so you don’t accidentally turn into a carbon copy of someone else?

Well… Exhibit A.

{Thanks to Vincenzo R.)