Mailbag #114: Approaching Test Subjects

I’m taking this email slightly out of context. I’m intepreting the question more generally than it was asked. The basic idea is how to approach people for help when you’re testing out new tricks or techniques.

If I'm to have a friend or three selected especially for this task provide discrete and prompted feedback on individual magic tricks, what excuse do you think I should use to avoid the real reason?

I'm thinking that I'll just say that I'm part of a secret society that values actual feedback […] and I've been enlisted to test some of the creations of the society out on them.—JN

I don’t have one approach to this, so this is going to be a mishmash of thoughts and ideas.

Identifying good “test subjects”

To me, one of the joys of amateur magic is finding my ideal audience. That is, finding people who not only like watching magic but also enjoy losing themselves in weird experiences. I don’t force this sort of thing on anyone who isn’t into it. There’s no pleasure in that for me. That’s another problem of magician-centric thinking. “I like to do magic. And you’re someone I know. So you’re going to have to watch me do the type of magic I want to do.”

The feeling I get seeing many amateurs perform for people is the same feeling I get seeing a six-year-old pester his mother at the public pool. “Mommy! Mommy! I can dive. Hold on. Look mommy. I’m going to do a BIG DIVEY!” And then he goes and flings his dumb little body into the water, coming up moments later, flailing and sputtering. “Did you see? Mommy? I did it mommy, did you see? Did you see my dive?”

“Yes,” she says, as she stares into the novel she’s reading. The one featuring a woman who doesn’t have a kid constantly begging for her attention. The only person wanting that woman’s attention is the guy she just met. The one with the shredded abs and the new little shop in town where he sells his home-made pastries. “Yes, sweetie. Great job. Let mommy read now.”

I never want that needy vibe when I perform. So I’m always focusing on building my audience by giving people a peek at the type of stuff that fascinates me and then moving forward with the people who are genuinely intrigued by this sort of thing.

When it comes to performing for people who are going to be in my life regularly, I start to categorize them regarding their appreciation for the type of magic I want to do.

• There are fans, and there are superfans. They make up my core audience.

• There are people who are purely anti-magic. They just can’t appreciate it on any level. I’m not going to bother with these people. (Unless I feel like torturing one for some reason.)

• Then there is a final group that likes magic somewhat, and they’ll ask me about it from time to time. But they’re incapable of letting it truly affect them. It may be because they know a bit too much about magic and how it’s done. Or it may be because they’re just too guarded. Whatever the case may be, I’m not going to waste a truly special presentation on them. But they do make good test subjects when you’re looking for people to take a more analytical look at magic.

Two Things Worth Testing

#1 Sleights

I don’t learn too many new sleights these days, but when I do, I usually try to test them out in some form. You might think you could ask another magician if you’re flashing or if the sleight looks good. You can’t. They’re just as blinded as you are. And they want to believe that something looks normal, and fooling.

Instead, you want someone who doesn’t know what they’re looking for.

I like to test new sleights with zero heat, and then with 100% full heat. Knowing that when I perform them for real, the heat will likely be somewhere in the middle.

For example, let’s say I was learning a second deal.

— Zero Heat Test

“Can you help me out? I’m going to deal some cards into different piles. Will you make a note of how many I deal into each pile?”

They would watch me deal out some cards, and then make a note of how many I dealt.

What I’m actually doing is second-dealing on every deal, or on some particular deals.

There’s no heat on this. I’m just asking them to help out with some sort of administrative task. I’m just looking to make sure that they don’t say something like, “Why are you dealing in that weird way?” Assuming that doesn’t happen, I can feel confident knowing the sleight is at least somewhat workable.

— Full Heat Test

“I’m going to deal twenty cards onto the table and count them out as I do. On two of the cards, I’m going to deal in an unusual way. I want you to try and spot when I do and remember what number I called out when I did it.”

Let’s say I deal out 20 cards and I second deal on cards 8 and 11.

I now ask them which cards I did something weird on.

I’ll get one of three responses:

1. Totally Unsure - “I don’t know. It all looked the same to me.” Great. That means I can probably use the sleight freely with no worries.

2. Totally Sure - “You did something funny with cards 8 and 11.” Okay. That doesn’t mean the sleight is worthless. Or that doesn’t mean the sleight is unusable. It just means I’ll want to give it some more practice and not use it in circumstances where there is a lot of heat on the dealing itself.

3. Somewhere in between - “I don’t really know. I thought I spotted something in the middle there. Maybe around 10 or 11?” This is fine. This tells me it’s a usable sleight and as long as I’m not telling them to specifically focus on the cleanliness of whatever action I’m taking, it will most likely fly by them.

I always try to test sleights and moves outside the context of a trick. Most people want to be nice when you’re showing them a trick. But if you say, “Watch me cut this deck of cards 10 times, and tell me if you see anything odd,” then they’ll feel no need to be nice.

You can see why this type of testing is great for someone who is analytical and happy to help. But you wouldn’t want to use someone who’s willing to really “dance” with you in more magical ways. Don’t waste their time.

#2 Suspicion and Transparency

The other thing worth testing is how suspicious or transparent a trick or the deceptions used in a trick are.

If people are suspicious of something, and you can’t allay those suspicions in any way, then it doesn’t matter whether those suspicions are true or not, the impact of your trick will be greatly reduced.

For this type of testing, I need to present the trick to people in some way, but I don’t always perform it for them.

Often I will just describe the trick for people. Other times I will show them a video of someone else performing the trick.

Then I can just play dumb. “Do you have any idea how someone could do that?”

Now I listen for their responses. Are they focusing on the exact method simply by hearing about or watching the trick? That tells you if the method is transparent, or if there’s something they would naturally be suspicious of.

When Leviosa came out, we tested it by putting a demo video in front of 47 non-magicians. 100% of them were suspicious of the deck. I don’t have to now buy the trick and perform it myself to know that this is something that’s not going to work for my performing situations. And you don’t need a 47-person virtual focus group to test this on. You could show the demo to three or four people and try and get their earnest thoughts on how it might be done, and if you have most or all of them being suspicious of the deck, you can be pretty certain that’s what you’ll have if you performed it in real life too.

I have a friend who was interested in a recent iPhone trick where the spectator would type something in your Notes app and whatever they typed would be revealed on your phone in some manner (I don’t remember the details). Before buying it, he decided to test it out by describing this trick “someone showed me” and then asking his friends if they had any idea how it could have been done. The majority of the people he asked said that it was probably some trick with the phone—some kind of app or something. It wasn’t an app (I think it was a shortcut) but really, what’s the difference as far as the spectator is concerned?

And this is all the type of testing that can be done without actually performing.

Approaching Test Subjects

When testing out a trick, you really need to frame it as if you’re doing it on behalf of someone else. Most people aren’t comfortable giving their friend or loved one honest feedback. If they were, you’d never need to test anything. You could just perform and people would say. “I believe the card was in your hand before you put your hand in your pocket.” But most people aren’t going to call you out like that, even if you indicate that you’d like them to.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, the story I tell people if they’re someone I’m going to be testing tricks out on regularly, is that I’m a member of this group of magicians that helps test out new tricks, to give feedback to the creators. This allows me to ask very direct questions after the trick is completed, as if these are just the questions I’ve been tasked with getting answers to.

This is similar to what the email-writer is considering. But I don’t call it a “secret society” or anything like that. (I use talk of “secret societies” in my “real” presentations. But not for these purposes.) I intentionally make the thing seem as dull as possible. This is one of the more boring aspects of my interest in magic. It’s just this thing you can sign up for if you’re part of one of the regular magic organizations and they’ll send you tricks from time to time as long as you give your test them out and give feedback. The testing group is run by these guys.

So clearly it’s not anything exciting.

This is similar to what I wrote in the Beta Test Performing Style.

What Not To Test

I don’t bother testing premises or presentational techniques.

I mean, I do test them in an informal way, in the sense that I perform them, and then I make note of how people respond to them.

But I don’t break these things down with people specifically. I don’t say, “Okay, so I framed this deck cutting itself as if a ghost was doing it. Do you think it would have been better if I said I could astral-project my essence across the room to cut the deck to your card? Please rate those premises on a scale of 1-10.”

Magic presentations have already been focus-grouped to death. That’s why they’re generally so bland and homogenous. They’re designed to go down easily for the widest possible audience.

As an amateur, I want to test things like sleights and techniques to make sure the fundamentals of the deception are sound. But I don’t believe you should leave it up to the audience to decide the stories you want to tell and the experiences you want to deliver. Those things are supposed to be an extension of yourself, and a way to connect with people. You shouldn’t leave the outward expression of yourself up to committee.

Dustings #107

In Monday’s mailbag, I wrote about taking advantage of recurrent, seasonal events as the backdrop for your effects. This is an easy way to imbue them with a little more sense of “special-ness.”

This is just simple supply and demand. If you only got a boner when the seasons changed, you would cherish every one. If, like me at 14, you have a boner 23 hours of the day—acting as either a tent pole or a kickstand when you tried to sleep at night—it would be meaningless at best, and annoying at worst.

“I can do this anywhere, any time, with anybody,” is the opposite of a “magical” experience.

Many of us will have an opportunity this Monday to take advantage of the eclipse for one-such Sky Imp when the eclipse happens.

It’s all about picking the right trick, of course. You can’t be like, “I can stack any poker hand with two shuffles during an eclipse.”

I will be up near Niagara Falls in the path of totality. My intention is to demonstrate the cool gravitational anomaly that occurs with the gyroscopic effect when the sun and moon are aligned.

I’m going to demonstrate this “anomaly” using Grandfather’s Top (minus the disappearing phase, of course).

I think the image of a top spinning in the air in the midday darkness will be cool and memorable. Any other similar floating effect or balance effect feels like a good match for the eclipse.

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A few times over the past couple of years, I’ve had people question me when I describe a trick and suggest grabbing a couple of business cards that are lying around a café to write something down on. They’ve questioned if business cards are commonly found in cafés still.

Yes. I don’t know if this is a regional thing. But in New York state, if you’re in a coffee shop that isn’t a Starbucks, there is almost always a place for people to leave their cards. Business card magic—which may be a dying concept in some situations (handing out your card at a cocktail party, for example)—is alive and well at coffee shops around me.

I visited my friend (and the publisher and distributor of the Jerx books) who lives outside of Syracuse NY, to plan out the release of the hardcover edition of the Amateur at the Kitchen Table. We camped out at one of his usual hang-out spots where I took these pics:

There were over 150 different little stacks of business cards. So yes, business cards are still quite natural objects in certain circumstances.

If you happen to have a coffee shop as your “third place” where you spend time and perform occasionally, I recommend spending $15 and printing up 1000 cheap business cards for some unexciting sounding business. “Proofreading” or “Commercial Real Estate” or “Vending Machine Repair.” Put a fake name, an email address, and maybe a Google Voice number on it. You don’t have to ever bother checking the mail or the phone number, they’re just there so the card looks normal. The reason I recommend doing this is that many modern business cards are so thick and have so much printing on the front and back that they become not great for billet work, or anything along those lines. Having a cheap stack of these fake cards lying around in a place that you perform regularly assures you that you won’t have to go digging through cards to find one that works for your purposes.

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Random Trivia.

When I write a book, I listen to the same song over and over the whole time. I do this because it blocks out the surrounding noise from where I’m writing, and I prefer it to white noise. If I listened to different songs, it would be too distracting. But listening to the same song over and over is almost meditative. And I’m sure it helps put me in the headspace to work.

During the writing of my last book, Young Girls Are Coming to the Canyon, I listened to this song 14,989 times.

I thought it would make a good song to write a book to because there aren’t many lyrics to get in the way. I love songs with harmonies and ba-ba-bahs. And this song is almost only harmonies and ba-ba-bahs. Plus, the Beachwood Sparks, are reminiscent of some of the Laurel Canyon bands (specifically the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield) that inspired part of that book. And this sunny tune usually put me in a good mood to write.

I was feeling bad because I listened to my own copy of the song rather than streaming it on Spotify to make the band some money. But I just did the math and it looks like my 15,000 streams would have made them about $60.

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Don’t forget to send in your T.W.A.T. picks.

(Not your “twat pics.”}

TWAT - The Worst All Time - Magic Tournament

It’s often said, “There are no bad tricks, only bad performers.”

With your help, we’re going to put this notion to the test.

I would like you to submit to me what you believe to be the worst magic release of all time.

I will take all your nominations and we will put them in a single-elimination tournament over the course of a few weeks to crown one trick the worst of all time.

Then we’ll take that trick and see if there’s some way to perform that trick in a way that makes it “good.”

Depending on how many nominees I get for the worst trick of all time, this will go on for maybe 1-3 weeks.

To start this off, I’d like you to send me an email where you nominate the worst trick or tricks you’ve seen.

Rules:

1. Let’s limit it to tricks that have been released separately. Not something in a book or magazine.

2. The trick should “work.” Like don’t nominate a trick that uses an app that wasn’t updated and no longer works. I want tricks that function as they were intended to. But they just happen to suck.

3. Nominate real tricks, not gags that are intentionally stupid.

4. I’m not looking for rationales like, “This is the worst trick ever released because it’s stolen. It’s a copy of a trick by so & so.” Stealing a trick doesn’t make the trick bad, it makes the person who stole the trick bad.

5. Don’t just name a trick. Tell me why you think it’s no good. Is it overly complicated? Meaningless? Dull? Too unimpressive?

6. Being overhyped doesn’t mean a trick is terrible. Don’t confuse these two things. You might think Dex by Lloyd Barnes didn’t live up to the hype, but that doesn’t make it anywhere near the “worst” trick of all time.

Submit as many tricks as you like and your rationale for why they suck via email. Put TWAT in the subject line. I probably won’t reply to each email, so I’ll thank you now for taking part.

(Keep Feeling) Fascination

Why are you doing 3 Card Monte one day, a memory demonstration the next, and turning $1 into $100s the next? What do your friends see as your rationale for why you’re doing it?

I think the worst-case scenario is that they think you’re getting something out of fooling them. That you’re trying to impress them. Or trying to get them to think you’re more clever than them. Or just trying to point out that you know how to do something they don’t.

But what is the best-case scenario? That you’re showing them these things because you hope it will entertain them? That’s definitely better than the previous option. But it’s also still a little weird.

“I’m going to entertain my friends!” is an odd instinct. Certainly, us being together should be a fun time and “entertaining.” But if I’m learning a trick, practicing it, and then showing it to you for your entertainment, that doesn’t feel like a natural interaction between friends.

“I’m doing this trick for you.” Is weird.

So now I try and firmly establish the opposite.

“I’m doing this trick for me.”

I’ve said in the past that if your audience suspects you’re doing a trick for yourself, that they’ll be turned off. And they will shut down.

But I realize that’s not completely clear.

The truth is, if your audience gets the sense that you’re doing the trick for your own glorification, then they will shut down. (Unless they’re your mother or madly in love with you (or both).) It will come across as pathetic. “Give me praise! Be impressed with me! Look what I can do!”

But my attitude is not that I’m doing it as some sort of validation seeking exercise. Or that I’m doing it for their entertainment.

My attitude is that I’m doing it for my entertainment.

Magic, mind-reading, psychology, strange-phenomenon. These are subjects that fascinate me. And their role is not to applaud what I do. But to help me while I practice something, or test an idea, or explore a concept, or experience something new.

Their “job” is not to be entertained. Their role is simply to be a helper, a test subject, a witness, etc. They will be entertained, but that’s not why they’re there, or why we’re doing this.

My former downstairs neighbor in my apartment used to practice her flute occasionally. Not often. Maybe once or twice a month. When I would hear it coming up through the floor, I would usually lay down, close my eyes, and just enjoy the soothing, mellow sound of it. Thus, I loved when I would catch her practicing.

What if she came upstairs, knocked on my door, and said, “I’m going to play my flute for you.” Obviously, that would be a completely different—and probably uncomfortable— dynamic, even though the outcome is the same: it’s me listening to her play the flute.

By expressing my fascination with the subject matter, then I am allowing people to help me experience this subject that fascinates me.

They will hopefully be amazed, amused, impressed, intrigued, scared, unnerved, mystified, or whatever I’m going for.

But even if they don’t feel any of that, then the worst case scenario is that they just helped out someone they're friendly with as that person delved into a subject that interests them.

So I recommend you not forget that what you’re sharing with them should seem to be a subject of your fascination, at least until it becomes a subject of their fascination. Once people start asking you to show them something, then you don’t have to worry about this as much because they are putting themselves in the audience role.

But until then, you need to give them a reason why you’re doing this (because you’re fascinated by it) or they will come up with their own reason (that you need validation, or you have to resort to tricks to entertain them).

This song holds up.

The Essential Story

This is a subject I’ve written about before, but it’s been about five years, and it came up again recently in real life, so I want to re-address the idea here today.

In the last week of March, I spent time with two different magician friends who were dealing with similar, but opposite, issues.

To maintain their anonymity, we’ll call the first person Magician A. And we’ll call the second person—

Yeah, yeah. Magician B. We get it. Just get on with the post.

No. Actually, we’ll call the second person Professor Creighton von Bigglesworth the Third. Don’t get ahead of me.

Magician A was having issues with expanding the premises of the tricks he performed outside of simple “meaningless” tricks. He felt odd delving into a weirder subject matter. Maybe the jacks switching with the aces wasn’t inherently interesting, but it felt natural to him to perform. He was comfortable with it. More comfortable than he felt saying, “I found the weirdest thing at the thrift store recently.”

Professor Creighton von Bigglesworth the Third has the opposite issue. He is completely comfortable presenting tricks with more fanatical premises. His issue is that there are more tricks he would like to perform than there are unique, interesting premises. And he feels weird moving from some crazy story to some pedestrian coin trick.

I understand where both Magician A and Professor Creighton von Bigglesworth the Third are coming from. I’ve been both of them. For the first couple of decades that I was interested in magic, I felt like seeing something impossible should be interesting on its own. And it wasn’t natural to me to try and give a trick any more meaning than that. Shouldn’t a card changing into another card be enough? That’s something impossible. Why does there need to be more to it than seeing something impossible?

This is an attitude a lot of magicians have. And it’s accurate in the sense that the first few things you show a person don’t really need to have much more going on besides seeming impossible. But impossibility loses its novelty remarkably quickly.

In the last decade or so, I’ve learned the power of recontextualizing effects. How you can create a story around the effect that leaves them not just fooled, but completely enraptured in the experience. And that type of performance can stick with people in much more significant ways. And as I delved into that style, the pendulum of my performing swung heavily to Professor Creighton von Bigglesworth the Third’s end of the spectrum.

The problem becomes, if you only want to perform highly affective or immersive magic, you are greatly limiting your opportunities to perform and the material you can use. Because not every situation is conducive to that type of interaction, and most tricks don’t lend themselves to that style. You also quickly learn that for the sake of pacing, you want to have your most powerful magic effects spaced out a little. If every time you see them you take them on a 45-minute magical journey, then that will soon become routine. So you mix up those moments with impossibilities that are just cool or fun or “eye-candy” or thought-provoking or whatever the case may be.

I think the hard part for people can be navigating their way between these two types of magic. How can you do Sponge Bunnies one week and then hope to get people to lose themselves in a more immersive trick the next? Or vice versa. How can you predict someone’s actions via a Groundhog Day situation one week and then get them to care about Color Monte the next?

The key is The Essential Story.

You need to have a narrative that accounts for everything you might want to ever show people. Once this is established, you can twist balloon animals, and bend a key with your mind, and display a piece of secret government technology you bought on the black market. Not all in the same interaction (because that makes no sense) but over time. Your story needs to allow you to “code switch” between fun little tricks and deep mind-bending experiences.

What is the story that covers all these things?

Well, the basics elements are these:

1. When you were younger, you had an interest in magic.

2. You learned all you could through the normal channels—the library and teaching videos.

3. You started digging deeper. Started going to magic stores. Maybe got a mentor. Sent away for books that couldn’t be found in normal bookstores or libraries. Started going to conventions.

4. Through this process you encountered some interesting people. And through those interesting people you met some strange people. And through them, you’ve learned about and encountered some weird things.

So the story is rooted in truth: When you were young, you had an interest in magic. And that seed of truth can be followed as it branches out into weirder and weirder areas. My uncle showed me a magic trick. Because of that, I wanted to learn magic. I learned everything I could from the library. I started going to a local magic store. The owner told me about a convention where magicians would speak and teach tricks. I started going to conventions regularly. One time I met this guy there who was selling a floating dollar trick, but it didn’t use any of the methods magicians know about. It used a special kind of powder that this guy claimed he got from another guy who lived in a cabin in the woods in Minnesota. And that guy claims the powder is made from grinding this material that he found in a meteorite that crashed on his property. Well… the government claims it’s a meteorite. But this guy believes it was some kind of spacecraft.

etc. etc,

Now, I’m not saying I would ever tell the story in that way. I wouldn’t go back to my uncle showing me a trick in order to tell the story of this special powder that is made of ground-up alien bones. I’m just making the point that if people understand this essential “story,” then it can really lead to any type of trick.

The story is: I had an early interest in magic, and by pursuing that I was introduced to all sorts of weird people, concepts, and objects.

People in my life know this about me. And because people know this is my backstory, I can go from a psychological trick during one meetup, to a gambling demonstration the next, to invoking possession by a demon the next, to the Hot Rod the next. It all “works.” Nothing throws them off. They can enjoy the frivolous tricks, but still get wrapped up in the deeper mysteries.

Magician A’s issue was that he never hinted that his “story” involved an evolution of his interests beyond standard magic tricks. So it felt strange to bring up anything too “out there” to his friends.

Professor Creighton von Bigglesworth the Third’s issue was that he didn’t embrace his interest of traditional old-fashioned magic. So anything that didn’t fall in his narrow presentation style (which was a collection “unusual objects”) was unusable for him.

Of course, if you only ever want to perform material with ONE style of presentation (e.g. “I’m a master of deductive reasoning.”) then you can have a much more focused backstory. But most of us enjoy performing a wide range of material in various styles. And if that’s you, then establishing a backstory along the lines of what I’ve written here will allow you a great deal of freedom. It allows you to perform the most trivial magic effects as an example of the tricks that originally got you interested in the art. But at the same time, it doesn’t get in the way of you presenting something that’s designed to feel weirder and more engrossing than “just a trick.”

Mailbag #113

If you and your other readers are planning to try out some haunted themed effects, I would recommend to do it on April 4th, which is the Chinese Memorial Day, but can be translated as tomb-sweeping day. There are a lot of rituals related to this Memorial Day. For example, in my province, we would put food in front of our deceased grandparents. We would then burn joss paper. After that, we were supposed to eat some of the food that we served to our ancestors because they are now blessed by our ancestors. This year is particularly special since it is on Thursday, April 4, 2024 (4th month, 4th day of the week). The pronunciation of 4 in Chinese sounds similar to death. So we can make up the story that it has strong connections with the died ones.—SY

This is a good suggestion. One of the projects that is on the furthest of back burners for me is to put together a little almanac of events, annual holidays and celestial events that can be used as the backdrop for different types of effects. Having a reason why what you’re showing them has to be done on this day, or at this time, is a nice subtle way to make your performance feel more significant.

Magic is particularly meaningless when it feels like it’s something that could be done by anyone, for anyone, at any moment in time. Tying a trick into the schedule of some outside event is an easy way to broaden the resonance of the trick beyond just what’s happening in your hands or on the table in front of you.

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I have nothing to add to this email from Marc Kerstein, but thought it was worth sharing…

I was reading your post on “Sponts”, and it reminded me of when I first met Blaine. It was back in 2013, and I’d been working on my WebFX trick: a playing card reveal in a photo on your website, which you go to on the spectator’s phone.

At some point, some guy comes around to his hotel room and was keen for Blaine to show him a trick. For some reason, Blaine wanted *me* to show him a trick instead. Blaine said to him something like “no wait, you should really ask this guy,” pointing at me, and then shouts over at me something like: “Marc, can you show John the way you can make someone think of a playing card?”
I had no idea what he was talking about. He then said “Do you have cards on you? Here, you can use mine…” before failing to find a deck of cards anywhere nearby. Then he said “Wait, what about that photo you showed me earlier, do you think you could use that? Maybe try to get that card across to him?”

It took me a bit to really understand what he was doing, but this is very much a thing he does all the time - he often tries to recontextualise a trick to make it feel much more happenstance. It’s of course better if the spectator took the initiative in the first place, but the little charade upfront definitely makes a difference.

It’s something I’ve become aware of with tech magic - I often think the best magic that overtly uses tech should feel happenstance, otherwise the spectator begins to question the tech, which is the only commonality between effects. WikiTest is much better when it’s “we need to use a bunch of text somewhere and there’re no books nearby” rather than some strange insistence on using Wikipedia.—MK

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I was reading Monday’s post, and revisiting Fuzzy PATEO. An idea came to mind, but I’m unsure if it strengthens anything, or not. I also don’t know if it has been thought of before.

With Wes Iseli’s FLIP technique you can have one object focused on at a time.

Wes offered a roulette style routine with coins/objects, but the performer is the only one flipping the coin. Alternating the flip of the coin adds nice shade, and suits casual interactions. Stasia’s coin also makes the technique easier, as mentioned in a previous post.

You still go back and forth per original PATEO, but there are no restrictions on who goes first, phrasing, or which object is chosen. You avoid the target on your turn, and control the outcome of the selection (based on their question) for theirs.

You have to present with Yes/No in lieu of Yes/Instinct so you are covered in case they select the target, and also ask to eliminate.

Some objects might stay in play multiple times, which adds to the feeling of fate taking its course. —LT

So, to be clear, he’s suggesting instead of a Pick Any Two Eliminate One force, you just go back and forth with the person picking one object and the other person flipping a coin to see if that object stays in play or is eliminated.

I think this would likely work, but I would be concerned that:

A) it goes on too long if you keep flipping and things aren’t getting eliminated

B) it might be more transparent when focusing on one item at a time that a particular item keeps getting saved when in front of you and you never pick it to be eliminated.

Plus, I like the “yes/instinct” option that’s inherent in the Fuzzy PATEO version and wouldn’t want to give it up.

That being said, I think a controlled coin flip does make a nice ending for the PATEO force (as opposed to the usual way of just having the magician decide which item stays or go). Using this technique to start the PATEO selection, and then—when it comes down to two items and your choice—using a coin flip at the end would feel very fair, I believe.

Until April...

This is the final post for March. Regular posting resumes Monday, April 1st. And the next issue of the newsletter will be out Sunday, the 31st of March.

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If you ever wanted to purchase the GLOMM “Elite” Membership Kit, I would do so relatively soon, especially if you’re a XXXL. (And no, I didn’t mean that like “order soon before you have a heart attack.” I just meant that that’s the most limited size.)

We are on the last batch of shirts, pins, and membership cards that make up the membership kit, and they are not going to be reprinted again after this.

At this very moment, there are still plenty available in most sizes, and at the rate they normally sell, there should be for a while. But as they sell during the course of this year, they won’t be restocked. So if you’ve ever wanted one, don’t wait too long. You can order here.

The GLOMM will still continue to exist, and there may be some one-time printing of shirts of a completely different design in the future, but this particular shirt with the GLOMM logo is being retired.

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Oliver W. writes…

I’ve been carrying around Evoke with me since it was released and performing it regularly. Yesterday I used the“spont” that you posted earlier this week and I just tossed the deck in a mailing envelope I had from Amazon. I showed it to a few people and the reactions were SURPRISINGLY different. Not only did it seem to get a stronger response but the entire interaction felt better in some way. […] I’m hoping you’ll share some more of these sponts or whatever you end up calling them.

That doesn’t surprise me. Evoke is exactly the sort of trick that can benefit from that technique.

I’ve gotten similar emails about almost every extra-presentational technique I’ve written about. Magicians are surprised that people actually notice them. Or that they seem to have an effect.

I promise you, these things are noticed. These aren’t magic techniques as much as they are story-telling techniques. And spectators are much more aware of them than some of the stupid shit we focus on as magicians. (Should I do my Elmsley count from the fingertips or from mechanic’s grip? No layman in the history of the universe has ever noticed a difference.)

The idea of the Spont category is to identify ways that lessen the friction of getting into a trick. Little things you can do to help you roll into a trick more naturally. Spectators feel the difference between abruptly moving into a trick or naturally flowing into it. As surely as they feel the difference between going to the store to buy an apple vs. plucking it off a tree as you pass by.

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I’ve heard stories (I believe on reddit) where non-magicians were given gimmicked coins (that a magician had accidentally spent) as change in a store and they were left wondering what the hell they were looking at and trying to make sense of it.

It was funny to read their ideas about what they had found.

A copper/silver coin was called a “misprint.” Look, I don’t know much about the coin-making process, but I’m fairly certain you can’t just “accidentally” have a half-dollar on one side and a Mexican centavo on the other. That’s not like a “whoops” thing.

I read about another person who found a flipper coin, and someone surmised it was for spies to use. They could take secret bits of information. Like codes or something. Write it on tiny bits of paper and put it in the shell, and then put the inner coin back in place. That way, if anyone searched them, they wouldn’t find anything on them besides this innocent coin. (Little do they know the nuclear codes are trapped inside.)

I like that interpretation. And apparently it’s not that far-fetched. Hollow coins (not flipper coins) were used in espionage. If you have a WWII era flipper coin, you might be able to get away with it.

Anyway, I sort of felt like one of those people discovering a gimmicked coin the other day when I was at the library, and on the shelf of books that you could just take and keep for like 25¢ was this book.

20,000 words is, in fact, a book of 20,000 words.

This is the fifth edition, printed in 1965. The first edition was printed in 1934.

Why did they have to put out a 5th edition just a few years after the 4th? Well… to include “new” words like laser, epoxy, and googol.

I spent a couple of minutes examining the book closely, half-convinced I had found some weird magicians book test. But no, it’s a legit book.

The purpose of the book—as the introduction tells me—is that most people use dictionaries to look up the spelling of words, not definitions. So this is a dictionary without definitions. Making it much smaller and more convenient for “stenographers, authors, and proofreaders.”

I still think there’s a trick to be found in here. I’m not quite sure what it is just yet. We have many ways to force numbers in magic, and those numbers could be translated into a page, column, and position in the list. So the book would be a good way to transform a number force into a word force.

I do like using it as part of book test as well. “A normal book has maybe 75-100 thousand words in it. But only about four thousand different words. This little book has 20,000 distinct words and thoughts you could think of.” etc., etc.

There are lots of copies of the book on ebay for just a few dollars if you come up with a use for it.

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Have a great rest of your March. See you all back here on Monday the 1st.