Five Lies and a Truth
/Our buddy, Marc Kerstein has released the second “season” of his app, Amalgam. This app doesn’t do one specific thing, it collects different apps that Marc has created under one umbrella. You can buy apps individually or in 4-app groups.
I haven’t had much time to experiment with the new apps in this release, but the one I’ve played around with the most is called Inertia, and it’s really good. You know those phone forces where you would hold the phone upside down and have them scroll blindly and whatever picture or item they landed on would be forced (usually because their scrolling wasn’t doing anything). Well, this app allows you to do that type of force face-up while the spectator looks at the phone. It’s so good and “feels” exactly like it should. I’m looking forward to playing around with it some more.
Today I wanted to share a routine I’ve been using for an effect in the first season of Amalgam called Watch.
In this trick, you show the spectator a picture and you ask them to name a time, when you zoom into a clock or watch in that picture, it’s shown to have that exact time on it.
I like this one a lot and have used it quite a bit.
This is the presentation I’ve been using for it recently if I’m showing it to someone I don’t know that well. (I have a weirder presentation for people I know.)
Five Lies and a Truth
When they ask to see a trick…
“I don’t really have my cards or anything on me to show you a trick. But I can show you something that’s sort of like magic. It’s like a weird psychology test… or game. It’s even weirder than a trick in some ways.”
I open my phone and pull up the photo.
"The game is called Five Lies and a Truth. I’m going to tell you five lies about this photo, and then we’re going to follow that up with a truth. Okay?”
The spectator is probably not quite understanding what exactly I mean at this point, but they’ll agree to play along.
I count out the lies on my fingers:
“This group is all my best friends. They were applauding for me. It wasn’t my birthday or anything, they just really appreciate how nice and funny I am.”
“This photo was taken on a Thursday.”
“That’s Lisa. She was my girlfriend at the time this photo was taken. We dated for a while. But she said it was intimidating to be with me, because I’m so handsome. So we split up.”
“That’s Jerry. He’s 48, but I thought he was 42.”
“Everyone in this photo is still alive today.”
Your “lies” can be anything. I just make them up in the moment. But they usually include a mixture of things that sound self-aggrandizing, and some things that sound dull but perhaps will carry some weight in the spectator’s mind when they look back on it, i.e., “When he said the one guy was one age but he thought he was the other, was he trying to suggest a number to me?”
And then the last “lie” is just something to sound mildly ominous and introduce a weird energy into the mix.
“Okay,” I say, “So those were the five lies. But I said this was called Five Lies and A Truth. So there has to be one true statement as well. What makes this interesting is that you’re the one who’s going to make the true statement, okay? I want you to tell me the exact time this photo was taken.”
I say the “exact time” because I found if I just said, “the time,” they would say a very non-specific sounding time like noon or 3pm.
So maybe she says 12:19.
“And that is… true! Good job.” I say as I zoom into the photo and onto someone’s watch where she sees it says 12:19.
For me this is just the right amount of presentation for this type of trick. I want to give it a little more build than just saying: “Name a time. Look, here it is.” But on the other hand, it’s not the sort of thing that I want to build up too much either. Making it a couple minutes long and adding a bit of intrigue with the premise (“What does he mean ‘five lies and a truth’? Am I going to have to tell the truth from the lies? What exactly is the game here?”) and then having the small twist of it being their own statement that is going to be the true statement—that works for me as a good everyday routine to have in my pocket when I have a little time to kill with someone.