Monday Mailbag #35
/
Two of your dealbreakers were a) tricks involving faro shuffles and b) timing forces.
Basically you were saying that once you knew an effect involved either of those, you eliminated it from consideration.
But I think it's a bad idea to eliminate consideration of a trick just because you don't yet have the skill yet to do the sleights well. Which is essentially what you are saying. Because there are many magicians who can perform both sleights with no suspicion. Yes, of course it takes a lot of practice to get it right. *But more practice should not be a reason to eliminate consideration of a trick*
Look, remember when you first started out in card magic and palming and a good strike double lift seemed unattainable? So quite naturally when a person starts out s/he keeps away from effects with such sleights because the magician doesn't want to screw up.
But why then do people eventually learn those skills? Because they make the calculation that on balance there are certain effects strong enough that it would be worth it to put in the time and practice to learn the skills properly to do the effect. But if such effects were immediately eliminated from consideration, that impetus to learn something new would be squelched. And that's what you are doing to yourself now. You've already said there are some great faro tricks out there. The problem now is to get your faro decent enough to do them so that they overcome your objections. I'm not saying you *have to*, just you might want to, just like attaining anything else hard, like a second or bottom deal. Probably the best motivation for learning a sleight is because there is a freakin cool trick that you can't do because you can't do the sleight yet.
And as a bonus, some sleights/techniques are much easier than one first imagines them to be--like a a timing force and a classic force. It's mainly about confidence and doing it enough times to see how it works in the real world with people. A good technique to practice such things with people is to have an out prepared. There are lots of outs for timing forces--see Dani DaOrtiz's stuff for example. —JS
I was probably unclear about my reasons for making these particular techniques dealbreakers. It’s not because I can’t do them, it’s because I don’t want to do them.
In regards to the faro shuffle, I have never seen a non-magician shuffle cards in this way. And my personal priority is to keep my card handling as close to a non-magician’s as possible, with the exception of situations where I want to draw attention to what I’m doing. So, using the faro shuffle for Paul Gertner’s Unshuffled would be less of an issue for me, because he’s suggesting that what he’s doing isn’t your normal shuffle. But, for me, it just doesn’t work for other routines where you’re supposedly mixing the cards guilelessly. It doesn’t mesh with my standards for what looks innocent.
But I realize a lot of people don’t share this concern/objection, however, and I don’t really expect them to. I’m the guy who spent years recording people turning over the top card of a deck so I could make my double lift as psychologically innocent as possible. So I’m a little extreme about these things.
And sadly, there is no level of skill involved that could overcome that objection. To say that you can get good enough to execute a faro shuffle so that it elicits “no suspicion” is just not accurate. Do you remember the first time you saw a faro shuffle? Did you think it was perfectly normal? Maybe you did, but I didn’t. So I suspect a certain percentage of non-magicians might feel the same way.
As far as timing forces go, I just feel I have other forces that are less restrictive and feel more fair. I also think it’s a force that works better in more formal work, or at least with a larger group of people. When you’re sitting one-on-one with people, they’re not reluctant at all about dealing through half the deck or more. They’re in no hurry.
I’ve had people say, “Yes, but what about Dani DaOrtiz? His style couldn’t be more casual. And he does a ton of timing stuff. So obviously it works in those situations.”
Really? I find Dani’s style to be loose, free-flowing, and fun. But not casual. Maybe it’s theatrically casual, but not normal-human casual.
At 4:15 in this video you can watch how he handles a timing force failure. Ultimately he does get to the card he wants. And it works for him because of his personality and he plays the, “I don’t speak English too well,” card. But without Dani’s personality, I don’t think the technique would go over nearly as well. (To be honest, I’m not sure it goes over that well here either. There’s no chance this woman thought, “Yes, that’s precisely where I wanted to stop.” But the force of Dani’s charm covers for it.)
If he spoke to that woman in a casual situation like he does in this show situation, she’d think he was a goddamn lunatic. It just doesn’t mach normal human casual conversation..
Normal-Human Casual: Where do you want to go for lunch?
vs.
Dani-DaOrtiz Casual: Where should we go for lunch? KFC? Burger King? Subway? McDonalds?
Dani’s Friend: Burger King
Dani: McDonald’s?
Friend: No. Burger King.
Dani: Okay. I don’t care either way. So you want a burger. Where’s the closest place around here for burgers? McDonald’s I guess?
Friend: No. I want to go to Burger King. Do you want to go to McDonald’s?
Dani: Me? No. I don’t care. It’s up to you. Where should we go?
Friend: Burger King.
Dani: Okay. We get in the car and drive in that direction and we stop at the first restaurant we see along the way.
My point is simply that this type of timing force is somewhat personality dependent. And I’d rather change the technique used to match my performance personality, than change my personality to allow for a particular technique.
I was thinking that a faro shuffle done weaving the long sides of the deck looks similar to a layman’s shuffle. If practiced enough to make sure you can quickly cut the deck in half and do the weaving without looking, you could have a “normal” looking faro. Especially if done in an off-beat moment.
I’ve tried a few times in the mirror and it’s way better than the normal way, and if you finish the shuffle with a messy square up to it looks quite amateurish.
I did some research on conjuring archive and it seems like it’s a very old idea. This is the oldest reference I found on there, but the idea could be even older:
1968 - The Batchelor Side Faro Shuffle - to simulate an amateur card shuffle
I don’t have the book, but it seems like it’s the same idea, and even the reasoning behind it is the same. —AF [Who wrote about this in the 4th issue of his newsletter. I haven’t read it (It’s behind a paywall), but if you’re interested, you might want to track it down.]
I love this idea. And it does take away my issue with the faro shuffle.
Has anyone out there mastered a side faro shuffle? If so, let me know where you learned it and any tips you might have.
You mentioned in a recent post that you found it harder than expected to come up with groupings of letters to use for the Ascrabbological Sign trick. I love combinatorial puzzles like that! Years ago I worked on software tools that were good at solving those kinds of problems, and I still enjoy dragging out those tools and applying them to fun new problems. So if you ever have need of a solution to this kind of thing, I'd be happy to hear from you.
Anyway, one thing I didn't like about the groupings you came up with was that B and P appeared in both groups. I imagined that somebody who was (say) a Libra, upon seeing the second B, might be unsure as to whether or not they should take it the second time ("There's only one B in Libra, and I already have one, so..."). Of course, one could address this issue in the patter to make sure that they take it both times, but I figured it would be neater to just side-step the issue by not having any repeated letters, and it turns out that there are lots of groupings that can be used that don't have repeated letters (I give a couple of examples below).
Here are a couple of the solutions without duplicates that I found while messing around. The first is one (of two) minimal solutions, i.e. having as few tiles as possible in the groupings. Though it's probably not the best choice in practice, since Libra and Aries might find it suspicious that they get 4/5 of their letters out of just 7, and Taurus gets them all (discounting the second U). It could be padded with D, K, etc., but still...
Group 1: I S U
Group 2: A L R T
0 1 Leo
0 2 Cancer
1 0 Gemini
1 1 Virgo
1 2 Capricorn
1 3 Libra
2 0 Pisces
2 1 Scorpio
2 2 Aries
2 3 Taurus
3 2 Aquarius
3 3 Sagittarius
And just for fun, here's a maximal one (having as many tiles as possible in the groupings - ignoring D, K, etc.).
Group 1: C G N P Q S
Group 2: A B L O T U V
0 2 Leo
0 3 Libra
1 1 Aries
1 2 Virgo
1 3 Taurus
2 0 Gemini
2 1 Cancer
2 2 Aquarius
2 3 Sagittarius
3 0 Pisces
3 1 Scorpio
3 2 Capricorn
—WH
Hey, do I have the smartest readers in magic, or what?
Just kidding. Most of you are just as dumb as I am.
Thanks to WH for using a targeted method at coming up with the letters for the Ascrabbological Sign trick. That definitely gets a better result than my method which consisted of, “Hmm… I wonder if these letters will work.”
I still think it’s a fairly dumb trick. Other than a formal show, I can’t imagine many situations where you’d be sitting with someone whose birthday you don’t know and have a scrabble board handy. But I found it interesting to see how he cut down the needed letters to just three and four.
I’ll continue to think about this trick and other groups of words that might be more useful/interesting presentationally, and I’ll report back if I come up with anything.