Lasagna Motor

I have a couple anagram tools to mention today.

Lasagna motor… get it? It’s an anagram for “anagram tools.” Oh, fun.

(I also considered “atonal orgasm”).

I have two tools for you today that might help with some of the anagram stuff I’ve mentioned in the past couple weeks. One is to help with the construction of Squared Anagrams. The other will help with the performance of many types of anagram effects.

First, let’s talk about a 16 item Squared Anagram. So there will be two “volleys” of two letters each. For the sake of explanation, let’s say those letters are A, B, C, and D.

Now, I think most of you probably have an intuitive understanding for what that means. But for those who don’t, that means the 16 words we need must meet these requirements

1. None of A, B, C, or D

2. Just A, no B, C, D

3. Just B, no A, C, D

4. Just C, no A, B, D

5. Just D, no A, B, C

6. A and B, no C or D

7. A and C, no B or D

8. A and D, no B or C

9. B and C, no A or D

10. B and D, no A or C

11. C and D, no A or B

12. A, B, and C, No D

13. A, C, and D, No B

14. A, B, and D, No C

15. B, D, and C, No A

16. A, B, C, D

It’s not that difficult to come up with words that fit into these parameters, but it’s much easier by using this site, Lots of Words, the Word Search Engine.

Here you can put in certain criteria for words. For example, words with C and D in them, but not A and B.

Then run a search and it will spit out 1000s of words for your consideration.

I would recommend you sort their results by “frequent words,” that will give you the most usable results first. You can also sort by alphabetical order or size.

As I said, it’s not that it’s impossible to come up with words with a C and D in them, but not an A or B on your own. But it’s easier to have a whole list of options spit out at you and to choose the one you think works best.

Here are the first few dozen out of 20,000 or so options…

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The second tool I want to mention would be used when performing an anagram effect.

I used it for the first time this afternoon and it went over exceedingly well. I met up with my friend Brooke today for coffee. She asked if I had anything to show her and I told her that I didn’t really, but I could use her help with something.

I showed her my mentalism vocabulary list on my phone. It’s Level 46. You guys know the one. It’s over 400 words. It’s a real bitch. Anyway, she scrolled to a random part of the list and thought of any word she saw there and I was able to tell her what it was. Yes, it required some work on my part. But that makes sense. This is my new vocab list. It’s not something I’ve mastered yet.

Okay, so this is just a combination of the Squared Anagram principle with the Sweep revelation technique and Marc Kerstein’s Inertia app.

So, it uses a real web page that I can show as having 400 different words, but when they flick their finger to get to a “random” point, it takes them right to the start of my anagram list, with the word “talisman.”.

I use the same words from this post. (Except I changed “match” to “tomb,” in case I wanted to use the “is this an object you can visualize” subtlety. In the context of the poem, it was clear that “match” referred to something you use to light a fire. But that wouldn’t necessarily be clear in just a list of words.)

For a quick trick that you can do anywhere (as long as you have your phone on you), I think it’s pretty strong. And I like the inherent backstory of the effect. In this trick, mind reading is something that is learned word by word. Like learning French, or sign language, or kanji.

Of course, Marc’s app can be used with any style of anagram and make the whole selection procedure seem much more fair. You just need to make up a list and post it somewhere online (I just created a Google Doc.) You could have a list of 1000 movie titles and an anagram for 8 of them and it would feel like a pretty free choice from 1000 movies. You could argue that if you were going to use an app, then you might as well just force a single movie and not bother with the anagram at all. That’s a fair point. Although I think there is something to be said for combining the two methods to help cancel out any possible solutions the spectator comes to.

“Could he have known the word I was thinking of just by knowing there was an S in it?” No, of course not. There are 100s of words on this page.

“Could he have somehow seen where I stopped on this page?” What difference would that make? I still had a bunch of different words to choose from.

These are both thoughts spectators might have, but for whatever reason, they don’t tend to put these thoughts together to hit on the actual method. I wrote about this a while back in this post.

That’s the end of the anagram posts for now. If you need more letter guessing fun, go watch Wheel of Fortune, ya mook.