Justifying Selections

In last week’s Bubble series I mentioned a trick of Andy Nyman’s called Windows. The trick uses cards with emotions written on them. The spectator chooses one and you’re able to determine what emotion it is.

A friend of mine asked how I justify the cards. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to just say, ‘Think of an emotion,’ and then take it from there?”

This is a potential issue with many mentalism tricks, of course.

“Why did I have to pick a card? Why couldn’t I just think of a card?”

“Why did I have to look at a word in a book? Why couldn’t I just think of a word?”

While this is a question that could theoretically apply to many tricks in mentalism, I don’t really find it’s something that comes up too often with actual people. Even when going over tricks with them after the fact, I rarely hear people question this small bit of procedure. Perhaps if I did a lot more straightforward mentalism, this would be something I’d hear more often.

Here is the language I use in the rare circumstance that a question of this nature does arise.

“Why do I have to choose a playing card? Why can’t I just think of one?” they say.

“Hmm… okay. I think I see what you’re getting at. I suppose what it comes down to is the difference between asking myself, ‘What card is she thinking of?’ vs, ‘What card would someone like her be likely to think of?’ When you actually pick a card at random, I can just focus on the thought itself. But if I asked you to imagine a card, then it becomes less of a process of thought transmission and more of an exercise in personality assessment or a guessing game based on statistics. That’s not really the sort of thing I do.”

The idea is to frame it in a way that having them physically select something is actually more difficult because I can’t base my guess on “personality or statistics.” I’m not saying they buy that completely but it’s an explanation that sounds feasible.

What I would also do is come back a few weeks later…, “Remember when you asked why you needed to pick a card? Why I couldn’t have you just think of one? Well, I’ve been working on a different technique—it’s new to me—that might allow me to do just that. Can I get your help trying it out?” And then I’d show them a trick that didn’t involve them making a physical selection. This way I’m letting a question from a previous trick hurl me into the next performance and tie those tricks together.