Short Sheeting - A One-Ahead Subtlety *

I have a new item I’ve been carrying around in my computer bag recently that might interest some of you.

Yes, let’s get it out of the way, a computer bag is really no different from a purse. It’s a purse which holds a laptop. But don’t look down on that. Be grateful we have an excuse to carry around a little bag with us. For years, only women had this luxury. They needed something to hold their pocket mirror, rouge, and a box of tampons.

In those days, women weren’t allowed in the Magic Circle and the International Brotherhood of Magicians. It was commonly understood that pretending to move sponge balls with your magical powers was a thing men did. A woman’s brain wasn’t quite yet evolved to handle these things. Their role in magic was to sew the toothpick in the hem of the handkerchief for the gentleman conjurer in their family.

So the sex that had the most ability to carry around little magic props was the one that was barred from performing.

But with the advent of laptops (and computer bags), all of that changed. Now men too had a tiny bag to carry around their little tricks.

Why did the concept of EDC only develop in the last five years or so?

Because, until very recently, carrying anything other than a pack of cigarettes or a pistol was customarily understood to be a sign of homosexuality.

But now, like women and kangaroos, we can take advantage of having a little pouch with us when we go out.

Something I’ve been keeping in my computer bag is this notebook from Field Notes.

The paper is thick. (Relative to other paper, at least. It’s not like Texas Toast thick.) It has lines on one side and a little grid on the other.

In the spiral of the notebook I keep this pen. Which was either designed to go in a notebook like this, or just happens to fit perfectly.

When you carry around something like this, you’ll find a lot of uses for it, even if you don’t imagine using it often. Getting or giving a phone number. Making quick notes. Tearing out a sheet to make an impromptu bookmark.

It’s easy to assume the smartphone has removed the need for physical notebooks, but for a lot of purposes, I prefer just pulling this out and jotting something down. Not because I’m anti-technology in any way. But just because I generally find it easier.

But, like a variety pack of tropically flavored condoms, this isn’t just something that’s functional, it’s also fun.

Impromptu “billets,” one-ahead routines, writing down words or drawings, predicting tic-tac-toe games, and so on.

Here’s a subtle one-ahead convincer that I’ve been using recently with one of the tricks I wrote about in the last newsletter. But it can be used for any one-head routine (probably with at most three “hits”). I’ll describe it here with two, because that’s how I normally use it.

I tear a page out of the back of the notebook and tear it in half across its width. I discard the bottom half and tuck the top half in the back of the notebook. It just sits there until I need it.

Now, when I’m performing the one-ahead routine, I open the notebook to write down my first guess.

I actually write down my force (or otherwise already known) object on the half piece of paper.

I then rip the page below it in half.

I pin that half against the notebook with my thumb and crumple up the other half. Hiding the ripped spiral things at the top as best as possible.

This is put on the table or in a cup or in the spectator’s pocket or whatever.

I now collect the first piece of information from them in whatever way the routine affords me to.

Now I act as if I’m writing down part two, but I write down what I just learned on the bottom piece of already-ripped-off paper.

Then I rip off the top half of the connected page. My friend hears the “plip-plip-plip” of the paper being torn from the notebook.

I once again pin the just ripped off piece of paper to the notebook while I crumple up the other piece and toss it with the first piece of paper I removed and crumpled.

I can now put the notebook away, and it has the half-sheet already removed and ready to go for another performance.

This is an interesting, subtle audible convincer. They hear a rip after the first prediction, and that is, in fact, the prediction that has a ripped top. They hear the tearing of the page off the spiral after the second prediction, and that’s the prediction that has the spiral-torn top.

How much does this add to the deception? I’m not completely sure. But I believe it does help. I was originally doing something similar that also involved marking the sheets with a 1 and a 2. But I realized that was somewhat redundant, as the sound and the condition of the page already “marks” each sheet.

The handling of this is somewhat sloppy, and you’ll have to be a little cozy with your hands. You can’t really have people looking at you while you do it. But that’s okay, you can just say, “I don’t want you to see what I’m writing just yet.” And hold the notebook to yourself.

You can do it with a 3-phase one-ahead routine as well. Although it’s more complicated than I feel like writing out at the moment. You’ll start with the top 2/3rds of a page ripped off already. You can figure out the rest.

Update: Turns out there is a similar idea called Triposte in Mind, Myth and Magick by TA Waters. His uses a notebook with a spiral on the side. So you miss out on the audio aspect of the deception, and the visual aspect is much more subtle (the difference between the margin at the top and bottom of a page). Still worth looking at if you’re interested in playing around with the idea more. Had I originally purchased a notebook with a spiral on the side, I probably would have come to the same idea he did.