"Whichever You Want" Equivoque

This is an equivocal phrase you can use when you’re down to two objects, such as the trick I was discussing yesterday using the Evoke deck where you have two cards at the end, and you want the spectator to end up with one of them and not the other.

I’ll describe it as you would use it with the Evoke routine discussed yesterday.

There are two cards remaining. A positive card and a negative card. I want them to keep the positive card to add to their hand. And I want the negative card to be given to me to add to the negative cards they pushed away earlier.

I say:

“Take both cards and mix them up under the table where neither of us can see. Then just place whichever you want on the table.”

If they place the positive card on the table

I push it toward the other cards they kept and say, “And I’ll take the one you don’t want.” And I reach out with the negative cards to have them place the card that remains in their hands with them.

If they place the negative card on the table

I slide it toward myself and drop the other negative cards on top. “And you can add whatever card you kept to your own cards.”

That’s it.

Here we’re capitalizing on the phrase “place whichever you want on the table.”

Which can mean:

Place onto the table the card that you want.

OR

Place whichever card you care to on the table.

And we cement that in place by reframing the other card as:

The card you didn’t want.

OR

The card you kept.

This works really well with this trick, or any other trick where you’re dealing with a blind selection between apparently identical items.

While you can use similar language with openly different items, I don’t think it works as well. And in that case I would probably try and craft an equivocal phrase that was specific to the items in play. Whereas this is a general usage type of equivoque.