How do magicians do those tricks where they...

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...figure out what someone is thinking?

No, not just a card trick, but where they seem to figure out the idea, object, or person someone is thinking of. I've seen different versions of this, by different magicians and I've wondered if they have trained themselves to pick up on subtle visual cues.

(Of course this would be a really useful skill, if so)

OTOH, maybe there's a more obvious answer which I'm missing.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2000

Answers

I'm not sure just how they do it, but those magicians are called mentalists. Maybe you can do a search on the Web for them, and find out some answers.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2000

I knew someone was going to say that.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2000

I think they probably do similar things to what psychics do. You start vague and narrow in, always leading slightly and letting the dupe.. I mean customer... fill in the blanks and then talk about how wonderful you are.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2000

When I was little, I got a Lucky Charms magic kit. One of the tricks was to hold up this card that said 1 2 3 4 and ask someone in the audience to pick a number. On the back was written, "You picked 3." Apparently, people almost always pick three.

If they didn't, you were supposed to make a joke (their HILARIOUS suggestion: "You're absolutely right!" Bwa-ha-ha-ha!) and move quickly on to the next trick.

Ever since I read that, though... When I watch the mind game magicians, I notice how much they chatterchatterchatter. I wonder how much of that is actually cover for a screwed-up trick or a lousy guess. I wonder how many tricks are just more sophisticated versions of playing the odds.

Also, I once had my head "cut off" with a guillotine at a Medievel Times. Even though I was right there, I couldn't figure it out. If anyone knows how that one works, I'd love to know.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2000


I think what Cory is thinking of is the kinda stuff David Blaine has done on his TV specials. Have you seen those? I know its TV and he controls what the viewer at home sees, but he does all those tricks with people on the street that don't seem to be playing along.

There are two tricks he does that have made me want to believe in magic again. One is the levitation thing. The other is this mind-reading deal. He gets someone to take a notepad and walk away, like, 20-30 feet. Then they write a name on the pad of someone close to them, keeping the pad hidden. They tear off the sheet of paper and fold it up very tiny, leaving the pad and pen on the ground so David doesn't see it. Then they come back, he looks deep into their eyes and lights the paper on fire. He puts out the paper on his arm or stomach, and when he lifts the sleeve or his shirt the mystery person's name is written in ash on his body. Goosebumps like crazy every time I've seen this. I have no idea how he does it though.

Wishing I could be more helpful...

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2000



David Blaine creeps the fuck out of me. I saw him do the paper name trick you described, but he didn't light it on fire. He ate it or pressed his hand to his chest or something like that. But sure enough, there was the name on his chest. The girl he was doing it to freaked out and he looked into her eyes and said "He will always be wtih you." And walked away. The camera showed the girl sobbing and saying that the name was her best friend who had died recently or something like that.

The other thing I saw him do was go up to this little girl and her mother, write down some numbers on a notepad, and then look into the girl's eyes and ask her to tell him the numbers. She rattled off the numbers on the notepad, and when the cameraman asked her how she knew, she said "He told me with his eyes."

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2000


The story of Clever Hans may be instructive. CH was a horse that apparently could do arithmetic, read, and spell. He communicated by tapping his hoof: if, for example, someone asked him "What is 2 + 2?" he would tap four times.

Oskar Pfungst studied CH's behavior and conducted a number of experiments. He concluded that CH was responding to cues from whoever was asking the question. After a human asked CH a question, the human would tense up while waiting for the answer; after CH had delivered the last tap, the human relaxed. By noticing these subtle signs of tension and relaxation, CH knew when to start and stop tapping his hoof.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2000


There's a quite interesting book by Michael Shermer called Why People Believe Weird Things that has a section on this - he talks about how mentalists get cues from the people without them noticing, and start with big vague generalities ("I see a woman standing behind you...") and narrow down to specifics based on the person's responses. Very much worth reading. In fact, I'd love to see the section in it on logic become a required course, so I could stop listening to people say things like, "Well, we don't know what it is, so it must be aliens/psychic powers/magic/pick-your-weird-thing..."
Another fabulous site for logic (sorry, I know this is OT but thought y'all might be interested anyway) is the Skeptical Inquirer's Field Guide to Critical Thinking.
Joanne



-- Anonymous, July 14, 2000

I, too, read the Shermer book, and I thought it was really interesting that he said he had no doubt that many mentalists really do think that they're psychic.

These people have a gift--not a gift for "reading people's minds" per se, but rather for picking up on subtle cues in speech and body language which enable them to draw conclusions about a person's character. In other words, some of these mentalists don't even realize how they're doing it!

-- Anonymous, July 14, 2000


I'm sort of ashamed to answer this question, because to do it I have to admit that I watched a Fox special. The David Blaine trick with the paper? What you don't see (according to Fox, who rank right below the pope in infallibility...) is that he actually has them write it twice. He tells them to write the name, walks away, comes back, asks them if they wrote it or printed it. Whichever they say, he says "Oh, you were supposed to do the other", rips up their paper, drops the pieces and gives them a new one. Then he walks away and they write again, and when he comes back he burns it/eats it, and it appears on his body. The trick is he told them to write in the center of the paper, so when he folds and tears the "wrong" one, he just palms the corner (which was the center) then he can write the name on his arm or whatever while he's down the street. It's kind of cheeting, because the TV audience doesn't see the first step, but it's still a neat trick.

Don't know about the number guessing thing, though.

-- Anonymous, July 14, 2000



I've seen, (Penn & Teller?) do something with a notepad. I think the idea was, even though the paper is gone, the impression is carried through. So, it can be retraced if the pad comes back into the hands of its owner. (perhaps they add a very pressure sensitive material into the pad, I don't know)

However, it didn't explain the versions I've seen without paper -- which involve making a correct guess, or finding a hidden object that someone has not written down. In these cases, I suspected a skill rather than an outright trick. I know magicians, like Houdini for instance, spent hundreds (or thousands) of hours in developing skills derived from studying locks, or swallowing and regurgitating keys and so forth, though he also used devices designed as outright tricks.

-- Anonymous, July 14, 2000


I'm a sucker for a dumbass trick. One of my favorites is a silly force where you have let's say five cards sitting face down on a table. You ask your other dumbass trick sucker to pick two of the cards. If the card you want them to pick was one of them, then those are now the two cards you've narrowed it down to. If it wasn't one of them, you eliminate those two cards. Basically you keep doing that until theirs is the only card left.
But my all-time favorite dumbass trick has to be the one where you hold up the deck so that it's spread out facing you and ask them to pick a card.
Crap, I hope the Magic Castle doesn't send Siegfried & Roy after me or anything.

-- Anonymous, July 15, 2000

I believe the "What is this object?" trick is done with patter -- the magician's assistant gives clues to the magician with what s/he says.

A good source for much magical stuff is "Abracadabra! : Secret Methods Magicians & Others Use to Deceive Their Audience" by Nathaniel Schiffman.

-- Anonymous, July 17, 2000


Re: The question on levitation and how it's done... I just saw a cheesy TLC special starring Some Guy Whose Name I Can't Remember and Gabrielle Carteris (of 90210 "Andrea Zuckerman" fame). The levitation trick is pretty interesting. The board is originally supported by two chairs. What the audience doesn't see is that there are two people behind the stage who are holding a steel bar that is shaped sort of like it has slots (hard to describe in print - sort of like a windy crowbar type of thing). While the magician is busily preparing the levitee, the stagehands put the short end of the steel bar into a slot that is on the back side of the board (away from audience), and the magician helps out, snaps the bar into place, and prettily arranges the levitee's skirts and such. The magician then takes the chair away, transferring the weight entirely onto the two stagehands holding the bar attached to the board (imagine a large frying pan). He takes a hula hoop (or any type of hoop), and weaves it around the levitee and the board. The windy part of the steel bar that is on the opposite side of the audience allows the magician to give the illusion that s/he is weaving it around the levitee, but in reality, s/he is weaving it around the steel bar that has lots of slots in good positions. Magician says whatever magicians say, and then prop the chairs or whatever back underneath the board, stage hands remove steel bar to the safety of backstage, and then levitee bows and dances. Damn, I really wish I had a website to point you to, as this is rather hectic. It was a decent show. The one after it was Judd Nelson being totally cheesy showing casino card tricks and "psychic surgery". Now I'm trying to remember whether or not I'd seen magicians do the levitation without a person on a board. I seem to recall David Copperfield doing it, but I just can't get my synapses firing this evening. Damn Damn. Cheers, Lis
Blue Letters

-- Anonymous, July 18, 2000

I remember Copperfield levitating himself over the Grand Canyon once. It was kind of exemplary of the problem with Copperfield's big tricks in general. He sets the whole thing to music and puts so much flash into it that it loses all context of reality. and it's much harder to be amazed with it as a feat of magic. It just seems like special effects. Ooh. He's flying. Go fig.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2000


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