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Lulu indicated 7 days when I ordered mine but it arrived well under that timescale.

Mandrake wrote:Lulu indicated 7 days when I ordered mine but it arrived well under that timescale.

Just ordered mine - not quite sure why it's taken me so long?! I suddenly thought to myself today "Crikey - I never got Jon's book!" So I have just rectified that.

Good to hear it takes a short time to arrive from Lulu. Can't wait.

I seem to spend my every waking moment waiting for the postie to arrive. I'm still waiting for my Higley's All-Seeing Eye to arrive 3 weeks after ordering, and every time I hear a van parking near-by I jump up and look out of the window hoping to see a delivery van.

themagicwand wrote:I seem to spend my every waking moment waiting for the postie to arrive...every time I hear a van parking near-by I jump up and look out of the window hoping to see a delivery van.

Not just me then. During the height of my CUPS I'm sure my postie thought I fancied him or something; every time he arrived at my door I'd be standing there, waiting for him with a big grin on my face. Poor guy.

My postie is a woman and I do fancy her thats why I always order stuff that wont fit through the letter box.

Now Mr Wand I think you shall make excellent work from this book.

My copy just arrived.

Seems I can wave the rest of the day bye bye...

Pete

Me too! It is in front of me right now. Goodbye.

I don't mean to be such a bad influence, it just happens that way.

Okay - so it's wonderful. Read it through in one sitting, and am now buzzing with ideas.

I particularly enjoyed the section on handling hecklers having experienced one such a-hole on Saturday. A guy behind my volunteer was just shouting out random card names and demanding that he should be paid my fee much to everyone's annoyance, so Tomo's experience tickled me.

The book test is of course the (current) pinnacle of the naked theory - but I seem to have discovered a weird anomoly (sp). I picked out 3 books of my own at random - one a Philip Pullman book, one was Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and one was Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines. The Hitchhikers Guide and Mortal Engines worked a treat, but the Philip Pullman book was scoring hits at a much lower frequency. I checked against other Pullman books to find the same oddity. Now I'm sure it's just me or bad luck, but has anyone else (Tomo?) noticed that certain authors score lower or higher than the expected - for whatever reason???

The information regarding the coin prediction is also priceless.

I'm thinking initially of using the naked principles as a kind of warm up for my routines, as in "we'll just do a few things to get me warmed up and get us all thinking on the same wavelength". Beginning the test early as Tomo says.

All very good and very exciting. I was supposed to be working on a new routine for the coming weekend, but that will have to wait. I'm far too busy running around naked.

PS Wasn't sure if it was safe to mention book tests, what with all the hoo-haa with that Spanish bloke.

Also as an aside - it would be nice to get some statistics on the cards chosen freely by laypeople. I think that those of us who take magic seriously will know what perhaps the top 5 or 6 would be, but it would be nice to find or conduct some serious research.

themagicwand wrote:Also as an aside - it would be nice to get some statistics on the cards chosen freely by laypeople. I think that those of us who take magic seriously will know what perhaps the top 5 or 6 would be, but it would be nice to find or conduct some serious research.

Excellent idea.

It might also be useful to find out what cards magicians name. For interest, if nothing else!

Part-Timer wrote:

themagicwand wrote:Also as an aside - it would be nice to get some statistics on the cards chosen freely by laypeople. I think that those of us who take magic seriously will know what perhaps the top 5 or 6 would be, but it would be nice to find or conduct some serious research.

Excellent idea.

It might also be useful to find out what cards magicians name. For interest, if nothing else!

queen of hearts > seven of diamonds > ace of spades

DrTodd wrote:
queen of hearts > seven of diamonds > ace of spades

Ooh, you see I find that my top 3 would be all hearts. Queen, seven, and ace.

It surprised me when I first started in the whole "pick a card business" that the ace of spades was nowhere near as popular as one would imagine.

Working out which card a spec has chosen is a lot easier for women as they would generally go for a heart (for whatever reason) - although I have worked at events (usually swanky nouveau riche weddings) where all the gals have gone for diamonds. That obviously speaks volumes.

For the gals, my experience says that 50% of women when asked to make a totally independent choice would pick the queen hearts. It's a huge percentage I know, but honestly, try it and see. Of the remaining 50%, half would choose a different heart card (7, ace). The remaining 25% tend to be all over the shop, although ace of diamonds, queen of diamonds would feature heavily.

For blokes it's a lot more difficult - the cards chosen tend to be spread widely across all four suits with no rhyme or reason - although of course the ace of spades would probably come out as favourite but to no huge degree.

It would be interesting to see if the choices vary geopraphically at all, or age wise.

Interesting stuff.

I think we need a controlled experiment and generate seom FSGs for this. I may be able to set something up at the Uni, but the cross section of the population would not be ideal.

DrTodd wrote:I think we need a controlled experiment and generate seom FSGs for this. I may be able to set something up at the Uni, but the cross section of the population would not be ideal.

I have a funny feeling I've seen a list of the most commonly selected cards online somewhere. It may have been a dream, though, which would be a shame.

Whenever I do my ID routine, I always ask people not to think of an obvious card like the Queen of Hearts or the Ace of Spades. Quite a few people admit they were thinking of one of those.

it's in seventh heaven i think, card, and positional percentages...