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The Effect

Paul Voodini’s classic routine ‘Psychic Cluedo’ is one of the greatest for psychic parties, after-dinner mentalism and is a regular in my own Murder Mystery events. The only downside is that the necessary cards can be very difficult to source and then gaff. So we did all the hard work and created them for you!

A murderer, weapon and location are selected by a volunteer, known to nobody else. Or are they? This is a first class piece of mentalism from the author of Reader of Minds and Midnight Side of The Mind. With Psychic Cluedo you will not only know the secret information selected by a volunteer instantly, you’ll also be able to predict a killer’s choices.

All this with props that are so innocent your audience will never suspect them!

Cost

£22.99

Difficulty 2
(1=easy to do, 2=No sleights, but not so easy, 3=Some sleights used,
4=Advanced sleights used, 5=Suitable for experienced magicians only)

Review

I have recently been gathering together a number of murder themed routines which I will also review in due course but I would like to start with Psychic Cluedo by Paul Voodini.

This effect arrives, supplied with a set of Cluedo cards, a pad of detective notes and a booklet detailing four different routines that could be performed with the cards.

Firstly I'd like to take a look at the cards themselves. They're well produced and of a very good quality. The designs are very professional although there is one thing which irritates me and could raise the suspicion of a seasoned Cluedo player, the type of card, be it a weapon, character or location is clearly printed on the back, something which would never work with genuine cards. Still, I'm sure that's just a small point and in the four times I've used these cards it's not been commented on.

The marking of the cards is very clever and well hidden, I looked for the markings before reading the instructions and couldn't find anything. Having said that, once you know they're there, the markings are easy to read. The reading is made easier by the inclusion of a crib sheet which is cleverly integrated into the performance itself.

The routines detailed in the booklet are really just variations on the same but they're easy to perform and have played out very well indeed with the audiences that I've performed this for.

Overall

Overall this is a very well produced product and good routine. A little thought and I think that there could be many things that could be done with these cards above and beyond that which is described in the booklet. One other fact that I've not mentioned but has interested me is that the cards backs are also a one way design which I'm sure could be used for a nefarious purpose or two.

Thanks very much for the review Dr P, I'm glad you like it.

A couple of points worth mentioning, mainly the 'labelling' of the cards. I've been performing Psychic Cluedo - using regular cards which I've self-marked - for some time and I've had to mark them twice, once for the type of card (location, weapon, character) and then again for the value. For my liking, this is one marking too many. When I take my 'peek' I want it to be as minimal as possible, the extra marking means extra 'eye-on-target' time, however brief. Thankfully, there are a number of editions of Cluedo that carry the same labelling - I doubt I'd have thought of something so simple if I'd not seen it for myself to be honest. I've been using these cards for almost 6 months now and like you, it's never been commented upon, though if it ever were I can happily say that some editions do, the Harry Potter Cluedo being one of them (which is where I saw it!).

You're absolutely right in that there's a lot more that can be done with these than outlined in the booklet, they can give old card tricks new life - one customer emailed me last week to tell me she'd been sat with her Psychic Cluedo cards and Fulves and had quickly 'created' a handful of new effects.

I'll occasionally demo these in my regular magic shop, a very simple effect of having the spec create a fictional murder, having them select a location, victim and weapon. You can then spend a good few minutes on a mind-reading reveal, describing the elements of the murder in great detail. The more you play that, the more the spec forgets there have been cards in play.

I bought this for a specific performance I'd been booked for, which came round last night.

I was stressing that I'd not be able to read the marks, and think I spent to long "looking thoughtful" to be honest, but I'm expecting that's not something the audience would say. I used a pendulum to find the cards (some phases face up due to my script) and it went down an absolute storm.

Bringing the cards out of a box with some pencils, the pads and some dice in a "what shall we use, oh hey!" kinda way diverted any attention from these not being part of a normal Cluedo set.