talkmagic.co.uk

The Effect
An exciting new approach to an age-old principle.
The divination of a spectator's birthdate.
No sleights, no moves, no reset.
Anytime Anywhere.
Ultra clean handling.
Direct Magic.

Cost
£12 from Merlins Wakefield (http://www.merlinswakefield.com/close-u ... /index.php)

Difficulty
(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)

As it says in the blurb "If you can read this you can do this." - It's a straightforward 1 but with a bit of a caveat, see below.

Review
Anyone who's had a magic set as a kid or even pulled certain Christmas crackers will instantly recognise this one. A set of 5 cards, with numbers in a grid printed on one side. The ones I used to have were tiny and on cheap card. These are nicely laminated and are around the size of an average to large business card. In addition to the 5 number grids, there are also 4 other cards with the names of months on the front. The back of all the cards have patterns of coloured numbers, each card being slightly different.

The instructions are over 9 pages of A4 and are very comprehensive, giving all the details you could possibly need to perform the effect, which has a bit of a twist on the original.

Instead of handing you the cards with just specific numbers on, you now ask the spec to turn those cards over, discarding the rest. So, you're left with cards where you can't actually see the number grids. If you're familiar with the original, you'll know that without them, you can't divine the birthdate. Well, there is a method with these cards that allows you to do just that. Not only that, but you can get the month too. It does all look quite innocent and is a nice deviation from the old series of cards we played with as kids.

The pitch on the first page does mention fortune telling and ties this effect in with astrology or even personality tests. As you continue reading, it becomes apparent that this really could be used in conjunction with some kind of Tarot reading or similar. There are numerous references to using these cards to do a reading and the author has gone into quite a lot of detail as to how you could make this something very personal and quite interesting for someone. Which, I guess would strengthen the effect a great deal. It ceases to look like some kind of maths trick and if played and scripted properly, may seem like much more.

I must confess, when I got this home and opened it, I saw the cards and thought I'd paid £12 for some tat. Now that I've read through the booklet and thought about the extra complexity added, it's growing on me and giving me some ideas.

This effect is pretty much self working and very easy to learn for beginners. BUT...and here's that caveat....How strong it is depends largely on you and how you present it. On it's own, this is NOT going to get you any gasps of admiration or cheers. You really must perform to get the most out of it.

Overall
If you like magic tricks, this will turn you off. If you want a very quick and easy way to get someone's birthday, you can use the cards as with the originals and it is going to be very weak as a result. I'd suggest just using those you got with the Christmas crackers, as they're far cheaper.

If, however, you like mentalism and can string this effect out into a routine and include some kind of "reading" for the spec, I really think you could end up with something quite powerful and interesting.

I'm going to give this a 7/10