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Please note: This post has nothing to do with 'real' mentalism as the effect mentioned 'just' uses deceptions rather than any form of reading.

I'm working on a little effect where I play "human lie detector". I deal a few cards to each of the specs and then ask them a "calibration" question (to which they must give a false answer) about their cards. I then ask them another question about their cards and tell them if they are lying to me or not.

1. Am I reinventing the wheel here? Has someone already got a (probably stronger) version of this type of thing published already?

2. Assuming I stick with my version for now can anyone help me come up with an entertaining way of pointing the liars out? Just pointing across a table and calling someone a lying bedstead might not be deemed as entertainment

Maybe a little (relevant) flourish with a single card or the remainder of the deck when a lie is detected?

yes there are a few effects like this.

There are quite a few lie detection routines, even in the few books I have.

However, I'd like to see a routine which has the rest of the pack determining the status of the statement. ie.

1. Spek makes statement
2. Madge deals a card face up
3. Black for lie, Red for truth
4. GOTO 1

That sounds like a smashing presentation to me.

if you fancied a change, well, buy yourself a pendulum and a book or two...you can play at lie detection for real instead...

Marvell:
Your presentation could easily be acheived with a slight hack to your code (and the right sort of deck )

1. Spek makes statement
* 2. Madge riffles thru face down pack, stops at a "random" card and reveals it
3. Black for lie, Red for truth
4. GOTO 1

This would be no good for a mentalist's ego though, the deck gets all the glory!

Abraxus:
I'm not sure if I should be intrigued or scared by your post.. I might spend some time playing with a pendulum tonight though - see what darkness rises.

All:
Any clues to which books I should be buying?[/i][/b]

abraxus wrote:if you fancied a change, well, buy yourself a pendulum and a book or two...you can play at lie detection for real instead...

I have the keith Hart pendulim , I think would work very well for this.

i use the a 'human lie detector' to reveal a picked out card, mine is total bull, i feel the pulse of the spec that picked a card, and, already knowing the card, i go through a routine, in which they believe that they told me the card! always gets good reactions, and i barely even touch the deck!

I like the pulse rate idea Ghurka - cheers.

I'll save this for the ladies though, don't want to hold hands with the fellas do I?

At the moment I do it all by (supposedly) "reading" facial expressions and occassionally I get accused of seeing the cards reflecting in the specs eyes! I suppose I should tell them to never play me at poker then with a skill like that

It'll be good to switch to another method which doesn't involve staring at the spec. I suppose I could look away and listen for stress patterns in the specs voice too.

i believe banachek has a similar routine

richard webster has a pendulum book available...its all tied in with muscle reading and so on...very interesting ideas and tests you can perform solo or more...

a nice and simple one is to ask someone to hide a coin in either hand, and ask the pendulum as you hold it "does this hand contain the coin?" and wait....it takes practice and belief, but it does work...

I've done a similar routine before. Force a card, patter about how the pulse rate increases & pupils dilate when you lie, hold the attractive girl's pulse & stare into her eyes whilst asking a series of questions about the card and eventually reveal it. Great excuse for looking deeply into an attractive girl's eyes

you could use eye accessing cues common in NLP (do a google search) to assist you. Whilst not 100% accurate, when used in conjunction with say, a marked deck or a key card, you can learn when a person is lying firstly by knowing what card they have and seeing how they are accessing the memory (if telling the truth) or creating an image (if lying). Once you are comfotable that they are consistant with their accessing cues you can put the deck away and really go to town just using the cues to tell you if they are remembering or making stuff up.

sorry, just re-read your original post and was a little off topic with my tip.

No worries Strep. Old threads don't die they just go off..

..topic.


As I said the method I use is out and out "trick" although I do suggest to the specs I'm using more psychological methods. I always drop in a buzz-word or two such as "I'm calibrating to your eye accessing cues" - this gives them something to Google when they get home thinking "How the hell did he do that?" and hopefully keeps them off the scent of how I'm really doing it.

Having said that I always people-watch and have seen correlation between a specs physical behaviour and the validity of their answers.