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that you know you definitely wouldn't perform, it wouldn't suit your style and it's way too expensive, yet you desperately crave to know how it works?

Every time I see a card effect I go about working out a way of achieving the same effect, if not the same method but I'm talking either illusion or gimmick wise.

I would love to know the secret of the Mona Lisa puzzle illusion, of course I can think of a sort of way of doing it, but I know it's not the real method.

Also, Derren's Lottery Number effect he did relatively recently. Perhaps if I delved further into the realms of Mentalism etc I could work out how it's done, but at the moment, I have no clue!


Finally, are there any effects that you see right through, yet everybody else seems to just rub their heads in bafflement?

For example, and I don't want this to turn into my just ranting on Brown, but his effect on Jonathan Ross and his wife with the two decks, both blindly turning one card over, they are both the same..the freely mentally selected card...I worked out a method of achieving the same thing within about 5 minutes of watching it, yet a lot of people haven't a clue!

I don't want this to turn into a "I'm clever, I worked it out" kind of thread, but I would be genuinely interested in what makes your brain tick...and then fail or succeed where others find the opposite!

All i know Lenoir, is that I'm bloody brilliant.

I know how a lot of Lennart Green's stuff is done. However, i still can't do it. Other than that - i use the things i don't know as the spur to make me come up with my own effects that are "better".

I liked the Derren Brown ESP effect on his dvd. So i went away and came up with something that i feel trumps it. A double pack of esp cards, mixed face up and down. They are placed in coloured envelopes (free choice of card and envelope). I place a black envelope down first, they put a coloured envelope on top of mine. Blah blah, and for good measure - blah. And they have picked out 5 symbols that match mine.

However, there's are black. Its only when we reveal the symbols in my black envelopes that we see that the coloured shapes that i chose, match the coloured envelopes they freely picked too.

I have been drinking, so that was rather long winded.

I love a lot of Derren Brown effects, not because i can see through most of them, but because of the presentation. I'm not too fussed about method personally. That's secondary to the presentation.

Lenoir wrote:Finally, are there any effects that you see right through, yet everybody else seems to just rub their heads in bafflement?

Not a whole effect, but I did have a smug moment watching Max Maven's "Nothing" DVD and knowing what he did at one small point -- which had Eugene Burger baffled! Now that was a "whoo-hoo" moment.

at the moment im refining my take on Dunbury Delusion.

theres a video of it on the BBM site, so i bought the dvd and its not on there. checked back and its not listed on the contents so must've misread it.

i know i could prob google / youtube how to do it but i thought i'd have a go myself.

ps

i cant work out the Brown Ross's trick!, havent really been trying hard but nothing jumps out at me.

I'd forgotten about the Brown Ross trick; learnt a lovely principle elsewhere; now realise how the BR trick was done. There's a very shakey aspect to how this works that has never been questioned when I've done similar for people (yes, it's easy enough for me to do!). That said (and on reviewing the effect), Brown's presentation does a wonderful job of nipping that possibility in the bud before the spec has even considered it, even without the psychological force.

Similarly, Max Maven's trick with the magazines on Nothing had me baffled, but before I got to that part of the explanation on the disc, I read the method elsewhere.

Shirt Happens I found fantastically obvious. It's hardly changing hands for $200, but anyone who's seen as much gay pr0n as I have ought to see through it instantly.

I think it's the more esoteric principle based stuff that people have a tendancy to see right through or are completely baffled.

What bugs me is when some old and long established idea of magic is hawked as something new and wonderful. It's okay, perhaps, to market things that way to less knowledgeable folk, but if you think you're buying a new method to perform a different effect, then it becomes a rip off.