talkmagic.co.uk

Been inspired by Stan Lees Superhumans, and Im thinking of working on
some human calcuator/sper brain style effects.

Im learnt how to square numbers in my head a la Corinda,
and Ive been doing the Giant memory for a while now.
There are a few things from Scarnes magic tricks that are mathmatics based
and Dai Vernons Cutting the aces has a real superhuman gambler feel to it, while being easy to understand.

What Im struggling with is how to make this kind of thing fun. I know how
to do a Magic Square, but how do I make this entertaining?
Does anyone mind sharing some routines in this vein that they feel work?
Thanks.

You should check out some of Harry Lorayne's work on the subject, I hear it's very good. I'd share my magic square routine, but it's still a WIP at the moment.

I second the idea of checking out Harry Lorayne's work. He brought out a book on mathematical magic a few years ago; that would be a good starting point. The Knight's Tour and The Magic Square, as well as some memory demonstrations, would work.

John Archer has an entertaining version of the square. So did Paul Daniels.

Did Derren Brown close one of his shows with the magic square?
I think it was the 2004 tour but I don't know much about it other than he got a standing ovation

Yeah it was Derren Brown Live. It was a fairly basic presentation if I remember correctly, it was the method that made it strong.

He used a psychic clipboard so it was apparent that he couldn't know the number, let alone the effect of the magic square itself.

My presentation is similar, but a lot cheaper :p.

I'll give you the basic idea if it's of any interest to anyone.

You have a spectator think of a two digit number, write it down and seal it into an envelope which they then hold in one hand visibly for the entire routine.
You introduce a 4x4 square and tell them to place their hand on your shoulder as you begin to write down random numbers, you start in the top left corner and work down, explaining that they are to look at each number and think hot/cold/warm +5, -10 etc depending on how close it is until you reach the bottom right corner which you cover up after writing down and hide the number from them. You ask them yes or no was that the number they were thinking of. Obviously it isn't. When they reply with the no, you take the envelope open it and call out the number. Then you go into the standard presentation of the magic square.

I hope that it looks impossible because by apparently not knowing the number, how is it possible to do the square?

Method: The peek uses the technique from 'Modernized Reading' from PMM (Page 130-131) Obviously I won't expose that here.
Obviously it then uses a miscall when they say No and you open the envelope to check.

Hope that helps, the muscle reading style presentation style works well, but I've stopped using that after Derren's photo effect from ENIGMA.

Nic Castle wrote:Did Derren Brown close one of his shows with the magic square?
I think it was the 2004 tour but I don't know much about it other than he got a standing ovation

Indeed he did. He was, of course, 'one off' and then recovered with the multiple whammy - whoops of delight and standing ovations all over the place .

Have a look at the "Show Reel" on Graham Jolley's website.
His magic square (some of it) is at the end, very entertaining.
Bruce

Thanks guys!

phillipnorthfield wrote:Yeah it was Derren Brown Live. It was a fairly basic presentation if I remember correctly, it was the method that made it strong.

More the other way round, I'd say. He had quite a clever presentation about the sorts of "random" numbers different types of people were drawn to. As I recall (and Mandrake too), he then seemed to get the mind reading thing wrong, only to reveal that he'd created a magic square with the correct answer.

Tony's mentioned the Knight's Tour and that can be very exciting. I remember being impressed by someone doing that on one of Paul Daniels's shows. I wasn't a great chess player (at least partly due to being put off by my father, who was very good), but knew enough to see how tricky it was. Of course, now I know a bit better!

Devin Knight, Lior Manor and Bob Cassidy all have some good ideas on jazzing it up.

phillipnorthfield wrote:Yeah it was Derren Brown Live. It was a fairly basic presentation if I remember correctly, it was the method that made it strong.

He used a psychic clipboard so it was apparent that he couldn't know the number, let alone the effect of the magic square itself.

My presentation is similar, but a lot cheaper :p.

I'll give you the basic idea if it's of any interest to anyone.

I like that presentation a lot, thanks for sharing it.

Rob

a memorised deck and a couple of simple principles and you have yourself a potentially remarkable demonstration of memory.

If you have memorised the deck before hand, do you tell people? Or do you memorise the deck in front of everyone, using mnemonics? I'd imagine that would be time consuming.

Jadoo wrote:If you have memorised the deck before hand, do you tell people? Or do you memorise the deck in front of everyone, using mnemonics? I'd imagine that would be time consuming.

using a stack, you would false shuffle the deck or do a deck switch and pseudo memorize the deck.