talkmagic.co.uk

the title may sound confusing so let me explain a little more now

ive come across a lovley little effect of a 3 coin prediction - predicting the side of which the coins land on heads/tails from 3 different spectators using their very own coins ( each spectator taking out a coin from their own pocket )

so, i thought it would be a great kicker for the end of this effect to then reveal that i also knew the value of all the random coins added up ie to £1:70 for eg, or the coins that were freely chosen for eg a pound coin , and two 50p's or a 2pound coin / a 10 pence piece and a 20 pence piece.
i hope that makes sense.

i have a pile of random coins out in front of me now to try and workout if theres some kind of mathematical principle for the adding up of the certain coins , or maybe i could verbally force certain coins such as saying

"each take a coin from your pocket, preferbably a silver coin, that would work great for this "

so thats my problem, i was just wondering if there is any theory for this to work or if anything has been done like this before,

thanks for reading

You could make it easier on yourself by NWing a prediction, or making a custom ID from blank cards.

Coins regularly used in the UK are £2, £1, 50p, 20p, 10p, 5p, 2p, 1p. If you choose three coins from that selection, allowing for duplications, there are an awful lot of possible outcomes (although there are a few duplicate totals in those combinations). In the USA, this effect might be be feasible, as they only have four coins in regular use. Then again, that makes it less impressive, doesn't it?

Tomo has made an excellent, and practical, suggestion for one way of doing this.

If you try to go down the route of limiting choices, you will have to be very careful not to make it clear what you are doing.

I thought I had a way forward on this, but it wasn't quite the brilliant notion I initially thought I had come up with. There is a kernel of a good idea there, though and I'll post again (possibly in the secrets area) if I can make something workable out of it.

There are 120 ways of arranging a choice of 3 coins (allowing repeated coins) from the set of 8 (1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p, £1, £2). The summations give only a few repetitions (12p, 22p 30p, 60p, £1.02, £1.10, £1.20, £2.02, £2.10, £2.20, £3), you actually get 109 different totals from 3p up to £6. Listed below (in pence), all occur once other than the repetitions listed above which all come out only twice

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I'd go with nail writing it

A writer was going to be my suggestion too

Or a huge wallet with an amazing indexing system!

Thank you everyone for your input, haha I was trying to kid myself into hoping there was a miricle method to accomplish this, but it looks as though if I wanted to go ahead with this add on for the effect then the NWrighter would be the way to go .

I agree - nail write it, but just for the sake of the exercise, what if you always pick the first coin?
Plus you could probably also influence their choice for the second and third one, first ask them to pick a shiny coin (they probably take a silver one), then ask them to take another coin, but to make it something that looks completely different to the shiny one (they take a bronze coin).
You always take £1, and they then take 2 opposite looking coins, that should leave you with fewer outs.
Of course with more verbal ploys you could probably limit it even more, by talking about shape etc.

That all said... go with the nail writer!

Nail writing would work best for sure, but how about this as an alternative?

You say you are going to have them toss the coins, so to me it would seem quite natural to say: "Don't use a penny or a 5p, they're a bit small and fiddly to catch. And can you make sure you each have a different coin, variety is the spice of life after all."

According to my (possibly faulty) calculations, that reduces the number of possible totals to 20 (which would be possible to index in a wallet or pocket).

If you eliminate the 20p as well, that number drops to 13, but you also risk it becoming a bit more transparent.

Just a thought.

Ooooo excellent idea matcult.

Of course, remembering which part of your index holds the £2.52 billet and which holds £2.60 would be the real tricky part. I think secret writing is probably the best solution - it allows complete freedom.

Another possibility, and not knowing the method for the first prediction, I'm not sure how practical it is with the method your using for the Heads/Tails phase, would be to go o**-a***d. I'll PM you.