My math might be off but there's at least a 25% chance that is exactly what will happen.

The implication is that it would happen 100% of the time. Actually I'm not sure it's an implication. I think it's more of a statement as fact.

Depending on how good you are at presenting e********, your odds are substantially higher than 25%, and can in fact reach above the 75% range.

While the subtleties in the handling of e******** have definitely improved over the years, there's a reason why the original color books were primarily aimed at the underground. Heck, this was before the rapid commercialization of mentalism, when it was still a branch of magic had yet to be routinely performed by birthday party clowns.

Philemon, I understand and fully agree with your post. My point however was the published statement of the effect, and how it relates in general to other published statements of effects we read. And yes, my disappointment that such an description was used in such an extremely 'closed' publication.

I would greedily welcome references to more recent publications about how to apply e* than I've mentioned. To me it's like learning to play poker; it's not just the rules, it's how things unfold. Fascinating to learn and practice.

In the past week as I've been reviewing the previously mentioned studies I found myself wondering, how could something so ephemeral, something which requires so much skill, have such a limited body of published knowledge? Is it that there's little more to be published? Is it that the best of the best are (understandably) keeping information among themselves? I.e. how is it that the hop from "give me a number..." to "you selected the triangle" is like the leap from the monkey to the human, is how it seems to be in magic.

Regarding "the rapid commercialization of mentalism", I admit I'm curious as to what the current perception of that time period is. I'm not fishing or teasing, just genuinely curious. I do recall thinking at some point that the rapidly increasing levels of technology in general seemed to be slowly making mentalism seem to be the one branch of magic which would be last to be crushed under the boot of mediocrity. Color changes. Remote viewing. Penetrations, changes in matter, all seemed to be encroached upon as various scientific principles became more common to the average person. I'm not sure when that occurred to me. I'd have to check the dates of books in my library to see when some of them were bought and/or published.