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landmark Inner circle within a triangle 5194 Posts |
On Chris Wasshuber's otherwise excellent website Lybrary.com, he offers to sell the secret of the Knight's Tour with the difficult condition of the spectator choosing the beginning and ending square.
"In order to protect the secret, performance and your investment I will sell my knight-tour only to one person per state in the US, and to one person per country in the rest of the world. You will have to prove residence in the respective state or country before purchasing. The price of this secret is $10,000 (USD). The reason for such unusual high price tag is the uniquness of the secret and the protection of performance space. You will be the only one in your state or country to possess this secret. It will also deter the merely curious. This is meant for professionals who want to structure a unique performance around it. The knight-tour effect plays extremely strong one-on-one as well as in front of the largest audiences." Umm . . . Be A Genius. For free. 'Nuff said. You can now donate that $10,000 you were going to spend to your favorite charity. Jack Shalom
Click here to get Gerald Deutsch's Perverse Magic: The First Sixteen Years
All proceeds to Open Heart Magic charity. |
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Scott Cram Inner circle 2678 Posts |
$10,000?!?[outdated link]
To save readers of this thread a little web-searcing, Jack is referring to the section of my website that talks about doing the knight's tour, with the spectator choosing the beginning and ending squares. Roget, of thesaurus fame, also has an improvement on the "diamonds and squares" methods, and this can be found at Squares, Diamonds, and Roget's Method. I'm still shaking my head. $10,000?!?[outdated link] Update: I just e-mailed Chris and notified him of my website and its contents. I inform you of any response. |
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magicgeorge Inner circle Belfast 4299 Posts |
That's crazy .I didn't realise it was worth so much I'll have to add it to my kids show
Maybe one person per state will fall for this ruse. On the other hand, although the start square only version is in a few of the magic books I own and often also known by none magii chess players Scott's site is the only place I've ever seen start and end square method. Did you work it out yourself Scott? (and if so did you ,or did you need to, patent it in time?).If not where did you originally source the information? |
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Scott Cram Inner circle 2678 Posts |
I didn't work it out myself. A buddy and I both learned it at the same time from an old math puzzle book (from the 1940's) back in the late '80s/early '90s, and I've been using it ever since.
After I'd posted it to the web, someone else e-mailed me and pointed out that the same method could be found in Pallbearer's Review, a magic magazine from the 1960s and 1970s. The method itself, as described in the Squares, Diamonds, and Roget's Method link, comes from the 1820s or 1830s, with several sources publishing it. With Chris' permission, here's his reply: Quote:
I am aware of your site but feel that you are not explaining a system that can be used on stage under fire and blindfolded. I know mine can, because I have done it many times in the past. I would have to go into the details of my system to show you where I think it is far superior than what I have seen on your site or anywhere else. Of course there is always the chance that I am not aware of all sites or publications that deal with these kind of knight-tours. I must admit to being intrigued now. I won't have $10,000 to spare for some time, but I'm intrigued nonetheless. |
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balducci Loyal user Canada 227 Posts |
Are we talking about the same Knight's Tour presented in the widely available "13 Steps to mentalism" by Corinda (circa 1968), or am I missing something here?
$10,000 ... wow! Whoops, I see we're talking about a version that permits a spectator to select the starting and ending squares ... okay, maybe that's a little trickier than the version in Corinda.
Make America Great Again! - Trump in 2020 ... "We're a capitalistic society. I go into business, I don't make it, I go bankrupt. They're not going to bail me out. I've been on welfare and food stamps. Did anyone help me? No." - Craig T. Nelson, actor.
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Reg Rozee Special user Vancouver, Canada 592 Posts |
There is a presentation of it in Tarbell that allows you to start on any square selected (not sure about ending though). There is even a note on how you can present it under certain conditions without memorizing any system or order. I'll dig out the volume and page number if anyone is really interested.
-Reg {*}
Reality is what doesn't go away when you stop believing in it. -Phillip K. Dick
Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? -Chico Marx |
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JasonEngland V.I.P. Las Vegas, NV 1728 Posts |
I'm curious, does anyone know how many different possible "Knight's Tour" paths there are? Consider mirror images to be a single path.
Jason
Eternal damnation awaits anyone who questions God's unconditional love. --Bill Hicks
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Scott Cram Inner circle 2678 Posts |
The number of knight's tours that are possible on a normal chessboard is surprisingly big. Actually it is so big that simple counting of tours is out of reach even for the fast computers of today. The problem has to be tackled in other ways. In 1995 Martin Löbbing and Ingo Wegener proclaimed that "the number of knight's tours equals 33,439,123,484,294" (that's in the trillions!). They obtained this result by running 20 Sun workstations for four months.
I'm not sure how to adjust for your "mirror images" qualification, because a mirrored knight's tour would, by definition, have a different starting and ending point, and thus technically be a different Knight's Tour path. In addition, there can be mirror image paths along both the X and Y axis of the board, so you'd actually be considering four different Knight's Tours, each with a different starting and ending point, as one path. |
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JasonEngland V.I.P. Las Vegas, NV 1728 Posts |
That's very interesting Scott.
What I meant by "mirror images" is simply this: Consider that it is possible to produce a path from one white corner square to near the other (from A8 to H2). Now, it is possible to create an identical "mirror image" path from A2 to H8. I would count these as essentially the same path. A related question: How many paths would you have to memorize to tackle the Knight's Tour from any square to another specified square with brute force memory? Again, mirror images and working backwards (the path from C1 to C8 is the same as from C8 to C1) allows you to eliminate duplicate paths, but how many would you need? Jason
Eternal damnation awaits anyone who questions God's unconditional love. --Bill Hicks
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matthu Regular user UK 170 Posts |
I suppose the big question is: how much would any member of the audience be prepared to pay to witness somebody doing this amazing feat?
Somebody tell me this is a wind-up! I've been a pretty serious chess player at one stage, but I think that would even bore the pants off me. A LOT of people don't even understand how to play chess ... so in my humble opinion, I can't see this trick being worth more than $3-50! It must rank alongside watching somebody compose a crossword puzzle with a dozen pre-selected words. |
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landmark Inner circle within a triangle 5194 Posts |
<<It must rank alongside watching somebody compose a crossword puzzle with a dozen pre-selected words>>
Ahhh, I only charge five thousand for that secret. Jack
Click here to get Gerald Deutsch's Perverse Magic: The First Sixteen Years
All proceeds to Open Heart Magic charity. |
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Scott Cram Inner circle 2678 Posts |
Quote:
On 2004-03-09 15:34, matthu wrote: Ask Peter Reveen. His performance of the Knight's Tour has been one of the most talked-about portions of his show for decades. By the way, the original Knight's Tour offer has been removed from the Lybrary.com site. |
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Bill Palmer Eternal Order Only Jonathan Townsend has more than 24312 Posts |
I saw a video of Peter Reveen doing the Knight's Tour. I wasn't nearly as impressed by his presentation as I was by the presentation I saw Virgil and Julie do "live" at the College of the Mainland in LaPorte, Texas. Maybe what I saw Reveen doing was an earlier version of what he wound up doing.
When Julie did it, it appeared as if she were actually thinking about where the pieces went. I didn't get that from the Reveen presentation.
"The Swatter"
Founder of CODBAMMC My Chickasaw name is "Throws Money at Cups." www.cupsandballsmuseum.com |
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H_Ho New user 76 Posts |
How about a knights tour on only half the board? i.e. a 4 by 8 board?
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landmark Inner circle within a triangle 5194 Posts |
Once again, for that, I only charge half the price.
Jack
Click here to get Gerald Deutsch's Perverse Magic: The First Sixteen Years
All proceeds to Open Heart Magic charity. |
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Liam Jones Veteran user 384 Posts |
Why so expensive and what is the effect?
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matthu Regular user UK 170 Posts |
Liam
Unless you have a ready $10 k, I suggest you visit Scott Cramm's beagenius site - see the site reference in his earlier post! |
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ThorstenHappel Loyal user Düsseldorf / New York, NY 203 Posts |
Quote:
On 2004-03-09 15:34, matthu wrote: The presentation of a blindfolded Knight's Tour is a standard in German magician/mentalist Andy Häussler's professional show for years. The audience freely selects the starting point. A little over halfway into the routine, Andy "predicts" the final field. Having seen his performance several times, I can tell you that his audience is always amazed and far from bored. Would he keep an effect in his program for years that fails to amaze his audience? I don't think so. Andy has won several awards for his magic. He has been German champion in 1987, 1990, and 1999. At the FISM world championship 1991 in Lausanne he won the award for best mentalist. He is a boardmember of the German Magic Cicle ("Magischer Zirkel von Deutschland e. V.").
Thorsten
----------------------------------------- "If this be magic, let it be an art ..." -- William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale, Act 5, Scene 3 |
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owen.daniel Inner circle England 1048 Posts |
It's an amazing effect, but I too agree with the price being a bit steep. But good for you, if you have something, you sell it how you want to! I haven't seen Raveen do this effect, but I remember noticing in the "Best Show I have Seen" review of his show (in MAGIC last year), a picture of him performing it and thinking it was strange to see it being performed on stage as I had previously presumed it was more of a close-up effect. Since then I have re-read the Corinda version, and I can see how that would play for a large audience.
Have you sold any yet? Good luck, owen |
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Greg Owen Special user 623 Posts |
The ridiculously simple method in Corinda seems more than servicable...and does allow for the free choice of the starting square. Then ending square would be known to the performer immediately and could be called at the most theatrically strong moment.
Also no reason it could not be done blindfolded. - Greg Owen
Author of The Alpha Stack ebook - the balanced memorized stack
gobeatty@yahoo.com |
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