Richard,

First and fore most thank you for sharing so much of you knowledge and accumulated wisdom.

I have performed the magazine trest with a great response from the audience. I find it hard, however, to find appropriate pages in most mainstream magazines as they are filled with pictures/adverstisements. Is there a particular magazine that you prefer? How do you deal with this issue? Also, In the DVD series yoiu use the right side of the page, Do you ever use the left side, which seems to have more te3xt on it? I have used National Geographic as they contain much more text than the average magazine.

Thanks for your consideration!

Michael

I add a question to that....how do you manage if the spectator choose the other word, the word you crossed? And what if a spectator choose a word completely different by the two written in the black board?
Is that ever happened to you?

THANKS
Giacomo De Carlo

Giacomo, I can tell you from my perspective what happened when these two occurances happened to me.

1. Spectator chose the other word, the word I'd crossed out. Reaction was just as huge. As far as the audience was concerned, I'd "read the assistant's mind" not once, but twice.

2. I asked to look at the magazine, then noted the word and asked if they'd thought of it before choosing the word they said. Yup, they had.

*jeep!
--Chet

Thanks Chet

An idea came up into my mind....if they choose the word crossed, you can say that you wrote 2 words on the black board, and then cross, like in a test, the right one, the one that spectator has just named! So you are right equally!

Richard, have you ever used that? what do you do when they name the wrong word?

Thanks
Giacomo

OK, first things first.

If you go to a Barnes & Noble or other larger bookstore, even the mag section of Walmarts, you will see an enormous amount of different magazines. Some have a lot more copy than others. Newsweek and Time will work, but there are less good pages in them than a lot of others. Remember, you don't need to have the whole page filled with print, just a lot of it. There have been times when I used a page where the top half was a picture and the bottom was all print.

As for using the left side rather than the right, if you do the card move as I demonstrated, you have to use the right side. If I didn't make it clear enough you can check out the original instructions in the Tarbell course. I think it is in Vol 5 and is a Vernon move.

Finally about the word. You have to make sure the work you want it right in the CENTER of the circle. The word you cross out is a bit out of center. That way, the only word the spectator can say in the one in the middle. If he says the wrong one, I draw an X through the circle (with the center of the X hitting the right word) and say, "Let me bisect the circle so that you can determine what word is in the center." Then they can't go wrong. If they DO, then you have a problem spectator. When that happens I get ANOTHER person from the audience to help and ask them what they think is the word in the middle. To be honest, I only had to resort to this just one time in all the years I have been doing it. When the other person said the right word, then the first person said, "Oh, you mean the word in the MIDDLE of the circle!" See? He just got confused and didn't know what I wanted.

Hope that answers all the questions!

Richard

As far as I am concerned, Yes you did!

Giacomo

Thanks Richard. As I said, I've used National geograpc because it has much text and minimal ads.

Michael

Yes, that's a good one. A lot of the business magazines are also good.

Which pen and pencil set do you use? I have always wanted to perform this routine and could never find the pencil to do this job!

With thanks,
Snail

Tip: if you don't want to use the cross pen and pencil set, and don't want to use a "dead" ballpoint, you can seal a pencil's lead with elmer's glue. The graphite won't make a mark.

Francis Menotti makes a great product called the pointless pencil, comes with a pen as well in the delux version.

Snail,

As you can see from the post below yours, it is a standard Cross pencil. I use the pen and pencil set and it is referred to as the "classic." You can get a cheap set in chrome or pay a lot for silver or gold.

Richard