Did someone say more puzzles??
*insert drooling smiley*

So did I miss it or an update somewhere? Any word on the magazine?

I'm not sure the status of monumentalism, but the last couple times I've gone to the website no products appear on the catalog page. Is the store no longer a thing?

These projects have likely been affected by Peter's decision to take a sabbatical this year. I've kept my ear to the ground for news on The Riddle magazine, but it's been very quiet. If it's meant to be, it'll happen. The hard part is thatthe gguys who were going to run it are already overworked.

C.J - That makes sense

Any word on this site and details?

Sorry, I've only just seen this. Sean, I sent you an email a few weeks back. Have you not received it?

The EU VAT law on digital poducts has changed things for us and we are considering a physical product approach. This has also had an impact on our plans for The Riddle magazine.

Best,

Atlas

Atlas,

Thanks for chiming in. I like the physical product idea, but I'm biased and prefer real books to pdfs. Whatever approach you take I hope it brings you all nothing but success. Please do keep us informed.

Atlas,
Thanks for posting. You did indeed. I just thought some of these issues were still in flux (and not set in stone). Thanks and understood.

Hi all,

Well, including Doctor Jones (which will become a bonus effect in the forthcoming 'Decoherence'), I've written and shared EIGHT books. I have also come to recognize that within mentalism, we all have different personal goals and options that appeal to us. I think as I've written this last book, my own personal specific aims have really solidified in my mind and are hinted at in this extract from 'Decoherence':


While I enjoy spending time with magicians, I recognize that I think very differently to them, which leaves me as the odd man out in some instances.

I understand that.

I never had the strong foundation in magic that most of them do and I eventually abandoned my very meagre magical background in favour of mentalism.

But even within mentalism I saw enough of the old methodologies, which were generally some variation on the theme of control and then reveal, to recognize that this is not what I wanted and to sense that new methods were possible.

I think in terms of: allow chaos, harvest information, remove uncertainty, reveal.

This should've been evident in Train Tracking, where I employ hidden logical operations to give the spectator freedom and let performer certainty emerge from this invisible framework.

I have intentionally broken with tradition and moved from overt forces, peeks, billet techniques and the like. Instead, wherever I found the opportunity, I developed and employed structured information systems.

While this style made complete sense to me, what I did not expect was for it to resonate all that much with anyone else.

Yet, after eight years of deliberate creative isolation where I kept my ideas to myself, I was surprised when I returned to announce this book to find that a younger generation of mentalists looked at the material I've released ten to fifteen years ago and viewed me as a foundational architect of and champion for this modern mentalism methodology they viewed as so innovative.

It caused me to reflect - what was my true innovation exactly?

I think, if anything, it was that I really believed mentalism could cross into a territory where the danger was no longer that the audience would discover the method. To that end, I built systems that offered total participant freedom and guaranteed accurate reveals. The trade was no longer freedom for control, the innovation and the compromise was complexity for certainty.

I believe mentalism can be more sophisticated. The human mind is a predictable operating system and mentalism should be an intellectual discipline where frameworks that require immense skill and familiarity to operate offer opportunities for improvisational agility that truly feel like the real thing when performed.

To some extent, this means that you cannot judge the value of a system until you've put in enough work to master it and make it both invisible and natural.

The risk is that you have to trust that the reward will materialize. Kind of like a boomtown prospector working his claim.

Not everyone accepts those terms. But some do.

The term that has sprung up to describe us is, in my view, too reductionist and facile in nature. People call it propless, I think of us as post-gimmick revolutionaries.

And I think that we are perhaps the first generation of true mentalists.


I've posted here as I remember this thread particularly fondly because I found so many people who thought a lot like I do. I hinted at personal goals above. I'm wondering if I am not just a little bit interested in a future where the circle I share my ideas with is much smaller, but our preferences and styles are aligned and our goals are more niche.

So, the below is an open invitation to all those who can find their way in:

"it's nice to feel special.
it's nice to have a think.
and it's nice to get a break from that cynical beat.
i think my dirty wedding suit was a promise that I'll never Let them take my soul.
yeah, you're too good to spend any time in the mud,
well, you're a Truth to behold.
so How can I talk to the ones counting their Streams,
or the Ones who like to bully the dolls,
or the ones waiting in line to get ripped off, just to turn around and rip someone else off -
baby, aren't U sick of it all?
Now only my people can see me.
Only my people come in.
Everybody outside Talking like they know,
but, no, they don't know."

like the unstoppable tide of fate, we can write a new chapter, one like a forgotten frank miller made.

MgoazGgBkHheOcmjpfzFmCaowrxxoTrMfabhWtmWvu

I'm in


What a breath of fresh air.

Just found this today and it’s driving me nuts lol.

First part I think is pretty basic but after that it gets tricky, thanks Atlas!

I’m sure I’ll find the solution eventually

Anyone else working on this?

I've spent a good amount of time trying to work this out.
What I think are the correct answers to the clues just aren't producing anything meaningful as a solution.

So far nobody has solved this.

All the best,

Atlas

Been working this also progress made but not 100% maybe 50%