I hope this is the right subforum. I have been pondering this for quite a while and would like to hear your opinions about it.

There is this effect I have in mind, which would require assistance by a spectator from the audience. The problem however is, that the spectator 'has' to fail, for the effect to work. It's not in a comical way, it's just that the method requires it to work. So the spectator is given a task, and fails badly, the magician then proceeds to ace the same or a similar difficult task to demonstrate his superiority.

I don't see a problem with a spectator not being able to do the same feats as the guy who's being paid for. But since the effect is a little bit lengthy and a direct demonstration of 'magical powers/skill', I think it's kinda downputting and it may even be offensive to select someone and having him fail, while demonstrating that you can outperform him anyways.

So what is your opinion on that. Does a spectator always need to have a sense of achievment when leaving the stage or table or is the effect itself enough to end on a positive note.

I think this would require careful scripting to avoid looking/feeling like you're just picking on someone. It sounds like it is essentially a sucker trick.

Very concise. I did not realize that it indeed reads like the premise to a sucker trick/bet. But more importantly, the implication it might experience redemption through careful scripting also showed me the limits and possibilities, as originally this was designed as an ESP test under test conditions. And I think I neglected this when I assumed it could be used in a more general way. The idea you sparked is certainly, if you put it back where it belonged, you can script your spectator simply as the control group of such an experiment, maybe even two or three spectators. This alleviates and distributes the situation for all of them without giving the impression of one-uping everyone involved. Maybe there are other angles to this, other presentations, but hopefully this will do to save the method.

ESP Test? That you could definitely work with. If I were to try to script something like that, I would have comments about how the people were to be a control group, and control groups were expected to get suchandsuch percentage wrong or something like that. Basically set it up so that if they are wrong, they're actually right, because that's what they are supposed to be representing. You can use that set up as an unspoken emphasis of how strange/difficult what you end up doing really is.

I like that, seems natural. Thank you.