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glowball Special user Nashville TN 831 Posts |
Here is a binary effect I created this week:
The magician asks a spectator to think of one of 16 words on a chart. The magician then asks three questions to which the spectator answers yes or no and from those three answers the magician derives what the thought of word is. Basically the three questions are: Is the 2nd letter a vowel? Magician adds 2. Is the 4th letter a vowel? Magician adds 4. Is the word a food? Magician adds one. If total is 0 then add eight. Note that you will get a value from 1 to 8 therefore you will have to equivoque the two words on that row. Chart that The spectator looks at: 1 EGGS --- 9 GRITS 2 WOOD --- 10 SAND 3 CORN --- 11 OATS 4 SHOE --- 12 CHAIR 5 OKRA --- 13 FRIES 6 LASER --- 14 LAVA 7 PECAN --- 15 MELON 8 STONE --- 16 GLASS Presentation: "Think of a word, any word on the chart and remember how to spell it". Magician's starting mental total is 0. Tell the spectator: "Visualize the first letter". "Now visualize the second letter". Magician pauses then says: "it isn't a vowel (a e I o u) is it?" If they say "yes" then add two to your mental total and you say "good I thought it was". If they say "no" then add zero to your mental total and you say "I thought it wasn't". "Visualize the third letter". "Now visualize the 4th letter, Magician pauses then says: "it isn't a vowel (a e I o u) is it?" You could ask if it is a consonent. If they indicate a vowel then add four to your mental total and you say "good I thought it was". If they say "no" then add zero to your mental total and you say "I thought it wasn't". "Now visualize the whole word, it isn't a food, something that people eat, is it?" If they say "yes" it is a food then add one to your mental total and you say "good I thought it was". If they say "no" then add zero to your mental total and you say "I thought it wasn't". If your mental total is zero then change your mental total to 8. Use your mental total to look at the corresponding row on the chart. Their thought of word will be one of the two words on that row therefore you must do an equivoque to determine which of the two words they are thinking of. Example: suppose your secret mental total is 6 then that means their thought of word is either "laser" or "lava" therefore you say "you're not thinking of laser are you" and if they answer no then you say "I thought it wasn't, its the word lava". Another way to enhance the final picking of the two words is to make a statement to tie the two words together before you do the equivoque statement. Example for the laser lava situation: "I'm getting the color red". Then you say "you're not thinking of laser are you". Now if they say "no" you can say "I didn't think so, it is the red in the lava I am seeing". At the end another way to determine which of the two words they're thinking of is to say "look at the third letter again and concentrate, does the letter have a curve in it?" If they answer "yes" then you know it's the first word of the two if they say "no" then it's the second word of the two. I have carefully found 16 words to fit the rules (vowel or not) for the second letter and the fourth letter. These words were also picked for the curve (or not) in the third letter and also every odd numbered row is a food. Note that the numbers in front of the words in the second column (9 thru 16) are not utilized in any way but are simply there for visual consistency purposes. Possible statements to make before the final equivoque if the final total is: 1 EGGS GRITS "I see a plate of food at a breakfast diner" 2 WOOD SAND "I see a boardwalk by a beach" 3 CORN OATS "I see a farm crop in Kansas" 4 SHOE CHAIR "I'm sitting in a chair at a shoe store" 5 OKRA FRIES "It's lunch time and my plate has" 6 LASER LAVA "I'm seeing the color red" 7 PECAN MELON "I see something growing in the panhandle of Texas" 8 STONE GLASS "I see materials on the outside of a Frank Lloyd Wright house" Glowball Yelnif Larry Finley mystron mysterian |
glowball Special user Nashville TN 831 Posts |
Note: I tried this with someone and they happened to pick the word lava therefore I said "I'm seeing the color red" and they said no that's not it thinking that the word I was seeing was the word "RED".
Therefore I have changed the wording of possible statements to make before the final equivoque to "You are thinking of a word that can be associated with" if the final total is: 1 EGGS GRITS "food at a breakfast diner" 2 WOOD SAND "a boardwalk by a beach" 3 CORN OATS "a farm crop in Kansas" 4 SHOE CHAIR "sitting in a Nike store" 5 OKRA FRIES "lunch at a restaurant" 6 LASER LAVA "something glowing red" 7 PECAN MELON "something growing in the panhandle of Texas" 8 STONE GLASS "materials on the outside of a Frank Lloyd Wright house" The terminology "can be associated with" forces the spectator to say yes. Example for the laser lava situation: "You are thinking of a word that can be associated with something glowing red". They say "yes". Then you say "you're not thinking of laser are you". Now if they say "no" you can say "I didn't think so, it is the glowing red in the lava I am seeing". |
glowball Special user Nashville TN 831 Posts |
Other thoughts:
Memorize the words on the chart and the numbers in front of each row (the one through the 8) then make a new chart just for the spectators that does not have any numbers just the words and randomized jumble so there's no pattern to detect from word to word. Hodge podge Example: LASER --- CORN GRITS --- WOOD MELON --- CHAIR STONE --- FRIES LAVA --- EGGS PECAN --- GLASS SHOE --- OKRA SAND --- OATS You could have one sheet of paper that has the above jumbled list for the spectator to look at and have the organized list on the other side for you the magician to look at: EGGS --- GRITS WOOD --- SAND CORN --- OATS SHOE --- CHAIR OKRA --- FRIES LASER --- LAVA PECAN --- MELON STONE --- GLASS or just have the jumbled list to show to the spectator and use a mnemonic story to memorize the good patterned list - mnemonic story: 1 first thing in the morning have EGGS and GRITS at a restaurant. 2 at two in the afternoon go for a stroll on the WOOD boardwalk and look at the SAND beach. 3 at 3 in the afternoon go to Kansas or Nebraska and play baseball using a real long CORN cob bat and a ball made out of OATS and hit the ball striking the number three on a giant clock on the right field fence. 4 the number four looks like an upside down chair but the chair is sitting in a giant shoe inside the Nike store ie: SHOE CHAIR. 5 at five o'clock with Oprah have a late lunch at a restaurant serving OKRA and french FRIES. 6 at six o clock on the big island take 6 glowing red LASER guns and shoot them at the LAVA to get the temperature readings. 7 seven days a week farm workers pick PECAN and MELON crops in the West Texas panhandle. 8 ate STONE and GLASS material on a Frank Lloyd Wright House. Glowball Yelnif Larry Finley mystron mysterian |
Takwah New user 25 Posts |
As glowball has said, remove the numbers for the spectators, this way your chart will be able to start at 0, if you get three 'no'. This will make it possible to drop the 0/8 conversion step.
Also dissolve the pairs on the line, give each one a separate line, for the equivoque it doesn't matter. Also the example for the equivoque step that you gave, is just a fourth bit of information. Tak |
glowball Special user Nashville TN 831 Posts |
Takwa: some good observations, thanks!
Some clarifications: I believe your suggestions make a lot of sense if the magician has the original chart word pairs memorized. The other method I suggested was that the magician look/rely on the organized chart to determine what the thought of pair is. If you magicians out there use this non-memorized method then I suggest that you stick with my original chart keeping the pairs together and the 0 pair (STONE GLASS) in the 8th row because it keeps everything simpler ie: total 1 is row 1, total 2 is row 2, and so on thru row 7 and 0 is a frozen zero degree snowman (a snowman looks like the number 8). Thanks! |
glowball Special user Nashville TN 831 Posts |
Oh, another thought:
Many times you do not have to do the final equivoque because if your wording is good enough when you say the two words in the pair the spectator may latch on to the correct word and not even realize the second word it is of any importance. The following really happened: I had gotten to my final number and it happened to be the number two so I knew that their word was either WOOD or SAND so I said "I'm visualizing a WOOD boardwalk over a lot of SAND". And they immediately said "you got it how did you know!". They never gave me a chance to do the final equivoque, but hey, I'll take a gift when I see it. |
Thomas Henry Inner circle Minnesota 1394 Posts |
Hello Glowball,
Thank you for posting your excellent idea. Your method makes a refreshing change from the overworked idea of br**ch**g ana**ams. Your suggested script snippets for making the 2/4 questions not appear like questions are very good, too. For the collection of items, it would be great if they were all part of some "natural" set, such as the signs of the Zodiac, gemstones, countries, cities, song titles, rivers, famous landmarks, etc. I wonder if we could find any such set that meets your 2/4 criteria. In this way, the prop could be make to look like some sort of educational flashcard thing, for use in the class room. Thanks again for sharing, Thomas Henry |
glowball Special user Nashville TN 831 Posts |
Thomas: I like the theme idea, thanks!
The challenge will be to still have a sub theme to do the equivoque for the number one. Currently I have a sub theme of food versus non food in order to get the number one. If I were to make all the words a food theme then I could no longer use that theme to do an equivoque. Another challenge is to make sure that the average spectator will not be confused as to which category the sub-theme fits in. Example: I especially like your category of using cities as a theme. At first I thought about using European cities as a sub theme but Paris (Tennessee) and London (Kentucky) are also names of small towns in good old USA so I have rejected "European cities" as a subcategory. However using "cities" as the overall theme for all the words and using "large city in USA that has a major sports team" as a subcategory should work (so 8 of the cities will be in this subcategory and the other 8 cities will be completely outside of the United States such as Tokyo, Berlin, etc if I can't find enough cities that will fit this subcategory then I might throw in Paducah and Tupelo in to this subcategory). Note to everyone that I still have to find city names with vowels in the proper place. So Thomas you have given me my next fun project, thanks! |
Thomas Henry Inner circle Minnesota 1394 Posts |
Hello Glowball,
Well, if you went with a printed prop listing the cities, you could always include the country as well, and for that matter a colored depiction of the flag of that country. That would make it appear even more as a schoolroom learning aid you just happened upon, and would obviate the problem of redundant city names from the New World. Here are some good European ones to start with. This isn't a complete list by any means, but I chose them to be spread out and so no country is represented more than once. Neither 2 nor 4: Description Kraków, Poland Glasgow, Scotland Brussels, Belgium Prague, Czech Republic 2, but not 4: London, England Cardiff, Wales Helsinki, Finland Vienna, Austria 4, but not 2: Athens, Greece Istanbul, Turkey Oslo, Norway Utrecht, Netherlands Both 4 and 2: Rome, Italy Paris, France Munich, Germany Zürich, Switzerland Like I say, there are other choices, but these seem to be a pretty good lot of famous cities, well distributed in Europe. For the next step, may I recommend the fourth binary bit differentiate North America versus Europe, since that would open up many well known cities in Canada as well. Keep us posted! Thomas Henry |
glowball Special user Nashville TN 831 Posts |
Good list, thanks!
So that I could use the curve in the third letter as a signal I would use: BRUSSELS --- GLASGOW CARDIFF --- LONDON UTRECHT --- ATHENS PARIS --- ROME Note a couple days ago I had developed a cities and countries last so I posted it as a separate thread so I could find it easily, thanks. https://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/view......forum=99 |
Rogue181 New user 1 Post |
I'd like to preface my comments by saying this is my first post on the forums, so I am sorry if my grammar or anything else leaves something to be desired lol, and with that being said...
I'm relatively new to the use of equivoque, so I might be over exaggerating but this is GENIUS! so far I've only dabbled with methods of forcing cards, but the scripts I've learned all leave my spectators feeling like they "know how it was done". The use of false positive style questions had never occurred to me, and I am sure this will become a go to effect for me when someone asks me to "read their mind" Thank you Glowball |
glowball Special user Nashville TN 831 Posts |
Yes, the neat thing about the wording "it isn't xxxxx is it?" Is that not only can the question be interpreted either way, it WILL BE interpreted the CORRECT way in the mind of the spectator.
A real world casual conversation example: "your name isn't John is it?" A. If their name is John then they will assume that you knew it was John and are just confirming it. B. If their name is not John then they will assume that you knew that their name was not John and are just confirming that. Situation A above is stronger than situation B but both can be interpreted that you knew the correct answer. Reminds me of the story about a country doctor 100 years ago that could predict the gender of a baby before birth about 90% of the time. When he finally retired and was asked what his secret was he said "Simple I first asked the couple what gender they wanted and then I predict the opposite, if they got the gender they wanted then those couples were so happy that they forgot all about any of my wrong predictions!" glowball yelnif |
glowball Special user Nashville TN 831 Posts |
I just realized that the country Doctor example is somewhat the same principle as Paul Curry's "Out of this World" card trick. The prediction for one group is always 100% and the prediction for the wrong group is disguised.
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