David Kwong - Magician/Puzzler; Head Magic Consultant on "Now You See Me" davidkwongmagic.com @davidkwong dkwongmagic Directed by Clay Tweel, Produced by Steven Klein
The first thing I thought was: Notice that he doesn't reveal the name of the card UNTIL the person tells him what it is. How many other card names are lurking in the grid?
He explains on The Bryan Callen show (without giving too much away) that he has spent countless hours memorizing patterns in words and crosswords. I don't think simply trying to "think" about how it was done will get you anywhere. Not on this one!
None, there's only one diagonal in this example from the bottom left to top right (well two, top right to bottom left). You can see his other examples, it's always a diagonal, not some random set of letters hidden in the grid.
What seems strange is that the time-lapse at 2:02 has the words on the crossword put up in a different order than they are put up during the presentation. Pay attention to the word "GROAN" in the top upper right corner. It's not on the screen before "ETTA" during the presentation, but in the time lapse, the word "GROAN" is written out before "ETTA" is. This makes it seem like these videos were from 2 different presentations & that he plans out and memorizes these crosswords ahead of time.
atms: Automated Teller Machines tse: half of tse-tse fly oho: an exclamation askfor: to request (2 words) igors: belonging to Dr. Frankenstein's assistant all are possible (and common) crossword answers
Of course, if the choice of card is forced on the audience (and really, why pass up that opportunity) then you only need one puzzle (per audience). I'd be interested in analysis of the words used to intersect the audience-selected words. But not so interested that I'd do it myself...
People like you David Kwong are the reason that Magic is still striving today!You are Inspiring,entertaining,and are making Magicians think inside the box again!Kudos,Congrats,keep up the Great work!!This is one of those,"why didn't I think of that moments"!
Yes, it is a trick deck of cards. Not a full deck. You notice he didn't let her look at all the cards or reveal the cards not selected. They may have all been the same card.
Really you only need 4 puzzles. "ofhearts", "ofclubs", "ofspades", and "ofdiamonds" designed with enough flexibility to accommodate Ace through King attached. And the diagonal placement of these letters makes it especially easy to fit audience-selected words in. There's certainly a lot of other skill involved, both in prep, and in execution, but I think as Penn & Teller would say, "you did not fool us."
I guess if you're a magician it's not hard to do a thing where someone picks a card and you know what it is? Or else you force them to pick a card that you want them to. That's the kind of thing magicians do all the time, right?
