A magician called Hoy invented this technique. Like all mentalism, the method may be simple but the performance requires good acting and audience management. Magician's choice needs to be done well or it can be obvious- it's important to phrase the the option of book choice carefully. For example, you can ask the spectator to pick up one book and pass it to you- if the book you want the spectator to choose is handed to you, you can show it again as genuine and then hand it to the spectator. Then pick up the other book to "choose a page". It's very important to use "time misdirection" - in other words, as much time between your first peek of the word and the spectator "choosing" a word then you "reading their mind"- never rush the mind reading part- it's important to make it look like you are really trying to read their mind, and the longer you act this out, the less attention will be on what procedure happened before.
The real secret of magic can't be exposed. 95% of all the magic peformed on youtube is generally missing the same thing. Entertaiment, showmenship and talent. Anyone can learn simple tricks that don't make you a magician. Great magic doesn't fool you, it makes you believe.
Very good point. I used to do a little when younger from magic sets but whatever the elusive X factor is I did not have it so gave up and took to music instead and spent years semi pro. Pro would not have suited me as I have a proper job too.
can you try to explain james randi's iteration? everything is the same until the point where the word is chosen. He just asks to choose any word on the specified page
Chan Canasta did this trick, but he asked the punter to choose a page number and told them not to say what the page number was. Unlike in this version, the trickster told the punter what page they had stopped at when thumbing through. So can someone tell me how Chan Canasta did it?
I have seen this trick with no second book. Just here is a book thumb through and pick a line and tell me where the word sits in the sentence. That is much more impressive.
Derren Brown has done it in some of his live shows and if you search YT "James Randi on Magic, Skepticism, and the Future" and skip to 35:15 you'll see the trick done with 1 book. You don't see the selection process but Randi is no fraud and wouldn't lie about the set up of the trick
I recently went to a "mentalist" show and had a trick done on me. He told me to flip through the book and make sure it was a real book and that all the words on the pages were different etc..and then pick any word I wanted. He said nothing about a page number..just to pick any word on any page. He turned around and couldnt even see me and he told me to picture the word in my mind. Then without looking at me he wrote down my word!! How is that possible?
that is another book test. there is no reveal on youtube. and i dont do reveals :P but you can buy it at your local magic store :P btw the one they did to you was the easiest one :P
Romen Rodriguez a "mentalist" have also had this trick done on me, and i'm deseperatly looking for the answer, could you send me a private message too? Pleeease :D I have no idea on how to do it and i'm crazy with that :)
There are lots of different book tests. I personnaly don't like Brians, too much setup and the adding + substracting thing is both complicated and sort of obvious.
If this is the book trick then how do you explain when we get to pick a page number, random word from the whole page and if the magician never touches the books?....
ur an idiot none of anything like that happened in this trick. Plus it's a dumb trick anyway. I'd bet my left testicle no one will fall for it unless they were dropped on their head as a baby.
I just did it for my dad. His reaction: He threw the book on me, said shut up, and walked away HAHA. But you might want to do another trick right after this one, because it's kind of easy to figure out, if you get to think about it for a few minutes, wich he did.
Perché tu non hai creato un personaggio , tuo padre ha dubitato di te perché sa benissimo che non hai nessun potere mentale ma ti interessano i giochi di magia. Presentati a un estraneo , racconta che sei appassionato di trasmissione del pensiero e fai prima altri effetti in modo da creare una fiducia tra te e il pubblico, poi esegui questo test e restare a bocca aperta. Tutto perché non ha motivo di dubitare di te perché ha visto pochi minuti prima altri effetti magari più difficili da realizzare e si fida dei tuoi "poteri mentali" ;)
Worst explanation of a magician's choice I ever heard. As for the trick, it's so obvious that you could have said any page number... Bad trick, bad presentation, bad mentalism. For friendly or family performances maybe, for anything more serious : no way !
Oh, come on! Of course it's intended for friendly and family performances only. To what other people would a non-magician person show it, huh? A professional magician would not be looking for advice in youtube.
Of course the real magic is handling the individual so that they don't think to check the magician's book, or to question the fact that he has already scanned the book the individual is holding, and tricking them into believing that the magician has absolutely no idea what the word is, when in fact he has known before he ever handed over the book.
I will give you a problem to solve. 1) I was not given the choice of a book. 2) I was not given any page number. 3) I stopped at one page and memorized one word. 4) I turned the book upside down to mess with the mentalist. 5) I flipped many more pages the book still upside down and chose another word. He gave me the first word I had chosen and then started spelling out the second word backwards to let me know he had understood my trick. Now tell me how that is done...
Jessyca Higgins Colin McLeod, in his video set "Opening Minds," has a book test that exactly matches all of your conditions. Mentalists have expended a lot of time and ingenuity on book tests. Please don't think that the trick revealed in this video is the only or best version of the effect.
That is an anecdotal story and how you remember the trick being done. It is a parlor trick and you were fooled by misdirection and linguistic deception . I saw James Randi do it live at a lecture and didn't remember the second book but that is exactly how he did it ..
There are dozens -- hundreds! -- of book tests. All of them have one thing in common: the magician, not you, is in control. The magician sets the conditions. The magician provides the props. The magician defines the test. The magician interprets the results. What the audience remembers, and what really happened, are often entirely different.
Poor presentation. Ask for them to pick up a book. Not choose a book. Also show them the book when they say stop. Turn pages toward them. Across the room they can't see the page. It could be better. Give credit to Dr Hoy from 1963.
Aw man -- as much as I love your video and the explanation, it kind of ruined this trick for me. I thought it must have been something more complicated than simple misdirection and cheating at the beginning. D'oh!
