21 May 2014

"Mind-reading" magic tricks explained

To an observer, it looks like this. The magician is blindfolded and faces a wall while his confederate goes around the audience, asking people to place on a tray any random items that they happen to be carrying with them. Coins, eyeglasses, wrist watches, credit cards--anything at all. Audience members also have the option to select playing cards from a deck.

The confederate then holds up each item silently. No apparent way exists for the confederate to communicate with the magician, but somehow, the magician knows all.
Further details and explanation at Boing Boing.

1 comment:

  1. Clever. Expand your tables further with responses like: "correct", "spot on", "exactly", "precisely", "you got it", etc.

    The number of meanings you can encode is more limited by your memory than by the number of synonyms for "correct" in English.

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