Learn mind reading and magic!

Progressive anagrams are certainly one of the most powerful tools that a mentalist can employ in the performances. (If you don’t know about progressive anagrams – sorry, this will all be very confusing).

If you’ve spent any time using them, you’ll know they can take ages to create. I’ve made a little tool that automates the process and produces pretty decent anagram trees. Just enter the list of words you want to use:

One of the drawbacks of progressive anagrams as they are often performed is that they use quite small sets of data. It might be star signs, months of the year and so on – but you can get really good results by widening out the number of choices.

So rather than having the 12 months of the year – you could ask someone to think of a popular fruit, a name of a friend, a make of car or any other “big group” of things.

Obviously it isn’t practical to have a list of 1000 words in your anagram tree – but using some psychological principles and other tricks you can significantly shorten these near “unlimited” categories into something more manageable. Once you have this more manageable list – you need to put it into the anagram maker to build your tree. You probably won’t cover 100% of choices with your shortened list – but if you can cover 70%-90% of the choices that is pretty amazing. Here’s how you can build you lists – and I’ve love to hear about any good lists you’ve managed to  make.

First of all you can play statistics. If you are asking people to think of a fruit you know that most of the time people will think of common things like apples, oranges, bananas and pears. They are less likely to think of dragon fruit or passion fruit because they simply aren’t very common.

Second you can verbally eliminate – asking someone to think of a make of car “something like a Ford or a Toyota” has the effect of eliminating Ford and Toyota from the available choices and therefore reduces the size of your list.

Third you can play tricks with the names of the things in the list – so if you asked someone to think of a name, you could ask them to shorten the name to the usual “short form” of the name. This means that Alex stays as Alex, Alexander becomes Alex, Alexandra becomes Alex, Alexi becomes Alex, Alexa becomes Alex and so on. This means that you can have “Alex” on your anagram list, but actually use it to cover half a dozen variants. With 30 or so names on your anagram list you can cover a lot of ground here.

Fourth, you can use the word the person is thinking of to jump to another ‘shorter’ list. So if you ask someone to think of a surname (with really unlimited possibilities) you can then ask them to look at how many letters there are in that surname, or the first letter of the surname, or the last letter, or the first syllabal etc – and use that information to think of something else which doesn’t have unlimited possibilities. You can reveal this second thing they are thinking of using your progressive anagram and then use a nail writer to show that you also knew what they were thinking of originally.

Have you seen the Yes No Trick yet? I’ve been getting some great feedback on the latest premium offering from Free Mentalism. It really does allow you to amaze people by predicting their choices – literally ANY 50:50 decision. It works 100% of the time and there is nothing to stop you doing it again and again and again!

Check it out here: Yes/No Trick

It is definitely one of the cleanest, most direct mind reading tricks that I’ve ever performed. When the effect first launched it was just a pdf download. Since then the Yes No Trick has had video added to the product embeded directly inside the book which makes makes everything easier than ever. These new videos are free to download for existing owners. Just log back in to your members area to grab the latest copy of the ebook.

Keep coming back and checking the members area as fresh bonuses and updates are scheduled for the near future!

If you’ve been watching Fool Us in the UK, you might have seen the wonderful Nick Einhorn doing his mind reading thing. If not check it out right now:

So how did he do it?

Well assuming its not real mind reading there is only a few options.

He could have used stooges – that is, people that are in on the trick and not really members of the audience. He claims to have randomly selected the female member of the audience – but we can’t be sure that it truly was random. Other performers throw out a ball and have the audience chuck it around a bit. So the woman could be a stooge – only problem is that Penn (or was it Teller) confirmed on Twitter that she was NOT stooged. So that is that theory out the window!

Looking at the rest of the trick, three things were predicted:

1. That each man would be sat at the correct table number.
2. That each table has the right food on it.
3. The name of the man.

Lets ignore the “name” issue for the moment and lets pretend that somehow this problem takes care of itself…

Matching the correct table to the correct food suddenly becomes a lot easier. All you need is three sets of envelopes each with different predictions. You put a different set in each pocket and when you know the order the food has been placed on the tables you just bring out the correct set of envelopes leaving the others hidden.

So the predictions for the food and for the table numbers are easy. But that still leaves the issue of the “name” of the person that has sat at the table.

Those of you have already own Mind Reading Exposed will immediately be thinking “Dual Reality” – and that’s exactly what I’m thinking too.

I would wager that the prediction that the men each read out did NOT include their name. They were instructed somehow to “fill in the blank” when it came to their name. For example “This leaves (say your name) sitting at table number 3 where he will enjoy a pizza”.

Sneaky! But the question is, what else was written on the paper, or said to the men as they were coming up on stage to ensure that firstly they played along; and secondly that they didn’t tell all their friends when they returned to their seats? A good dual reality effect always takes care of this! Or maybe Nick didn’t – as he only needed the secret to be kept long enough to fool Penn and Teller?

What do you think? How would you script your dual reality – or do you think this effect is just too risky for anything other than TV work?

I was emailing with someone who purchased Mind Reading Exposed the other day. He was going to a friend’s birthday party and he wanted to perform an effect WITH the birthday boy. Super quick I wrote up the instructions to perform what I call “Black Magic”. Check it out below.

Everyone has to be in one room. You leave the room and everyone else has to think of an object that is in the room. When they have decided you come back in. Now your friend has to name different objects in the room at random. Then, whenever he wants he names the object they all thought of. You are able to instantly tell everyone that it was the object they decided on. So if everyone agreed on the object “apple” – your friend might say “beer, glass, plate, chair, table, ashtray, TV (which is colored black), apple”. The instant your friend says “apple” you know that it is the object they had decided on.

The trick is really simple. Your friend just has to name a black object before the object that was decided on. This is your signal that the NEXT item he names is the one everyone decided on. The great thing about it is that naming objects is the ONLY thing your friend has to do. Everyone will think there is some sort of trick… and they’ll watch for hand signals, blinking, body language and all manner of things. Sometimes they even want to blindfold people so they know it can’t be a signal.

It can be a really fun game and works great as a warm-up for the more advanced effects in the full Mind Reading Exposed ebook:

If there’s a certain type of effect you are desperate to perform, leave me a comment below and I’ll try to write about it soon!

Check out this guy Daniel Madison. Simple trick and great performance. It didn’t fool Penn and Teller, but I watching it with a house full of people… and they were all fooled.