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I am pleased to say that I have the full backing and blessing from
Phedon to release in his words my different AND similar
variation on the prop-less drawing duplication plot.
The shift that was required was to get the spectator to try to guess a
drawing you are merely thinking of, first. Of course, the way I
handle this is important, so that I am able to secretly obtain
information about their drawing along the way.
They would then of course, answer with the word opposite which
means we can then say.
And they will then answer in a way that tips to you which half of the
year they were born as they will now be answering in a way that is
always opposite to whichever half of the year they were born. All
you have to do is remember the opposite to whatever answer they
give.
This is just the first part of one of my star sign guesses and I hit
upon this whilst trying to achieve something else. It was only after
finishing the star sign guess that my good friend Ross Tayler
reminded me where the basic idea had come from; using opposites
within the context of a spectator guessing information about the
performer to secretly tip information about the spectator, was first
conceived by Ross in the early stages of his star sign guess that was
later released in our limited edition book Second Coming.
I feel each of our star sign guess are different enough to warrant
both being published and the handling of this question about which
half of the year they feel I was born, is a nice linguistic use of this
basic idea that did not feature in any of the previous attempts at
working out a use for this general concept.
Well, the reason is the following method believe it or not was born
out of these thoughts.
I then realised this was too overt and was too much like giving
directions that would make back-tracking easier and the method
more obvious, so I decided to change what I was doing by
simplifying it.
This made the effect and method work together in a way that was
beautifully deceptive and perfect theatrically it looking exactly as
it should, in terms of outward appearance of effect with the use of
opposites now applied to effect as opposed to being applied directly
to the method.
The way I shifted everything was to actually get the spectator to give
similar characteristics to their thought of drawing without is
seeming like I was asking directly for them to do this.
Props should go to Ross here for first applying the idea of re-
framing to method itself it has since become such an important
part of my thinking, it is hard to imagine modern mentalism and the
genre of prop-less existing without it.
The overall appearance of the effect creates a false logic that makes
everything appear entirely fair and the fact the method exists in
words and disappears after it is spoken means all that your audience
will be left with is the appearance of what seemingly took place; that
of real mind reading.
Note: Luke Jermay was the first to use a restrictive field that was
not seemingly restrictive.
Morgan Strebler has also used the idea of getting the spectator to
imagine they were back at school to restrict their drawing to one out
of a few simple drawings they could be thinking of.
MOON
SUN
TREE
CAR
BOAT
AEROPLANE
STICK-MAN
HOUSE
TABLE
CHAIR
GLASS
PEN
PENCIL
BALL
FISH
FLOWER
CAT
DOG
Man made and natural objects and objects that can or can not be
held in your hand.
Art Vandelay was first to use such distinctions in his work using
Anagrams to successfully divine objects thought of by a spectator
and should therefore get credit.
These distinctions are something Peter Turner has also played with
in the past when dealing with thought of objects.
It is this next line that underpins the entire method and makes it
work.
I casually say,
No.
All you have to do is listen to their answer and this gives you the
properties of their own drawing!
They will usually say that they feel it is more likely we have different
images due to the odds involved.
Whether they say they think the drawings are the same or not I
always inform them that they were wrong on both characteristics
and tell them my drawing has opposite characteristics to what they
say.
There is a weird logic at play that subtly implies if they are wrong
then what you said previously about the drawings potentially
matching must also be incorrect and any set up that may have taken
place or connection that may exist with the answers they give is also
irrelevant and of no use.
Of course, this isn't the case at all. The answers they have already
given in fact, tip the two qualities of their drawing to you.
So just trust your intuition and try to get what this is.
They settle on a drawing and I always just say whatever they name
is wrong and give them another object that matches the
characteristics I have already specified. Here I would say an object
that isn't commonly thought of to help suggest they literally could
have thought of anything as suggested by Peter Turner.
The reason I choose to say they are wrong is so that I can say the
next line.
This line will make the subsequent guess of their drawing appear
that much more difficult and will therefore make the reveal that
much more powerful.
It also suggests that you gave them clues about your drawing and
not the other way around.
Not only this, it also sets you up for the following convincer.
This line cements the notion that you don't know anything about
their drawing which of course, isn't the case why would you not
want them to give you any clues about their drawing, if they already
have? You wouldn't. Therefore, they have to assume you are not
aware that their first answers gave you any information. This also
helps change the meaning of your comment about the drawings
matching at the start to that of a simple curiosity which has already
apparently been proven as a false impression.
Pete prefers to say that they are correct on their final guess and uses
the following script as a convincer.
Now you can use the information secretly obtained as well as the
length of the word or name for their drawing to nail their exact
thought of drawing.
Those who know Cups by Michael Murray can apply it here. His
ingenious work on diving the amount of letters in a word to know
which word a spectator is thinking of can be found in his break-
though book A Piece of My Mind found on his website:
www.mindfx.co.uk. If not then simply throw out an amount of
letters and get the spectator to tell you the amount of letters if you
don't get a reaction. This is such a small piece of information asking
for it doesn't seem to lessen the impact of the final reveal.
It appears as if the amount of letters and the word are irrelevant and
are being ignored and this in turn, cancels out any possible method
and the notion that their previous answer helps you to guess their
drawing.
If you examine the list of possible drawings you will see that now
you are in a very good position to correctly reveal their thought of
drawing 9 times out of 10.
If they are focusing on a natural object they can not hold in their
hands then it will likely be one of these objects:
If it is man made and too large to hold in their hands (or they can't
hold it in their hands because it is not an actual thing such as a
stick-man):
And for man made objects that can be held in their hands:
The only drawings that might cause you problems when you know
the exact amount of letters in their word are HOUSE and TABLE
and MOON and TREE with more becoming a problem if you
decide to add more outs to each category of potential drawings.
For example, if you are left with HOUSE and TABLE as potential
drawings, you may say the following statement:
CAT/ DOG would also work well for this type of written out.
This will still seem to be a hit no matter which item the spectator
was focusing on, as these objects would usually be thought of as
going together.
You could also just apply more than one hanging statement to nail
down on the exact drawing, without using any form of out.
I prefer to not complicate the method further but instead use this as
taught and find a 90% chance of success adequate for my needs.
Naturally, you could present this in the classical way and have the
spectator actually draw what they are focusing on then draw it
yourself and have both drawings turned around at the same time to
show they match.
Enjoy!
Fraser