Soon after I got seriously into magic I picked up a copy of the book Thabbatical by Phil Goldstein (Max Maven). It’s got several progressive anagram tricks in the book. If you don’t know what a progressive anagram is, it’s a way of figuring out a word that someone is thinking of by asking them if certain letters are in the word. Everytime you get a “NO”, you move to a new list. In a good list, by the time you get to the second “NO” you know the word.
The huge problem with using a progressive anagram is the person needs to be able to spell the word correctly in their head. Sure you can have them take the word off of a list, but I think that takes ways what makes this type of trick work, and that’s that you don’t need any props.
The other challenge is that you need to memorize a flow chart of letters and words. It’s not super hard, but it does take work and you need to keep in practice. However, right now with use all stuck at home and doing magic over the internet, you can easily do progressive anagrams without memorizing anything! The way to do it is to simply print it out and put it someone outside your camera’s field of view. No memory work, it’s plug and play!
Tag: max maven
Premonition…
One of the card magic plots going around right now is a “Card To Pocket” that’s done in the style of Eddie Joeseph’s Premonition. Right now Max Maven’s Pocket Nightmare and the Other Brother’s Card To Pocket are just coming out. The trick is a card is selected, the cards are gone through and there … Continue reading “Premonition…”
One of the card magic plots going around right now is a “Card To Pocket” that’s done in the style of Eddie Joeseph’s Premonition. Right now Max Maven’s Pocket Nightmare and the Other Brother’s Card To Pocket are just coming out. The trick is a card is selected, the cards are gone through and there are only 51 cards, their card is missing. It’s then produced from your pocket.
Last night I was reading the book Concertos for Pasteboards and there’s a Card to Pocket by Roberto Giobbi called A Case For Premonition. This one uses one normal deck, which is a huge advantage for me than the two marketed ones. The disadvantage is that I need to deal the cards instead of letting a spectator go through the cards. Personally I think the condition of the audience dealing is a that impresses magicians more than non-magicians (in most cases).
After working through the one in the book, I did a couple of tweaks. There’s a moment where you need to spread through the cards to find selected card that had just disappeared. I didn’t like that, so in the dealing process I deal them a bit sloppy and side jog the card before the selected card, which lets me find it without spreading the cards. The other thing I changed was the need for a cull palm. Instead as I pick up the deck I do the pass that’s used in Bob Farmer’s Bammo Card Walloper to bring the card to the top and simply palm it.
I’m excited to try this out on real people to see how it plays. I think this will be one of the tricks that I do as part of an informal card set. I always like reading a trick and immediately know that if I change a couple of things it will work with my body vocabulary.