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i love math/"psychic" tricks

This one is kinda a number / psychic trick. It's back from my elementary school days ... but still occasionally works on your average US American (not on many other nationalities I've learned):

You ask a person the following, and let them answer after each time:

"What does 3+8 equal?"

"What does 2+9 equal?"

"What does 5+6 equal?"

etc etc. Each time, you want the answer to be 11. And you keep asking various addition questions with each question equalling 11 until they obviously see it and can anticipate the answer being eleven. IOW, you want them to be thinking about the number eleven.

Then, you tell them to, "Now .... name aloud any vegetable." It's often a carrot or carrots. If they take too long in their thinking, they may change their minds, so they need to do it immediately. If you see them thinking too hard, encourage them to be immediate and quick.

You, having already written this on a piece of paper in your pocket before you ever began the trick, pull it out ... and to their amazement, the word carrot is written on the paper. Yada yada yada.
 
Write the number 7 on a piece of paper. Fold it and tuck it in your pocket. Ask someone to give you (quickly) a number between 3 and 10. In my experience it is just about always 7 ( 10-3 ) I assume it would work with 4 and 10 (6) etc. As with Trent rays trick the answer has to be spontaneous.
If they reply with anything else pull a visionfromfeeling (or as I like to think of her, Visionfromgropinginthedark ) and claim that you knew it really but put the wrong number down. Its foolproof.
 
thanks!
here's a dumb, but fu one for determining age:
"add your age (as of the end of this year) to 90, and don't tell me what that is"
"now, scratch the fisrt digit of that result, and add it to the remainder."
"what is your sum?"
add nine to that, and you have their age.
por ejemplo, i'm 34.
34 + 90=124
scratch the one and add it, = 25
add nine=34

works for any age over ten
 
There's a similar thing to what Trent Wray suggested,
except you use 3 instead of 11 (not sure if that is even meanigful)

Then ask them for a color and a tool.
Most people will reply "Red Hammer".
 
Trent Wray said:
This one is kinda a number / psychic trick. It's back from my elementary school days ... but still occasionally works on your average US American (not on many other nationalities I've learned):
Click to expand...

It works very nicely on the English. My variant is to start with "What's 2+2?", then 4+4, 8+8, 16+16, then 32 divided by 4, and when they've dealt with the minor cognitive derail, ask for the name of a vegetable.

Dave
 
Trent Wray said:
This one is kinda a number / psychic trick. It's back from my elementary school days ... but still occasionally works on your average US American (not on many other nationalities I've learned):

You ask a person the following, and let them answer after each time:

"What does 3+8 equal?"

"What does 2+9 equal?"

"What does 5+6 equal?"

etc etc. Each time, you want the answer to be 11. And you keep asking various addition questions with each question equalling 11 until they obviously see it and can anticipate the answer being eleven. IOW, you want them to be thinking about the number eleven.

Then, you tell them to, "Now .... name aloud any vegetable." It's often a carrot or carrots. If they take too long in their thinking, they may change their minds, so they need to do it immediately. If you see them thinking too hard, encourage them to be immediate and quick.

You, having already written this on a piece of paper in your pocket before you ever began the trick, pull it out ... and to their amazement, the word carrot is written on the paper. Yada yada yada.
Click to expand...

Ah yes the infamous carrot 'engram'. ;)
 
I can't remember the specifics, but there was a trick I used to do when I was little involving three small pieces of paper. You would ask a question, have the person think of the answer, and write it down on the paper and fold it up. Then you ask the person what he thought of. You do this three times with three different questions. Then you open the pieces up and show him that you wrote down those three answers.

The trick was that the last question you already knew the answer to, and that is what you wrote down first, and then after asking the second question, you write down what his answer to the first question was.

Does anyone remember the specifics to this one?
 
Tell people you can get their number between 1-1000 in ten guesses if they just tell you if your number is low or high, then you use the search algorithm. The binary search.

1. Choose your number ask them if it is low or high to theirs. (It actually works best if you randomly chose the number)
2. If they say high compute the difference between your number and zero, if low, your number and 1000, then divide in two.
3. If they said you were high subtract the 1/2 from your guess, if low add the 1/2 to your guess, this is your next guess.
4. Repeat. Carry the 1/2 and half it again.

So it goes like this I will chose 771 for them. My guess is 500.
1. They say 'low', so 1000-500=500, 500/2=250 I add 500+250=750. (500/2=250)
2. I say 750, they say 'low', so 750+125=875. (250/2=125)
3. They say 'high' , so 875-63=812 (125/2=63 I rounded up)
4. They say 'high' again, so 812-32=780 (63/2=32 I rounded up)
5. They say 'high' again , so 780-16=764 (32/2=16)
6. They say 'low', so, 764+8=772
7. They say 'high', so 772-4=768
8. They say 'low', so 768+2=770
9. They say 'high', so I say 771, which is their number.

Now please note I chose the number 771 for them knowing it would take the longest to find with the binary search algorithm, especially starting at the median of 500.

But since log21000 is 9.9657842847, there are searches that will go to ten, and I don’t remember, maybe you always round to the even number.

Now the amazing thing to me is that log2 1,000,000 is 19.931568569 so that means you can do the same search for 1-1,000,000 in twenty guesses.
 
I have my own trick where I can tell the day of the week for any date from 1900 to 2020. It takes a lot of practice though.


How about a card trick? If someone has a deck of cards (ideally it's their deck), start off by asking whether it's a full deck - turn the deck face-up and deal the cards onto the tabletop as you count, and memorize the card in the 34th position. When you turn that deck over again, that card will be 34th from the top. Announce that it's a good deck, and make a prediction - write down the card on a piece of paper, fold it up, and place it in plain sight. Cut the top half off the deck and hand it to someone in your audience. Note: the top half will NOT include your 34th card. Tell him to shuffle the half-deck that he's holding, and place three cards onto the table. Take the remainder of the deck that he's holding, place it on top of your half of the deck, and hand the whole thing to him.

Have him turn over one of the three cards that he placed on the table, then "count it up to ten." For example, if it's a six, then place four more cards on top of it while he counts "seven eight nine ten." A face card counts as a ten so doesn't need any more added to it.

Have another person do the same for one of the other three cards, and another person do it again for the third card. Now have someone add the values of those original three cards, and have him count off that many more from the deck. At this point, you have someone pick up the piece of paper with your prediction and read it to the others. Then the person holding the deck (you haven't touched the deck in a while now) turns over the top card. Bingo!
 
Careyp74 said:
I can't remember the specifics, but there was a trick I used to do when I was little involving three small pieces of paper. You would ask a question, have the person think of the answer, and write it down on the paper and fold it up. Then you ask the person what he thought of. You do this three times with three different questions. Then you open the pieces up and show him that you wrote down those three answers.

The trick was that the last question you already knew the answer to, and that is what you wrote down first, and then after asking the second question, you write down what his answer to the first question was.

Does anyone remember the specifics to this one?
Click to expand...

I know one close.

1. You have a group of people, one of whom is your stooge.
2. They all write something on a piece of paper.
3. They fold it and put it in a hat you provide. Your stooge does something so that his paper is drawn out last.
4. Now comes the magic part. You take out one piece of paper and without looking at it say what it says.
5. Your stooge confirms that is correct.
6. You then read the paper. Confirm that is what it is written.
7. Draw out the next piece of paper and before reading it say what was on the previous piece of paper.
8. Someone confirms this is correct.
8. Repeat steps 6 - 8 until there are no more papers left. The last piece of paper to be drawn out is your stooge's paper.
 
Careyp74 said:
I can't remember the specifics, but there was a trick I used to do when I was little involving three small pieces of paper. You would ask a question, have the person think of the answer, and write it down on the paper and fold it up. Then you ask the person what he thought of. You do this three times with three different questions. Then you open the pieces up and show him that you wrote down those three answers.

The trick was that the last question you already knew the answer to, and that is what you wrote down first, and then after asking the second question, you write down what his answer to the first question was.

Does anyone remember the specifics to this one?
Click to expand...
Yes, and it is findable in many a basic magic book, but as it reveals a method which is still used in many commercial (and devastating) effects, it would be a breach to reveal it here. The method (not the effect itself because there are many effects possible with the method) has a three word name.
 
Hokulele said:
Or Aussies with their emus. ;)
Click to expand...
If you hold an emu upside down it looks like an elephant. That counts as a hit in psychic world.

Hmmmm.... maybe it's "if you step on an Aussie with an elephant he doesn't look remotely like an emu." I keep forgetting.
 
Garrette said:
If you hold an emu upside down it looks like an elephant. That counts as a hit in psychic world.

Hmmmm.... maybe it's "if you step on an Aussie with an elephant he doesn't look remotely like an emu." I keep forgetting.
Click to expand...

I could get behind the latter! Does anyone have a pass to the Aussies Only thread and want to propose this? They're all still hungover from ANZAC weekend, so probably won't notice an interloper or two.
 
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