On my re­cent lec­ture tour, I spent a won­der­ful even­ing after the lec­ture din­ing with my friends. Sud­denly a small dis­cus­sion about Denis Behr’s new full even­ing pro­gram came up. Some guys had seen it already, and the talk was about Denis’ open­ing ef­fect, which seemed to be quite strong (at least to me).

I was told the fol­low­ing: Denis would spread a red backed deck face down onto the table in a wide rib­bon spread, each and every card vis­ible. Then Denis would in­tro­duce a single card with a dif­fer­ent colored back. He would show the face of this card and slide it slowly along the spread, un­til a spec­tat­or stopped him. The spec­tat­or was giv­en the choice of a few cards more or less to the left or right. In oth­er words: a com­pletely free choice. The card was cleanly in­ser­ted into the spread at the point the spec­tat­or de­cided.

The deck was then slowly and without any false moves squared and taken face­down into deal­ing po­s­i­tion. Denis would then start to deal the cards singly onto the table, into a faceup spread. The spec­tat­ors could see that the cards were in new deck or­der. They came from Ace to King in each col­or. At same time, the dif­fer­ent colored card would ap­pear and when he dealt it face up, its value match the po­s­i­tion in the deck or­der. For ex­ample, there was the Ace of Dia­monds, then the 2, the 3, the 4. Then came the dif­fer­ent colored card, which turned out to be the 5 of Dia­monds, then came the 6, the 7, and so on.

Denis then re­moved from his pock­et the reg­u­lar 5 of Dia­monds, ex­changed it or the dif­fer­ent colored card and went on with his set (with an un­pre­pared deck).

This seemed to be the routine, be­cause my friends, who had seen the show, couldn’t ex­actly re­mem­ber all the de­tails, nor did they know the ex­act meth­od Denis was em­ploy­ing. So my start­ing point here is without any know­ledge of the ac­tu­al Denis Behr meth­od (and right now I don’t want to know his meth­od).  Also, I don’t know about all the tiny de­tails and work my way through with only the few things I heard from my friends. A funny but in­ter­est­ing start­ing point. But I like the ef­fect and it was a chal­lenge for me to cre­ate a work­able routine.

Know­ing Denis and his un­be­liev­able abil­it­ies with a deck of cards, I knew he could have em­ployed al­most any sleight of hand meth­od, and he would have fooled me with it. This in­cludes false deals, etc.

But I know Denis a bit, and I do know that he COULD real­ize this with pure sleight of hand. But I also do know that Denis is very clev­er and has no hes­it­a­tion to use a gim­mick, if it makes things easi­er or stronger. After all, his dex­ter­ity is only matched by his in­tel­li­gence. So everything was in the open …

The one thing that gave me some head­aches was the pro­duc­tion of the card from the pock­et. An in­dex? If so — which one? And how could that be prac­tic­al? Luck­ily, my mind made a con­nec­tion to some­thing else, which solves the prob­lem in a nice way and makes an in­dex un­ne­ces­sary. The routine now is totally easy to per­form and 100 per­cent prac­tic­al. A real work­er!

The works

For the first prob­lem, there are dif­fer­ent ways pos­sible to go. The easi­est re­minds me of an old An­nemann routine, where a waxed card is used. Nowadays we have ’Sci­ence Fric­tion Spray’ so this could be a good al­tern­at­ive. The face of the card with the odd-colored back is either treated with a bit of wax (old-fash­ioned meth­od, which makes the hand­ling of the ‘single card’ more se­cure) or it is treated with the Sci­ence Fric­tion (which is easi­er to sep­ar­ate later, but re­quires a bit more at­ten­tion in the hand­ling whilst deal­ing). Pick your choice. I am happy with both meth­ods, but tend to the old waxed card be­cause of the care­less­ness whilst hand­ling the double card.

The in­dex thing is solved in a com­pletely dif­fer­ent way. The deck it­self serves as an ‘open in­dex’. The card that Denis ap­par­ently pro­duced out of his pock­et is in my case in my ‘Avalon En­vel­ope’ (this is my ver­sion of a multi-pur­pose en­vel­ope, based on the work­ings of Ro­ger Cursor’s great switch en­vel­ope).

In the en­vel­ope (and vis­ible through the win­dow cutout) is the back of a red backed card. This en­vel­ope is placed in full view onto the table. Of course, the card in the en­vel­ope is a dummy card.

Now the red deck is shown and it is ex­plained that it is in new deck or­der (without show­ing the faces, of course). The deck is rib­bon spread on the table.

The odd and is in­tro­duced, again without sow­ing its face. Here I bring in a little sub­tlety I learned from the writ­ings of Theo An­nemann: I ask the spec­tat­or to sign the back of this card. This ac­tu­ally is not ne­ces­sary, but makes it all more con­vin­cing. With this little strategy, the idea of hav­ing more than the one card in play is can­celled out.

The spec­tat­or stops and the card is fairly in­ser­ted at this point. Of course, this brings the card auto­mat­ic­ally right on top of the prop­er card in the new deck or­der.

The spread is gathered up and the deck squared. When us­ing the wax meth­od, a slight pres­sure onto the deck makes sure that the card sticks to the card un­der­neath. With the Sci­ence Fric­tion pre­par­a­tion, you have to do noth­ing here.

Now the cards are dealt slowly face-up onto the table (in a spread, so the spec­tat­ors can fol­lowed the or­der). At one time there will be the card with the odd back. Deal this card (the double) onto the table and con­tin­ue with the rest of the deck. Due to the pre­par­a­tion there are no ‘moves’ to pay at­ten­tion to, and it is the nat­ur­al hand­ling without any ‘get-ready’ or any fum­bling that makes it all so de­cept­ive.

The ef­fect is fin­ished here. In a low key, you re­move the double card from the deck, and put it into your pock­et. In the pock­et, you quickly sep­ar­ate the two cards and palm the card from the reg­u­lar deck. In a seated per­form­ing con­di­tion I use a simple gam­bler­’s cop here.

Then you take the en­vel­ope and trans­fer it to the hand palm­ing the card (thereby load­ing the card un­der­neath) and pro­duce the ‘reg­u­lar’ card from the en­vel­ope. Add this to the deck, which is now com­plete and un­pre­pared and you are good to go.

Note:

When you don’t want to use the Avalon en­vel­ope (or the one from Ro­ger Curzon), a clas­sic­al Fred Kaps Wal­let is a nice solu­tion. Have the wal­let set-up in the pock­et. When you re­moved the odd card (double) from the deck and pre­tend to place it into your pock­et. In real­ity, the double is loaded into the wal­let. This might be the easi­est load­ing pro­ced­ure of a trick wal­let, all done in the open.

After some time mis­dir­ec­tion (im­port­ant!), reach for the wal­let. Open the zippered com­part­ment and re­move the red back card from it. The cards are sep­ar­ated in­side the com­part­ment, there­fore the Sci­ence Fric­tion pre­par­a­tion might be a bit easi­er and more prac­tic­al.

I do know that it is a fine ef­fect, when us­ing an in­dex, that you can bring out the reg­u­lar card and openly re­move the double and re­place it with the reg­u­lar card. Well, my solu­tion is quite close to this ideal but more more prac­tic­al.

I per­formed this a few times at my lec­tures without ex­plan­a­tion. Most ma­gi­cians were com­pletely fooled and angry with me, be­cause I didn’t ex­plain it. Now you know how I did it!

Ad­dendum:

Denis in­formed me that this is not his ef­fect, but Held­er Guimarães’.

The Goz­intha Box in­ven­ted by Lub­or Fiedler is ac­tu­ally a bril­liant in­ven­tion. Un­for­tu­nately, it has not been giv­en as much at­ten­tion and love as it de­serves. In real­ity, this feat is not that easy to per­form, and the hand­ling needs to be prac­tised very care­fully.

It is no­tice­able that most of the Goz­intha boxes avail­able on the mar­ket are love­lessly de­signed and man­u­fac­tured. Above all, the pro­por­tions of many of them, which are based on a pub­lished for­mula, are not cor­rect. Only if the di­men­sions of the for­mula are pre­cisely ad­hered to does the Goz­intha box have its de­cept­ive power.

An­oth­er weak point of many designs is the dec­or­a­tion. If you think about it lo­gic­ally, you come to the fol­low­ing con­clu­sion: What sense does it make to use two dif­fer­ent col­oured boxes? The weak point here is that the view­er nat­ur­ally can­not re­mem­ber which col­our was on the out­side and which was on the in­side. So the ef­fect is lost.

For this reas­on, I de­signed my Goz­intha box in the form of a stand­ard ship­ping box, which con­tains an at­tract­ive gift box from which the prop is then re­moved for a trick. Only then are the pack­aging and gift box re­as­sembled, this time with the pack­aging in­side the gift box. This makes the im­possib­il­ity of the pro­cess clear­er for the view­er.

In the fol­low­ing video, I have ex­plained all the sub­tleties that seem im­port­ant to me. Pay par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to the in­geni­ous hand­ling of how the boxes are opened and de­pos­ited. Everything is trimmed for ef­fi­ciency, there are no su­per­flu­ous move­ments and one ac­tion flows seam­lessly into the next. You have to get used to it un­til everything flows and be­comes second nature, but after a short time this hand­ling be­comes second nature.

Link to the video

If you are in­ter­ested in my Goz­intha box, you can or­der it here.

If you’re aim­ing to in­fuse a sense of genu­ine an­tiquity into your present­a­tion ma­ter­i­als – wheth­er it be an old-style let­ter con­tain­ing cards, akin to those used in the Gipsy Curse, or per­haps a cal­en­dar re­sem­bling an an­cient leath­er-bound tome – here’s my proven meth­od for ex­cep­tion­al res­ults.

Be­gin with the most eco­nom­ic­al re­cycled pa­per you can find. News­pa­pers, now avail­able in note­pad form, are a great op­tion, as is hand­made pa­per, which can also provide ex­cel­lent res­ults.

To give the pa­per an old-world charm, I use AQUACLOU li­quid wood stain, eas­ily found in the paint sec­tion of any hard­ware store. This stain is avail­able in a range of col­ors, al­low­ing you to choose based on how aged you want the pa­per to ap­pear. I of­ten choose beech, a some­what light­er tone, for a subtle aged ef­fect.

When ap­ply­ing the wood stain with a sponge, make sure to cov­er both sides of the pa­per. Em­brace your artist­ic side by adding a few ir­reg­u­lar spots – the ob­ject­ive is to cre­ate a con­vin­cingly aged look. Re­cycled pa­per is par­tic­u­larly suited for this tech­nique due to its su­per­i­or ab­sorbency. While the pa­per is still damp, crumple it into a tight ball to en­sure thor­ough sat­ur­a­tion.

Then, care­fully un­fold the pa­per and tear it to achieve your de­sired edges. If you’re go­ing for a rough, torn look rather than clean-cut edges, do this while the pa­per is still moist, us­ing a ruler as your guide.

The trans­form­at­ive step comes next: smooth out the damp pa­per by iron­ing it on a me­di­um heat set­ting. This not only dries the pa­per thor­oughly but also em­beds the creases, en­han­cing the an­tique ap­pear­ance. You’ll end up with pa­per that both looks and feels au­then­tic­ally aged.

This ar­ti­fi­cially aged pa­per is now ready for use and can be fed into a laser or inkjet print­er, just like stand­ard pa­per. You are now equipped to cre­ate a vari­ety of props with a con­vin­cingly vin­tage look. This meth­od en­sures that each piece of pa­per not only car­ries an au­then­t­ic aged ap­pear­ance but also re­tains the func­tion­al­ity for mod­ern print­ing needs. Wheth­er it’s for the­at­ric­al props, unique present­a­tions, or cre­at­ive art pro­jects, this tech­nique of­fers an easy and ef­fect­ive way to pro­duce old-look­ing doc­u­ments that still meet con­tem­por­ary re­quire­ments.

As a ma­gi­cian, I’m usu­ally re­luct­ant to re­veal the secrets of my craft to fel­low con­jur­ers, pre­fer­ring to keep these mys­ter­ies close to my chest. How­ever, giv­en my prom­ise to you, I’ll make an ex­cep­tion this time. While I have a gen­er­al fond­ness and re­spect for wiz­ards, I must ad­mit, there are as­pects about them that trouble me.

Through­out my ca­reer, my monik­er has be­come sur­pris­ingly pop­u­lar, ap­pear­ing on vari­ous ma­gic­al paraphernalia like handker­chiefs, card decks, gim­micks, and more. In­triguingly, a so-called card ex­pert even named a trick after me. Ad­mit­tedly, the trick was­n’t spec­tac­u­lar, but it did el­ev­ate my fame among a new gen­er­a­tion of ma­gi­cians. In grat­it­ude, I thanked him.

Equally de­light­ful was a rock band that ded­ic­ated a song to me, which I par­tic­u­larly en­joyed for its lyr­ics. It was one of the rare in­stances where I was in­volved, al­beit subtly, and most per­formers did­n’t im­me­di­ately re­cog­nize me. Their linger­ing doubts about wheth­er the band had any real con­tact with me (they had­n’t) con­tin­ue to amuse me to this day. This in­dir­ect re­cog­ni­tion served as ex­cel­lent pro­mo­tion for my brand.

Neither the band nor oth­ers sought my per­mis­sion to use my name or ideas, nor did they of­fer any com­pens­a­tion. This nev­er bothered me; I knew I’d catch up with them even­tu­ally. In fact, I ap­pre­ci­ated the pub­li­city it brought to my brand. It was a long-term mar­ket­ing suc­cess, en­sur­ing my status as a fa­mil­i­ar name in many ma­gi­cians’ rep­er­toires.

Once, I en­countered a tal­en­ted ma­gi­cian named Dav­id Cop­per­field. It was­n’t his real name, but I had sug­ges­ted it years earli­er, con­sid­er­ing Mark Twain had com­pleted his work, and I as­sumed he would­n’t mind the use of one of his char­ac­ter­’s names (and no, Cop­per­field nev­er paid me for this sug­ges­tion).

Cop­per­field, one day, de­cided to fly. Lit­er­ally. It’s been a hu­man dream since the dawn of time, in­spired by birds and in­sects. Of course, his flight was a trick, as hu­mans can­’t nat­ur­ally fly. The il­lu­sion was astound­ing – Cop­per­field soar­ing across the stage, leav­ing audi­ences in awe. They were moved, some to tears, pro­claim­ing it the most in­cred­ible feat they’d ever seen a ma­gi­cian per­form.

For me, fly­ing is in­nate, a nat­ur­al ex­ten­sion of my ori­gins. How­ever, dur­ing one per­form­ance, Cop­per­field suffered a fall due to a tech­nic­al glitch. The il­lu­sion shattered, and the audi­ence faced the harsh truth that he could­n’t ac­tu­ally fly. People love to be­lieve in the im­possible, which is why il­lu­sions like mine work so well. On a re­lated note, I was the pi­on­eer of free fall, a skill I de­veloped mil­len­nia ago, con­trary to the be­lief that it was due to a tussle with my ce­les­ti­al peers.

The les­son here is pro­found: to truly cap­tiv­ate people, you must touch their souls. It’s a chal­len­ging but achiev­able goal, even for someone like me who spent thou­sands of years mas­ter­ing it. Once you reach a per­son’s soul, they be­come in­cred­ibly re­cept­ive to your in­flu­ence. Some­times, a mere nudge is all it takes. I’ve done this count­less times.

Con­sider a book test, which is more than it seems. It em­bod­ies ba­sic prin­ciples like de­cep­tion, false as­sump­tions, and dual real­it­ies. But let me ex­press my dis­dain for books first. They’re cum­ber­some, of­ten filled with noth­ing but te­di­ous text. I re­call someone who even de­veloped a mass print­ing sys­tem, flood­ing the world with these books. Des­pite my dis­like, ma­gi­cians have an odd fas­cin­a­tion with them, con­duct­ing ‘book tests’ for reas­ons bey­ond me.

Typ­ic­al book tests are mundane. A spec­tat­or se­lects a word from a book, and the ma­gi­cian ‘reads’ their mind to re­veal it. The pro­cess is dull and un­im­press­ive. A bet­ter ap­proach would be to dis­card the book en­tirely and dir­ectly read the spec­tat­or’s thoughts.

The real ma­gic lies in ma­nip­u­lat­ing emo­tions, not words. Souls are rich with var­ied feel­ings and thoughts, far more in­triguing than any book. Des­pite my re­peated ad­vice, most ma­gi­cians cling to their books, un­able to see bey­ond the prin­ted word.

If forced to use a book, I’d opt for an empty one, cre­at­ing an il­lu­sion of con­tent. This ap­proach al­lows me to weave a nar­rat­ive, en­ga­ging the spec­tat­or’s ima­gin­a­tion. The real trick is the lie – con­vin­cing the audi­ence that the book holds un­writ­ten stor­ies and ideas.

I’ve de­signed an in­geni­ous sys­tem us­ing ‘power words’, writ­ten in faint pen­cil across the pages. These words, de­vised by a Ger­man mys­tic known as H.S., are part of a clev­er meth­od to de­duce the spec­tat­or’s chosen word. The cat­egor­ies range from nature to emo­tions, each word chosen for its spe­cif­ic at­trib­utes.

The art of de­cep­tion in this trick is in­tric­ate, re­quir­ing skill­ful ma­nip­u­la­tion and a knack for storytelling. It’s about cre­at­ing a shared il­lu­sion, where the spec­tat­or be­lieves they’re see­ing words that aren’t there. This ‘double real­ity’ plays on their per­cep­tions, mak­ing the il­lu­sion even more com­pel­ling.

In con­clu­sion, re­mem­ber that the true es­sence of ma­gic lies in reach­ing the soul, not in the su­per­fi­ci­al­ity of words or ob­jects. Mas­ter­ing this art re­quires prac­tice, cre­ativ­ity, and an un­der­stand­ing of the hu­man psyche. Em­brace the lie, use it as your tool, and you’ll dis­cov­er the true power of ma­gic.

I’ve al­ways main­tained that the es­sence of true ma­gic lies in its abil­ity to en­gage emo­tions rather than mere words. The soul is a ma­gi­cian’s real play­ground, rich with a spec­trum of feel­ings, thoughts, and pas­sions. It’s in this depth where true won­der is un­earthed, not in the life­less words of a book.

Des­pite my fre­quent coun­sel over the cen­tur­ies, few of my protégés have heeded this ad­vice. In­ter­est­ingly, a young Brit­ish ma­gi­cian seemed to grasp the concept, fo­cus­ing on emo­tions rather than words, and has since gained fame for his soul-touch­ing per­form­ances. Most, how­ever, re­main fix­ated on their books, en­tranced by the tan­gib­il­ity and the po­ten­tial for gim­micks. What more can I do?

If I were com­pelled to use a book, which is against my usu­al in­clin­a­tions, I’d opt for an ima­gin­ary book with blank pages. This ap­proach would shift the fo­cus from the words to what lies in the spec­tat­or’s soul, mak­ing the book a ves­sel for their per­son­al con­tent rather than someone else’s prin­ted words.

The key tech­nique in this ap­proach is de­cep­tion. When I present this ‘blank’ book, I spin a tale: “This is a book yet to be writ­ten, and its con­tents are for you to ima­gine.” The con­fu­sion and won­der this cre­ates are palp­able. I might even spin a yarn about it be­ing the last note­book of Hem­ing­way, adding lay­ers to the nar­rat­ive. 

In ma­nip­u­lat­ing the audi­ence’s per­cep­tion, I use the book as a tool to delve into their ima­gin­a­tion. I guide them to en­vi­sion a story, to im­print their thoughts onto the blank pages. This in­ter­ac­tion is not about the book or the words; it’s about tap­ping into the depths of the hu­man psyche.

The book, of course, is­n’t really blank. It con­tains care­fully chosen ‘power words,’ faintly writ­ten to guide the audi­ence’s thoughts without their aware­ness. This meth­od, de­veloped by the tal­en­ted H.S., is a mas­ter­piece of de­cep­tion and in­flu­ence.

I cat­egor­ize these words based on their char­ac­ter­ist­ics, like ‘re­flect­ing sur­faces’ for words like GLASS and MIRROR, or ‘nature’ for TREE and FOREST. This cat­egor­iz­a­tion aids in the ‘fish­ing’ pro­cess, al­low­ing me to subtly de­duce the spec­tat­or’s thoughts. 

The ac­tu­al trick lies in the present­a­tion and the nar­rat­ive woven around these words. It’s about cre­at­ing a shared il­lu­sion, lead­ing the spec­tat­or to be­lieve they’re see­ing some­thing that is­n’t there. This ‘double real­ity’ is a power­ful tool in the ma­gi­cian’s ar­sen­al, blur­ring the line between per­cep­tion and real­ity.

As the ma­gi­cian, your task is to guide the spec­tat­or’s ima­gin­a­tion, to coax their chosen word from them without overtly ask­ing. It’s a del­ic­ate dance of sug­ges­tion and in­fer­ence, re­ly­ing heav­ily on your skill in read­ing people and craft­ing nar­rat­ives.

In the end, the aim is not just to re­veal a word, but to cre­ate an ex­per­i­ence that res­on­ates on a deep­er level. It’s about leav­ing the audi­ence with a sense of won­der, a feel­ing that they’ve touched some­thing ma­gic­al and in­ex­plic­able. That’s the true art of ma­gic – not just to de­ceive, but to en­chant and in­spire.

In my ex­per­i­ment, I use the lie as a cru­cial tech­nique. The beauty of start­ing with a lie even be­fore the per­form­ance be­gins is that it sets the stage for a thrill­ing jour­ney into the ima­gin­a­tion. The book, seem­ingly blank, is ac­tu­ally in­scribed with words writ­ten in light pen­cil, form­ing a hid­den script of ‘power words.’ These words are a vi­tal part of the sys­tem, in­geni­ously de­vised by the re­source­ful H.S. from Ger­many, who deeply ex­plored mys­tic­al arts and in­ven­ted sev­er­al book tests. His sys­tem bril­liantly util­ized rich, force­ful words, but un­for­tu­nately, he still bound them with­in the con­fines of a book. So, I ad­ap­ted his concept, us­ing a blank note­book in­stead, thereby cre­at­ing a book test devoid of an ac­tu­al book, amp­li­fy­ing the con­fu­sion and in­trigue.

The pro­cess of fish­ing for in­form­a­tion in this trick is subtle and seam­less. There’s an art to present­ing the words in groups, mak­ing it ap­pear as though no dir­ect ques­tions are be­ing asked. Con­struct­ing your own word list is es­sen­tial once you grasp the un­der­ly­ing sys­tem. Each word has unique char­ac­ter­ist­ics, and un­der­stand­ing these nu­ances is key to dis­tin­guish­ing them dur­ing the per­form­ance.

Con­sider the fol­low­ing word list as a start­ing point:

- GLASS, BOTTLE, MIRROR, KNIFE, SWORD, DAGGER (shar­ing the char­ac­ter­ist­ic of a ‘re­flect­ing sur­face’).

- TREE, LEAVE, FOREST (all re­lated to nature and be­long­ing to a forest).

- SCARF, TIE, CRAVAT (soft ma­ter­i­als worn on a per­son).

- LOVE, SYMPATHY, AFFECTION (emo­tions, in­tan­gible yet sim­il­ar).

These fif­teen words are just a be­gin­ning. Ex­pand your list with oth­er words fit­ting these cat­egor­ies, ex­plor­ing con­cepts like LIGHT, SUN, MOON, and emo­tions.

In­scribe these words onto a double spread in a blank note­book, pos­sibly even in a reg­u­lar note­book, for an ever-ready per­form­ance tool. The idea is to lie as of­ten as pos­sible, em­bed­ding these force words in your note­book for spon­tan­eous use. If ques­tioned about the note­book’s empti­ness, seize the op­por­tun­ity to spin an­oth­er tale: “It’s empty be­cause I’ve tran­scen­ded writ­ing with a pen­cil. Now, I col­lect thoughts, pro­ject­ing them onto these blank pages.”

Force a page on the spec­tat­or, subtly guid­ing them to your pre-se­lec­ted words. Avoid dir­ect quer­ies; in­stead, delve into their ima­gin­a­tion, ask­ing them to en­vi­sion keywords as if they were Hem­ing­way jot­ting down story ideas. This by­play, layered with lies, is cru­cial. It’s not about the word it­self, but the im­agery and emo­tions it con­jures.

Once the spec­tat­or has a word in mind, the book be­comes ir­rel­ev­ant. Shift fo­cus to the men­tal pic­ture they’ve formed. “Ima­gine your word as a vivid im­age. Em­brace it,” you might sug­gest. This is where the true ma­gic hap­pens, as you nav­ig­ate through pos­sib­il­it­ies, us­ing lies and half-truths to hone in on their thought.

Your ap­proach to ex­tract­ing the word should be as var­ied as the words them­selves. Con­sider the shared char­ac­ter­ist­ics of each group and use these as guid­ing clues. For ex­ample, KNIFE, SWORD, and DAGGER are all dan­ger­ous, shiny, metal­lic weapons, while GLASS, BOTTLE, and MIRROR are re­flect­ive, break­able ob­jects.

The ul­ti­mate goal is to cre­ate an im­mers­ive ex­per­i­ence, not just to re­veal a word. Every ma­gi­cian has their unique style of fish­ing for in­form­a­tion. If you lack a meth­od, feel free to ad­apt or bor­row from oth­ers. The es­sence of this art lies in the subtle in­ter­play of lies and truths, cre­at­ing a rich tapestry of il­lu­sion and real­ity.

In the af­ter­math, if ques­tioned, em­ploy your greatest tool: the lie. Sug­gest that maybe the spec­tat­or was hal­lu­cin­at­ing, or it was all a fig­ment of their ima­gin­a­tion. This con­fu­sion, am­bi­gu­ity, and de­cep­tion work to­geth­er har­mo­ni­ously, per­fectly mim­ick­ing the com­plex­it­ies of real life.

In con­clu­sion, re­mem­ber that the heart of ma­gic lies in its abil­ity to blur lines, to make the im­possible seem pos­sible, and to deeply con­nect with the audi­ence’s soul. It’s not about the tricks or the tools, but the ex­per­i­ence you cre­ate and the last­ing im­pres­sion you leave. Ma­gic, at its core, is an art of pro­found in­flu­ence and won­der.

Sub­tleties are fine in ma­gic routines, but they will not al­ways work as in­ten­ded. Much de­pends on the audi­ence’s level of at­ten­tion and in­tel­li­gence, and their in­terest and fo­cus on the per­form­ance.

So you can­’t al­ways be sure that the sub­tleties in a routine will work. Some­times they will, some­times only par­tially, and some­times they will pass un­noticed.

What can you do about it? Noth­ing. Just try to in­clude as many fin­esses as pos­sible that make sense for the routine.