Magician Tricks – Learn Magic Tricks Using Items From Home – Part 2
This is a Magic Trick I found in one of my many books on magic. It requires no props only a piece of paper with a few letters written on it. The trick itself demonstrates the precision of mathematics but you can use it to impress your friends with your amazing mind reading skills. Remember to perform this mind reading trick with an actors stage presence. Use your most mysterious sounding voice and have a blast performing it.
My name is Magic – This is the name of the trick.
Ask your audience to think of a number any number between three and twenty.
Give them the following instructions.
Ask them to start counting along the letters of the name, written below.
D R A K E
– – – S – J
– – – E N O
Start from the letter D and then go around in a square, counting one letter at a time. Continue counting around just the darker square of letters until you reach your chosen number.
Now starting on exactly the same letter you ended on counting it as number one start counting your chosen number counter-clockwise, just count around the darkened square ignoring the first two lighter letters D and R.
Stop when you have reached the number you chose in your mind and let the mind reader know you are done.
Now you, the magician mind reader, with your back to your audience and using your most mysterious voice say “Although I cannot see you I think you have ended on the letter E”.
Amazing isn’t it!
As you work your way through more magic tricks that you are adding to your repertoire begin to focus on your presentation. Remember every magic act is a theatrical performance. Magic is classified as Arts and Entertainment and the sub-classification is Performing Arts.
This might be a good time to introduce you to the term patter. All successful performing magicians make use of patter. Patter is the story line, jokes, or other talking that accompanies the performance of a trick. Fred Kaps (1926-1980) regarded by many to be the greatest magician in the world, raised the bar when it comes to the use of the patter that accompanied his acts. He performed magic with such charm and personality that everything he did seemed real. After his success on television audiences expected more charm and charisma, as well as technical perfection from other magicians.
So now you have an idea of where to begin with learning easy to perform magic tricks. These tricks presented in the series Magician Tricks – Magic Tricks Using Items From Home are all easy to learn magic tricks and also easy to perform. You can be the worlds greatest magician. In part one of this series we covered some tricks that demonstrated the laws of force and friction. In this second article we showed you a trick that relies on mathematics. There are still many other magic tricks to introduce you to, each surprising stunt is really an experiment in physics, chemistry or perception. So put on your magicians cape and start practising.
