Eight principles
01
Say less than you can do. An audience forgives a small promise kept; it never forgives a large one broken.
02
Misdirection is attention, not distraction: where you look, what you ask, where your voice goes. Tell a story and the audience gives you the room.
03
A trick that happens to a volunteer is remembered ten times longer than one done in front of them. Give the spectator the choice, the card and the credit.
04
Time is the performer's real instrument. A beat before the reveal and a beat after it do more than any gimmick.
05
A repeat teaches the audience how to watch. Leave them wanting, and keep a different surprise for the encore.
06
Self-working tricks are a perfect place to start: they let you concentrate on presentation, not method.
07
Say clearly that it is a trick. Mystery, not mysticism: the wonder is in not knowing how, never in claiming powers you do not have.
08
Perform for a mirror, then a friend, then a stranger. The words need as much practice as the hands.
The trick library
Tap a trick to play it on its home page. Open “How it works” to learn the secret. These are classic self-working tricks, offered for fun and learning.
01
Six cards. One thought. One disappearance.
None of the second six cards is among the first six. Every card was replaced, so whichever one you chose, it is gone. The surprise lives in how confidently the missing card is announced.
02
A prediction sealed before you begin.
Whatever the starting number, the answer is 1089. The difference of a number and its reverse always has middle digit 9 and outer digits that sum to 9; reversing it and adding always produces 1089 (use 099 if the difference has two digits).
03
Think of a number from 1 to 31. I will find it.
Each card holds the numbers whose binary digit for that card is 1: the cards start with 1, 2, 4, 8 and 16. Add the first numbers of the cards you said yes to, and you have the number.
04
Name any total. The square will already add up to it.
A fixed arrangement of 0 to 15 adds to 30 in every line. Adding an equal amount to every cell raises each line equally, and the leftover 1, 2 or 3 is spread by adding 1 to a set of four cells that has exactly one cell in every row, column and diagonal.
05
I will find your card in three deals, without once looking at your face.
Each time the chosen column is slipped between the other two, your card moves toward the middle of the pack. After three rounds it is always in position 11, the exact centre of 21.
06
Any digit in. Six identical digits out.
3 × 7 × 11 × 13 × 37 = 111,111. Any digit times 111,111 is that digit repeated six times.
07
Fifteen Indian cities. One of them is in your mind.
It is the same binary idea as the number cards. Each city has a secret number from 1 to 15, and each card holds those whose binary digit is on.
08
Pick any nine dates in a square. I know their total before you add.
The middle date is always the smallest plus 8, and the nine dates balance around it. The total is simply 9 times the middle date.
09
Hide a digit. I will recover it.
A number and any scramble of it leave the same remainder when divided by 9, so their difference is a multiple of 9, and the digits of a multiple of 9 add to a multiple of 9. The missing digit is whatever completes that sum.
10
Pick two numbers. I will tell you the sum of ten before they exist.
In any sequence made this way, the sum of the first ten terms equals 11 times the seventh term.
11
A chain of thoughts that ends in one place.
Multiplying any 1 to 10 by 9 and adding the digits always gives 9, and 9 minus 5 is 4. The fourth letter is D, and Denmark is the most natural country, with its second letter E for elephant and elephants being grey. It does not work on everyone, and that is part of the lesson about suggestion.
12
Choose a symbol. See whether the envelope agrees.
On a screen, the envelope is a line of code that writes itself after you choose. In the theatre, the same effect is done with a real envelope, a real audience and a great deal of care. That difference is the whole art.
13
Any four digits. One destination.
This is Kaprekar's routine. Every four-digit number with at least two different digits reaches 6174 within seven steps, and 6174 maps to itself.
14
Three numbers in, and an age comes out.
(2n + 5) × 50 = 100n + 250. Add the right constant and subtract the birth year, and 100n + age remains: the first digit is your n, the last two are your age.
15
Press stop on any number. The headline is always the same.
(2n + 8) ÷ 2 − n = 4. The n cancels completely, so the starting number never matters.
16
A crystal symbol appears. It is yours.
A two-digit number minus the sum of its digits is always a multiple of 9 (9, 18, 27 and so on). Every multiple of 9 carries the same symbol, and the symbol is changed each time you play.
17
Watch the golden orb. It is faster than it looks.
There is no trick here: it is a pure attention game, so every miss is simply the eye being led elsewhere, which is exactly how misdirection works on a stage.
18
A second vanish, with a different deck.
The same principle as the first vanish: all six cards are replaced, so any card you hold in mind is gone.
19
Choose a card for the envelope that was sealed yesterday.
Same as the Telepathy Test: on a screen, a sealed envelope can quietly rewrite itself. It is a joke about prediction, not a claim about it.
Practise like a performer
Mystery, not mysticism.
Rehearse the words. Speak the patter aloud until it sounds like you, not a script.
Rehearse the pause. Count a silent beat before and after every reveal.
Rehearse the reaction. Decide in advance what you will do if it goes wrong. The audience remembers how you recover, not the slip.