Once when I was in high school, I was the guy in the audience that the magician called upon. He asked me for a flavor of soda. I was quite intent on answering “sarsaparilla”, but for some reason “root beer” is what came out of my mouth, and indeed that’s what his guess was. I walked away convinced that he had somehow steered me into root beer, but I could not figure out how he did it. I really wished the whole thing had been taped so I could review it and see where the steering happened.
It sounds similar to a trick a teacher told me about that made her students think she was a mind reader.
She’d hand each student a quarter of a sheet of notebook paper and ask them to write down their name and favorite color. She then had them fold their answers in half and put them in a bag she passed around. She picked out the first one and said she couldn’t read it. Then before she picked out the second answer, she’d hold her finger up to her forehead like she was receiving psychic signals and say “I see Charlie likes red.” She’d then pull out the second answer and unfold it and show it to the class.
Actually, she read the first answer just fine. She kept that answer in front of her, repeated what she read while doing the psychic act, then pulled out the second answer and switched it with the first. She had the bag in front of her so the class couldn’t see her switching. Then she’d remember the second answer she pulled out, say “I see that Lily likes yellow” and repeat the process.
That’s the way to hide things in plain sight: make the setup and your actions look normal and use that to conceal the switch.
All right, I think it must be a version of this one. Thanks everyone!