I used to know a bar trick that I’d like to start amazing people with again. Thing is, I can’t remember it. I remember what i think it is, but obviously not enough to find it via googling. So, here I come to the TM’s for help. Here’s what I remember:
The trickster has their back turned for most of this trick (if not the whole thing). You have three objects on a table. You have your rube move the objects through instructions, and at the end of the trick, when everything is seemingly mixed up beyond all belief, you can tell them the order of the objects…or the one they touched last…or…
Or something like that. It was a GREAT trick that required some thinking on the Trickster’s part. So it’s not an automatic thing.
I’ll give a quick try (I didn’t watch all 12 minutes):
You line up three sugar packets, each a different color (he used red, white, and blue). You put in front of each an item symbolizing a weapon from rock, paper, scissors (he used a wadded napkin, a salt shaker, and a pair of scissors). He turns his back and has the participants swap two of the weapons. He’s then still able to tell them which sugar packet would win in any combination. He’s able to do this when weapons and/or sugar packets are switched.
He explains that once you’ve initially set up the packets and weapons, you should visualize a circle where, for example, the white packet would beat the blue packet who wold beat the red packet who would beat the white packet. Every time a switch is made the effect is just that the clockwiseness of the circle is switched. So it doesn’t matter what is switched, just how many switches are made.
Right – all you have to do is count the number of switches. Note that this assumes a) that your targets don’t lie to you when they say they’re making a switch and b) that all switches are just pairwise swaps, instead of rotations among all three objects.
