My hypothesis: Examine the glasses during the close-ups, before the milk gets poured in. There is more refraction of the background than you would expect if the glass were empty. I suspect the glasses already have a transparent liquid of some kind, probably more viscous than water, and something that doesn’t render the milk obviously less opaque as it gets diluted. Even so, the milk is visibly watered down on the final pour from the big vessel back into the smaller ones. The patterns on the glasses are intended to conceal the liquid they already contain. Note, when he pours, he’s careful not to tip the receiving glass too much.
Ooh, I hadn’t thought of the possibility of other liquids already present. There’s also the possibility that there’s a chemical reaction that turns the clear liquid milky, so the “milk” isn’t even being diluted at all.
As with any magic trick, there’s more than one possible way to do it, and the difficulty isn’t in figuring out a way; it’s in figuring out which of the ways it was.
Saying “in Europe” just makes it transparently a force (unless you want to count Dagestan.) You want some illusion of free choice, though there’s only about five or so countries at all beginning with “D.”
I would think the milk would be seen billowing out in the transparent liquid, like when food coloring is dripped into water, but maybe the liquid is thicker.
It’s only “transparent” if you immediately realize that your random number has been turned into a 4. That’s the trick, that virtually guarantees the outcome.
True – I guess I’ve heard enough of these math tricks (really, it only takes a couple to realize what is going on – God those math tricks are boring) that whenever I hear any trick starting with transforming the number in some way and then reincorporating the original number into the math, that a predetermined result will happen. (Of course, knowing that, I would be the person to pick the most obscure country starting with that letter in the next part of the trick.)
That, or doing something to the number that turns it into a multiple of 9, and then adding up digits.
I think it is similar to the pour milk into a paper cone trick. Which I do know how is done. My brother did it in junior high talent contest.
The jug of milk had a false center. All the milk was on the outside of. When it looked like you were pouring milk into the paper cone, it was actually just moving into the false center.
Penn and Teller had another card trick at a pool/beach where the dramatic answer was “Was it the (card name)?” and point to (something), where (something) was one of fifty-two items scattered around the pool that had (card name) on it. The real trick was to memorize the fifty-two locations correctly. They did mess up occasionally.
I would think that anything simple is not, and anything easy is expensive. Talking with a local magician, it’s also preparing the audience’s mind to see what you want them to see.
I don’t know whether any contemporary mentalist acts do this, but I’ve read of ones in the past where the magician had some sort of radio or earpiece, and his assistant had a device that could produce Morse code.
If you have a hidden earpiece, why bother with Morse code?
Because your assistant twitching their thumb is much less obvious than them speaking into a microphone.
Peter Popoff was caught using a radio earpiece (and no Morse code)
I love the final sentence in that section.
A former associate of Popoff from 1965 to 1990 said, “When you’re praying for the sick, it’s through the Holy Spirit, and there’s some times that it works freely, and then there are other times when the Spirit’s just not there.” He went on to say that “on the days it didn’t show, you still had to pay for the auditorium, so you needed to help the Holy Spirit along.”[2]
So, I guess God’s love is… an intermittent thing. I would be interested in finding out how often H.S. needed helping along vs. working freely.
I’m not forgetting anything. As I’ve said explicitly, I don’t see any way that the pre-selection would give the certainty the act would require to be impressive; even if you are right about certain people being predictably unimaginative. And you haven’t outlined any step by step process by which it would. Do you have any evidence that even unimaginative people always say Chevrolet? Given how many common brands of car there are? It makes no real sense.
I don’t really know much about car brand popularity, but this table suggests that there are probably at least 10 brands with little difference in fame and popularity.
As LHD has said, there are far more reliable methods. Why rely on some highly chance alleged mentalist thing when there are any number of sleight of hand/trickery options that are known to work reliably, basically every time.
I suppose in a sense it’s all trickery but I think the distinction that Gyrate is probably aiming at is between some form of direct physical or verbal misdirection, as opposed to trickery that relies on certain quirks of psychology and experience to create a certain impression while actually openly pretty much openly not doing much at all.
I agree it would be quite hard to draw a sharp line between these things.
This happened many years ago. I was not present for the so-called mentalists act, and only heard what it was like from a couple of people who were there. I don’t know what questions he asked, and used the “name a car” one as just an example of what he might have asked.
This was not a situation that people bought tickets to attend. This was entertainment supplied by the organization for the Saturday evening of the conference. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole point of the act was from Corporate’s viewpoint to highlight how suggestible people can be, and that escaped the attention of the people who told me about it.
I’m more inclined to say that I consider camera trickery to be a separate category of “magic” (or whatever). You can do pretty much anything with cameras these days without any stagecraft whatsoever. If you’re not fooling the person in the room with you, it’s just not the same. Which is why I prefer watching closeup magic to David Copperfieldesque spectaculars. I’m far more impressed by someone making a coin disappear from their hand when they’re standing right in front of me than making the Statue of Liberty disappear on television.
Cold reading is a skill in itself. It’s still a form of trickery, but like closeup magic it’s being done right in front of you and the best practitioners can do it without giving the trick away.
I’m surprised / shocked / aghast that no one has mentioned the WW1 POW escape classic, The Road to En-Dor by Elias Jones.
Its about him and an Australian POW captured by the Turks who try to effect escapes including becoming a mentalist act in the hope that this will improve their lot. It provides a detailed description of how they built up and used a classic mentalist act.
Who says I’m not around?
Every time a thread like this comes up, I make the same point: those who know won’t tell, and those who tell don’t know.
But that’s boring so no one ever pays any attention, which is perfectly okay.
Which is mostly true, particularly for a specific act, but people can certainly infer general methods using historical evidence (the faith healer using a mic for example).