And he’s freaking out. He’s 5 years old, and has a deck of cards he’s playing with. He’s pulling each card off the top of the deck, being very careful not to show the card, and is holding up the card in front of his face, and asking me to guess the card.
So far, I’ve gotten 100% right. How?
It’s a bright day today, and the room is filled with sunlight. Basically turning his glasses into mirrors. This phenomenon is lost on him and he’s wide eyed at my mystical abilities.
You are so evil.
My mom and her siblings used to participate in a card “trick” that their father liked to play at parties. He would tell the people at the dinner parties that he had a friend that could read his mind and guess the card taken from a deck. He, of course, would see the card, then place the call to his " friend" (he had a standard name for him, but I don’t remember it right now!). Of course, he’d dial home, and one of the kids would answer and just start chanting “hearts…clubs…diamonds…spades” and he’d say " Mr Smith?" into the phone for the correct suit, while explaining to the party-goers that Smith was a little hard of hearing. The kids would then start with “Ace, two, three, four…” until dad would again say “Mr Smith?” to identify the card, and then using " old-man-voices" the kids would just repeat " four of hearts, four of hearts" or whatever while the phone was passed around the room. My grandfather managed to impress quite a few people back then!
Whee, now my 9 year old daughter is floored. This is too fun! It doesn’t help that I’m hamming up the part of a psychic, either. They practically think I’m going to walk on water next.
That’s a great trick, mnemosyne, I’ll have to remember that for our next family get together.
And if my kids make the scratch Montel does, then I can justify my actions.
Heh. I guessed your method before looking at the spoiler box because my six-years-younger brother did that to me when I was about 13. We’d play “Go Fish” and it drove me nuts how he bled me from my cards consistently or knew to call out for cards I just drew. I guess I didn’t give the 7-year-old enough credit. I didn’t even figure it out–he told me.
The effect is properly called, “Mr. Wizard” and is an old stand-by of magicians for years. I’ve pulled it myself on a number of friends who were floored by it. It is a classic example of how people automatically make assumptions, and how magicians exploit those assumptions.
