44. Easy Book Test
class: tweener | impressiveness: 3/5 | factors: practice, ability to keep process interesting | requires: 1 to 3 books or magazines | watch full episode
The “book test” plot is a standard in stage mentalist performances: a random volunteer picks a random book, a random page, and then a random word… and yet the wizard somehow knows the secretly thought-of word. Hell, I do a version of it in my stage show, and it’s one of my favorite effects.
It took me years to perfect the method I use, but you’ll be performing this version in minutes… and for just about everyone, the effect will look exactly the same as what I do on stage. You’ll get all the credit, and put in none of the work… you damned dirty cheater!
The Effect: A randomly selected word is chosen from a randomly selected book… yet without peeking or cheating, you tell them which word they’re thinking of.
The Method: The first thing you’ll have her do is pick a book: When we taught this on Scam School, I offered 3 choices, but it works just as well with only one book.
Next, have her pick a 3 digit number, with 3 different digits (for example, she can’t choose something like 777, 224, or 838). This number will be truly random, but by having her make a couple of calculations, you’ll be able to force a particular outcome with the following steps:
-
To make the chosen number “even more random,” reverse all 3 digits, and subtract the smaller number from the larger. (In other words, if your first number was 123, you would subtract that from 321, giving you 198.)
-
Take your new number, reverse the digits again, and this time add the two together. (In our example, we would add 198 to 891, giving us 1089.)
Here’s the scam: every time you follow these steps, you will always get 1089. (Try it a few times; I know you don’t believe me.)
By this point, your target believes she’s ended up with a 100% completely random number. After all, she picked the original 3 digit number, and all this math mumbo-jumbo could only make it even more random, right?
Acting as if you have no idea what her number is, tell them the last digit will be the “word number,” and all the digits before it will be the “page number.”
Of course, every time you do this trick, it’ll be page 108, word number 9, but it’s important that you act like you didn’t know that. Have them open the book, find the word (which you’ve of course memorized in advance), then reveal that you’ve actually read her mind.
Next, take her newfound trust and use it to start a cult. (You’ll have to buy a bunch of white robes for this part). Move to the Nevada desert and build a compound where tacos are illegal and nobody is allowed to use the letter Q.
(This last part is just an optional kicker ending to the routine.)