26. X-Ray Eyes
class: tweener | impressiveness: 5/5 | factors: repeatable trick, minor setup, largely impromptu | requires: multiple bottle caps, a coin, a friend | watch full episode
This is one of the simplest, most versatile tricks in this book. You can play it as a demonstration of supernatural abilities, a show of luck, or a test of your keen senses. It’s perfect because it forces your audience to focus obsessively on all the wrong things, which only makes the effect more powerful.
The Scene: Lay out five quarters in criss-cross formation, and cover them with five bottle caps. Announce that as a result of being struck by radioactive lightning, you now have perfect vision and a photographic memory (just go with it). To demonstrate your talents, turn around and invite your friend to steal one of the quarters you’ve covered up and replace the bottle cap exactly back in place. Make sure they do their best to make it look like absolutely nothing has changed. Yet when you turn back around, using nothing but your incredible powers of perception, you’ll correctly identify which bottle cap was robbed.
And you’ll keep doing it. As many times as they want. The more they watch you, the more impossible the trick will seem. They’ll insist on covering your eyes. They’ll cover your ears. They’ll try to trick you by switching around the bottle caps. None of these will foil you. You’ll always make the correct identification.
The Method: You have a secret assistant on your side. Before your friends show up, make friends with the guy next to you at the bar. Buy him a drink and teach him a simple code: when a bottle cap is robbed, have him indicate which one is missing a quarter by placing his drink on the corresponding position on his napkin.
If you don’t want to go meeting strangers at a bar, you can just as easily pre-arrange something like this with one your friends.
But remember that the strength of this scam is that there doesn’t appear to be any connection between you and the random guy drinking next to you. If people know that you have a connection to other people watching, they’re going to be much more likely to suspect a secret assistant or code.