This one truly concerns me because, frankly, I can’t get it to work!
I don’t want to disrespect the inventor, who is in reality a much better magician than I am. This effect has gotten rave reviews, and every magician that I’ve talked to has enjoyed doing it. This makes it clear to my mind that the problem is with my delivery on some level. Still, that delivery being what it is, this is not working.
Billed as “true” mind reading, a spectator is asked to “build” a card in their mind. I won’t go into method at all, but the strength is supposed to be that there is no “pick a card”, no “write this down”, no “whisper to your neighbor” kind of magic trick stuff. The card exists nowhere except in the spectator’s mind, which is then read by the mentalist.
Working with friends and family, it never worked because of familiarity issues. This is to be expected, especially in mentalism. But the premise reads so clear, and the theories are sound; this HAS to work! (In fact, I seem to remember my friends and I playing a game exactly like this in elementary school.)
Other great mentalists have added their own embellishments to the work, and I chose one of these handlings (from someone that I admire for other work he’s done), and placed it in the line-up.
This is close to the beginning (NOT the opener, or even the second effect) because from the earliest consideration I felt that I might need “recovery time” if it failed. That was a good decision.
The first show, the gentleman wasn’t even on the right key, ultimately giving a pairing option that wasn’t strictly possible. He’d misunderstood something; my fault, even though several others I talked to later said they were thinking of the “correct” card.
The second show was the same. The “no fishing” option broke down completely, even to the counting of pips. Right color, wrong end of the spread. I’ll have to write this one off as a loss, at least for my present skill level (that’s the story we’re sticking to!)
I want to “give it one more shot”, but my wife doesn’t know why I’d even consider it. There are MANY other ways of doing (in the audience’s perception) the same thing, and that’s probably what I should be looking at.
Rats!