I recently bought a copy of Steve Dacri’s Spongeball Toolbox, and have started to watch the DVD. I have a lot to learn, but I thought I’d show people what I can already do with spongeballs, that is, before even starting to learn anything from the DVD.
The chapter of Fail-Safe Magic (i.e. self-workers) in the Stein and Day Handbook of Magic contains, among other things, a trick described by Marvin Kaye under the title Find the Ball. The main presentation given by Marvin involves cups and balls, but he mentions that it can also be performed as a coin trick, indicating quite rightly that the trick can be adapted to a wide range of equipment.
In a quest to learn more about the trick (e.g. whether it has an official name) I started a thread on Talkmagic and learned that it is associated with Bob Hummer, but I don’t know who should be credited with the elaborations that appear in Marvin’s presentation. The trick works by a simple mathematical principle and Marvin suggests presenting it as a puzzle for a spectator to solve. It really is more of a puzzle than a demonstration of magic, but it is also simple, repeatable, more-or-less impromptu, and rather cute. (”Puzzle” is almost a dirty word among magicians, but that is not a controversy I intend to address today.)
I’ve been working on my own presentation, a full description of which can be found in the protected post entitled The Magic Triangle. A preview follows.
On New Year’s Eve, 2007, I performed some magic for my extended family, including children. Here is a summary of my routine.
What’s the most boring trick ever invented?
If you’re like a lot of magicians, you will probably say it’s the one where the magician takes 27 cards and deals them into three piles of nine cards each. Then the spectator chooses a pile and memorises a card within it. Then the magician puts all three piles back together with the selected one in the middle. Then the magician deals the cards into three piles again, and the spectator looks through them and indicates which contains the selected card. Then you put them together again, deal them out again, have the appropriate pile indicated again, and by a simple mathematical principle you now know exactly where the spectator’s card is. So you put the piles together once more and reveal the card that was chosen.
Lots of people know it, it’s easy to figure out how it works, and it’s tedious to perform. As something for children to learn to do, it’s a classic; as something for magicians to perform, it is not. But over a period of years I transformed the 27-card trick into something which can genuinely entertain an adult audience. And that, some would say, is magic in its own right.
Welcome to the special place I have created for sharing ideas about magic. Please read my introduction (which tells you, among other things, how to get the password), and if you wish you can also read my inventory of magic I own.
I have announced the creation of this blog over on my main blog.
Have fun, and try to dodge if I look like I’m about to turn you into a frog.
