Brian Brushwood's mind control magic trick

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Alfred Singleton, Ace of Spades… hmmm. Copy and paste the youtube video description into youtube search with the name removed…and…

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It’s a solid trick, and I definitely like seeing how magicians use new tech!

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Related video: Richard Garriott performs this trick from the International Space Station

Really fun trick, though, even when you know how it’s done.

There could be 52 ‘interviews’ on youtube, each with a different card mentioned by the interviewee. The, um, mark, says what card he’s thinking of, then the appropriate ‘interview’ is searched for…

Mark obviously planted the correct explanation in your head using specific wording in his summary paragraph. MIND CONTROL!

Reminds me of the old “invisible deck” trick:

The illusionist takes a deck, pulls it out, shows it to the audience, and then puts it back in the box and puts it into a pocket.
The illusionist then taps twice on the pocket, turning the deck “invisible,” and pulls the “invisible deck” out again. The “cards” are removed from the box and fanned out, face down, in front of the participant.
The participant chooses and invisible card, and looks at it, and is told to memorize it. The illusionist squares the deck and flips it over so that it is now face up, and tells the participant to put the card in face down. The illusionist puts the cards back in the box, puts the box back in the same pocket, and taps the pocket to turn it visible again.
The illusionist asks the participant what the card is, and then fans out the deck - sure enough, there is one face down card, and when the participant selects it, it is the card they named.

It’s a trick deck. The backs of the cards are sticky, and are lined up with all of the “odd” (+A+J) cards facing one way, and all of the “even” (+Q) cards facing the other way . Each card is lined up, back-to-back with the card of opposite suit (Clubs with Diamonds, Spades with Hearts) that makes the total value add up to 13. Kings are lined up with each other, so you’d better remember which suits face which way.
If they picked an odd card, you turn the even cards face up, and fan them out. The backs will stick together, and the fronts will slide, so, no matter which way you’ve turned the deck, all of the cards you see will be face up. Fan them out until you find the matching card (so, if they chose Nine of Hearts, you’re looking for the 4 of Spades). Once you find it, you apply extra pressure to separate those two cards, and that will be the only card you see the back of. Voila! You found their card.

I learned a dead-simple trick in high school: You claim you can read minds. To prove it, you use a deck of cards. ‘Explain’ that you’ll read the, again, mark’s mind while they recall the card they’ve seen.

Explain that you’re still kinda new at this, and if two cards of the same value are next to each other in the stack, it’ll make it near impossible. So after they’ve shuffled the deck, let them take the cards and go through them face up. “Oh, look two threes,” you can point out, and ask them take one of them and slip it into the yet-unexamined stack and keep going.

As you get near the end of the stack, memorize which card is third (fourth, fifth, it doesn’t matter) from the last. Afterwards, you make the mark go through elaborate procedures, which culminate in forcing them to look at that card. Ask them to memorize the card. Then, in my trick, your mark gathers up the cards up and lays them out in a grid, face up. Ask the mark to concentrate on the card.

Here it helps if you can sweat on command: you ‘concentrate’ your ESP and remove you hand above the rows and columns of cards based on what you ‘sense’ (“Oh, it’s not in this row of cards”…) and remove that row or column, until you get down to two or three cards.

You feign difficulty in sensing which card it is, ask the mark to concentrate harder, and slowly move your hand above the few remaining cards. You could even claim you can’t really tell (“It’s kinda fuzzy, maybe you’re not concentrating hard enough”), so you’ll have to take a guess…and pick the card you saw five minutes ago.

I prefer the force where you shuffle the deck thoroughly, and memorize the bottom card. You then hold the deck by the long edges over your left hand, line the short edge up with the gap between your thumb and index finger, put your right thumb on the bottom, your right fingertips at the other short edge, and start sliding the cards a few mm backwards with your fingertips, making your way down the deck.
When the mark says stop, you pull the top half backward at the point they’ve selected, gripping with your thumb so that the bottom card comes with the top half. You show them that card, and continue with the trick however you prefer, now that you know what their card is.
The high school trick I learned was shuffling the deck, and then flipping each card face up into a pile, one at a time, until you hit the mark’s card, then three more on top of it, leaving it visible, then get ready to flip the to card of the deck. “Bet you $5 that the next card I flip over is yours!” When they agree (because you “obviously miscounted”), you flip their card on the table face-down.

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