The book test, this comes in many forms and is typically used by mentalists to give the impression that they have some telepathic ability. Books as props been used in magic for over 500 years and there are many variations as you’d imagine, for the book test. These include using specific books and forcing selection. Using sleight of hand for selection or using stooges and other gimmicks. I’m going to cover cover a couple of methods here for this fantastic mind reading illusion.
Okay, so the first example of mind reading book trick. I’m going to give you the mentalist Max Martin. I don’t want to say too much already. If you haven’t seen this trick I suggest you watch it. We have embedded the video below. Watch the illusion, watch all of it and see if you can figure out what he’s done to make the performance possible and I will explain after the video.
There are a lot of factors involved in this trick. A lot of them aren’t necessary for the trick it just creates more grandeur and illusion. You could recreate this trick in its entirety the only possible problem will be using the same book.
One thing to nice about this trick is the way Max delivers the trick. If you’ve watched his explanation you will know that he needs to participants to pick a particular book. Equivoque makes this particular part the trick possible and it’s really worth noting how he does it. Whenever use this technique if you’ve got a choice of free books you always tell the participants pick up two. If he doesn’t pick of the book you want him to pick that is excellent just telling to get rid of the two books left hand and used the one he didn’t pick. If he is picked up one of the books that you do want to use then you must know the selection day between the two books he has. Max does this by asking if one was to book stand out to him. If the participant picks the book you want you say that “it is excellent and you will go with that one”. If he picks the other than asking to pass that book to you and the one remaining is the one that you will use. It’s worth noting how natural Max does this adult think it raises any suspicion whatsoever and really makes you think that the participant chose that book by his own free will. The other part that arose my suspicion was that he would talk about the book unnecessarily saying it was one of the best sellers from a few years back.
The next part the trick involves taking a word from the corresponding page number to the numbers that Max has asked five participants to write down. Of course it doesn’t matter what the participants have written down. Max deserve very subtle rolling pass which forces the numbers that Max wants to give to the participant with the book. This book is very unique in that for each of the page numbers Max has given is all about artificial hair for each one of those five pages. So as long as Max draw something to do with take care he will seem to have telepathic powers. It’s an excellent trick perhaps the article a specialist unit to one who may are not the trick would be using that specific book. I’m going to show you another way of doing the trick that you can use any book for. It’s using a mathematical algorithm to force the page pick.
Using mathematics algorithms for mind reading
For mind reading tricks are quite a few ways you can use maths on your side. I’m sure you very simple example of a very simple algorithm for my reading trick as a similar outcome to the danish elephants trick. Okay so the trick;
Think of a number, any number
Multiply it by two
At 14th your total
Now divide your number by two
Now take that number away from your first number
The number you get is seven
no matter what the me choose the answer is always going to be seven. Now you don’t have to stop the trick here you can our senses choose the corresponding letter in the alphabet for the number so in this case will be the seventh letter which is G. Because our ass them to think of something beginning with G, for example think of a metal beginning with the letter you thought of. There are more than likely going to say gold.
As a problem here is that that equation is far too simple and it wouldn’t take so wall with much mathematical abilities to realise that the outcome is always going to be seven. So if you can do the book test there is a better way to do it.
1089 that’s my lucky number
this mathematical equation will set you up beautifully for the book test. It also appears to give a much greater illusion of free choice. The number they get will always be the same provided they do the maths correctly so it’s good to provide them with a calculator so they don’t make any mistakes.
- Before you begin you got to decide if you could use one or multiple books. If you decide to use multiple books you don’t need to force a choice as the number generated will always be the same if you use free books you will only need to remember free words one each corresponding book. For each of the books you need to turn to Page 108 and look at the ninth word, Remember it.
- Usually the act is performed by having two volunteers but there are different variations on this. Typically you will have one volunteer with the book and one volunteer to do the mathematical equations.
- Before you ask the volunteer to make the mathematical equation allied to set a little bit of foundation to make it more believable. If you say that without an equation and you just asked to randomly pick a number you really limit your selection as people always pick server numbers so to make it more random we will use this equation. Ask the volunteer with a calculator to pick think of any three digit number. You must also place in that statement the stipulation that none of the three in numbers must repeat. You can play this often a number away say that you don’t like numbers that repeat could you to pick 666 and that’s devil work. Or repeating numbers isn’t random enough and you want it to be as random as possible. E.G 256
- Next you will need to ask them to take that original number and reverse it. Then take the smaller number away from the bigger number. E.G. 652 – 256 = 396. Finally asked them to reverse that number and add them together 396 + 693 = 1089. If they follow this equation correctly they will always end up with 1089.
- Now tell them that the last digit will be the word on the page that the pick in the first three digits will be the page that they have to turn to. This will always make them turn to Page 108 and select the ninth word.
- You should already know what this word is as you preprepared the illusion and looked up at word in the book. All that is left is to deliver a performance this believable that you telepathically gain an word from them. You can deliver this in a number of ways you could sketch out the word on a piece of paper, write it down or just say it.
you can also do this with telephone books or dictionaries anything where it has over 109 pages will work.