Simon Aronson - Worker Bees - A Reset

Simon Aronson - Worker Bees - A Reset

Just for the challenge I tried to work out a reset to Simon Aronson's Worker Bees. I thought I'd share my result for anyone who might be interested. If anyone has a better way, I'd be interested to hear about it.

The Effect:

2 spectators cut to and remember a card in the deck, the deck is reassembled and the magician removes the “bugs” – the spelling bees.
The deck is freely cut in half, and each spectator gets a half. The first spectator names her card and the magician spells to it.
The second spectator does not name his card, but he mentally spells it to himself as the magician deals. The magician stops dealing at exactly the last letter and the selected card turns up.
Finally the effect is performed one more time, but under challenge conditions. A fan of cards is held up to the spectator who thinks of any card. The deck is shuffled and the spectator takes the cards and mentally spells one at a time – the merely thought of card turns up at the end of the spelling.

The Method:

Buy Simon’s book here: http://www.alakazam.co.uk/product-Try-The-Impossible-Book.html
I won’t teach the method to Spelling Bees as it is not mine to teach. However if you combine my reset instructions below with the instructions in the book you will have a simple reset to this effect.

Prep:

You need to mark the 1st (3 diamonds), 13th (2 spades) and 52nd (king diamonds) cards in the stack (cards in brackets if you are using the stack detailed in the book. You don't need to know which card is which, although that might make things simpler, I simply mark all 3 in the same way.

In effect changes:

You have to do a couple of things differently during the effect. Proceed as described in the book, have cards selected and returned using the undo influence procedure. When you have dealt the face up pile you should have 1 pile of discards, 1 pile of face up dealt cards, and 1 selected card. Leave those as 3 separate groups.

Then spell the face down cards the same as in the book, add the cards remaining in your hand to the top of the discard pile. The card spelt to face down should be face up on top of the face down dealt pile. Instead of discarding this card, turn it face down and leave it on top of the dealt cards.

The card that was spelt to face up should be added on top of the discard pile (in the book the opposite is true - the face down card is discarded, and the face up card is added to the face down dealt pile.) this has put it back into its correct place in the stack.

Now proceed with the thought of card section. Afterwards drop the face down dealt pile on top of the thought of cards section (as in the book). You need to move the top 3 cards to the bottom of the packet without reversing their order (in his book Simon suggests shuffling them to the bottom, but that reverses their order) - I cut them to the bottom and then false overhand shuffle.

You now proceed as in the book, until you've spelt to the thought of card (end of effect)

Reset:

After spelling to the thought of card, return it to the dealt pile face down, and reverse the order of all the remaining cards in your hand and place onto the dealt pile.

Pick up the dealt pile and spread until you find the first marked card, cut this to the top. Next count off 12 cards from top and place these in a face up pile on table.

Spread to next marked card and cut this to the top, all the remaining cards in your hand can now be put face up on top of the first 12. You have sorted the top 24 cards of the stack into their correct order.

The discard pile contains cards 25 - 52 in order. You just need to spread through these and cut the marked (52nd) card to the bottom, and place these face up on top of the top 24 cards.

Your deck is now back in the worker bee stack.

I should point out that the procedure works exactly the same, regardless of whether or not you need to cut an additional 6 cards to the bottom during the final phase.

Also, you could mark the 25th card (instead of the 52nd) and cut it to the top during the reset (instead of cutting 52nd to bottom) - do whatever is easiest for you.

This is the 1st Time I've worked out a reset like this, and it took me a while to figure out how to approach it, so I thought I'd share my method to figure it out as well:

I simply wrote numbers 1 - 52 on the back of each card in correct stack order, did the trick several times and then worked out how to return to the stack from the end. Eventually I noticed the patterns and was able to adapt it to work every time.

Let me know if you have any questions, or suggestions, etc.

I hope this is of help to someone. Perhaps it will encourage someone to do this wonderful effect without having to worry about having to manually set up the stack each time.

New Year Resolution 2012

New Year Resolution 2012

When performing magic I suffer from stage fright. Actually that comment is deceiving – it implies that I perform magic. I began studying magic at the age of 11 or 12, developed stage fright at 16. I am now 25 and trying to overcome this stage fright, that’s nearly 10 years since I was comfortable performing.

Back in 2011 I started attending a weekly “magic night” at a bar where two magicians were paid to perform close up but any magician was allowed to perform for free.  I never performed. I did learn and share with other magicians and performed a few pieces for them, but there was no issue of stage fright when performing for other magicians.

Over time I started to realise what I was missing by not performing, and I wanted to overcome the stage fright. The other magicians there were all very encouraging and had nothing but kind words and helpful advice.

The stage fright started when I was 16 years old, I began studying magic at about the age of 11 or 12 during my first year of secondary school. At first it was great, I loved performing, but at the age of 16 it became well known throughout the school that I performed magic and suddenly there was a lot of demand to perform all of the time.

At the time I was happy to perform for them but I soon ran out of tricks so I started repeating the tricks I’d already performed. Occasionally people were able to figure out how the tricks worked because of these repeat performances. My next solution was to keep learning new tricks and perform those instead. By doing that I put a lot of pressure on myself and couldn’t practice the tricks to a level where I felt comfortable performing them. This caused me to develop my famous response to being asked to show a trick: “Not right now, but I’ll show you one later” and similar phrases to delay performing indefinitely.

As soon as I started finding excuses not to perform I started feeling nervous about actually performing, and that is how the stage fright started. The stage fright is specific to the performance of magic, I have no problem speaking publicly and giving presentations, I actually enjoy giving presentations, and I get a great thrill giving presentations when I am completely unprepared and have to make it up on the spot.

I went through a small phase of performing again several years later when I was at university but only when I was rather drunk. A month or so after attending my first “magic night” I started performing for friends, but once again only when I was drunk.

In about September or October of 2011 I decided that I wanted to overcome my stage fright and begin performing magic again. My solution was to focus entirely on presentation, and perform some self-working/semi-automatic tricks. My favourite magic books have been The Collected Works of Alex Elmsley ever since I first read them, I loved the mathematical based tricks and principles and was very inspired by Elmsley’s way of thinking. I have always enjoyed self-working tricks and when I started attending the “magic night” it was quite enjoyable to fool the other magicians with this style of card trick.

The logic behind performing self-working tricks was that ‘if I enjoy public speaking then the presentation should be no problem, it is the method I am nervous about.’ However this turned out to be completely untrue, even with methods where I have absolutely no doubt about them working I was still nervous. As such turning to self-working magic probably wasn’t the complete answer, but it was a good first step. It eventually led to the realisation that until I feel comfortable performing I need to avoid anything complicated in method regardless of how well I have practiced it. I needed to be completely focused on the performing.

So I started performing magic for my friends more often. I would do a couple of simple tricks, usually highly interactive and often end with Paul Curry’s Out of This World. I was enjoying myself but I was still only performing on nights out, and only after a couple of beers. This was an improvement, as I was no longer performing drunk, it was only after one or two. I should point out that I was not drinking to help me perform, most of my opportunities to perform just happen to be when I’m having a drink with friends.

Fast forward to new year’s eve 2011. After the countdown (shouldn’t we count up?) to midnight we all celebrated and then people started asking each other about their plans and resolutions for the new year, normally I have no idea what to say because it’s not something I’d previously thought about. This year I was prepared... “I want to perform a magic trick for a stranger at magic night.”

The new year starts, and I take it slowly, I start by practicing lots, and planning. I soon realised that the tricks I was learning with stacked decks were relatively useless in the situations I usually found myself and started learning impromptu self-working tricks.

I came up with a new response to the show me a trick question: “yeah, OK.” I didn’t use this response all the time, and still don’t, saying no is a long hard habit to break.

I slowly started performing for friends more and more, and made the decision that if I was going to drink I wouldn’t take any cards with me, and if I took cards with me then I wouldn’t drink all night. This way I started performing when I wasn’t drinking. This is an obvious step forwards when trying to develop genuine confidence performing. Plus it is just nicer, I have some horrible memories of performances going wrong due to alcohol (either on my behalf or spectators), and gave me more clarity and control over the performances.

Several months into the year along came a major setback. Or so it seemed at the time, “magic night” was cancelled at the bar. We could no longer perform there, we continued meeting elsewhere, but I had lost my easy opportunity to perform to a stranger. I needed it to be easy to make it less likely that I would chicken out.

“Magic night” continued, but at a new venue, and with just magicians attending, there was no more performing to audiences, just talking magic, learning and sharing. We started a weekly magic challenge, to come up with solutions to problems. Performing for strangers went out of my head completely. I did continue performing for friends and family though.

Several months later (in September or October 2012) we heard of a kind of open mic night for magicians, and suddenly the thoughts of performing for a stranger came back. We started attending these open mic nights twice a month.

The first open mic night coincided with the local university LGBT society freshers pub crawl. Suddenly we were overwhelmed with drunk freshers enjoying their first weeks at uni. I was planning on performing for a stranger, and joined a group of students for a chat, they asked me what was going on, and I explained what the night was, they told me they hate magic, so I carried on chatting and didn’t mention that I had a trick to show them. I didn’t perform that night or any of the subsequent open mic nights. I kept the attitude that I would perform if I felt like it, but I wouldn’t pressure myself.

In late November I showed a couple of tricks to a friend who came for dinner. I explained my resolution to him and then I realised that there were only two open mic nights left before the end of the year. I was running out of time.

I decided that I was going to perform at the next open mic night. It turned out it was the last open mic night of the year, as they had cancelled the next one. You can read about my journey to this open mic night in my previous post “Fooled by an Inanimate Object Performing a Double Lift”.

I arrived and chatted for a while, there was no one in the pub except for magicians! What terrible luck!

Eventually one man arrived at the pub with a friend, they are regulars to the open mic night, so I considered them a safe bet, but shortly after they arrived other magicians showed them tricks one after another, I didn’t want to bother them any more! So I waited to see if anyone else arrived.

No one arrived. I went to get a glass of diet coke. I was chatting away with the bar tender and asked him “do any of these guys ever come and show you a trick?” referring to the other magicians, he responded that they have a couple of times. He asked me about my magic, I offered to show him.

I took out my deck and I shuffled it, then I performed the oldest trick in my repertoire. The one I’ve performed countless times, everyone enjoys, and I have no problems with. It’s not even self-working – all that practice of self-working tricks gone out of the window...

I followed the first trick with a second (the Biddle trick). All through the performance I was comfortable, didn’t feel nervous at all, in fact it seemed just like I was having a chat. The bar tender seemed to enjoy the tricks, I enjoyed myself, everyone was a winner.

I continued chatting with the bar man for a while and then returned to my seat. When I sat down I realised my hands were shaking, but they were not shaking during the performance which is good.

I was honest with the bar tender. Before I started my tricks I explained to him what my new year’s resolution was, and that he was going to help me complete it. I’m not sure if this was a good idea or not, but it made me feel more comfortable.

Observations:

I think the key to the successful performance was that before I went to the open mic night I had already decided that I was going to perform. So I did.
Previously I had gone with the intention of performing if I felt like it. So I didn’t.
If anyone reading wants to overcome stage fright, absolutely decide to perform before you arrive. It will help.

Next steps:

I need to continue with this for a while. It would be very easy to say “I’ve done it now” and then never do it again – I need to do it again at the earliest opportunity.

I also need a new year’s resolution for 2013: something to help further with overcoming stage fright. Comment with any suggestions.

Fooled by an Inanimate Object Performing a Double Lift

Fooled by an Inanimate Object Performing a Double Lift

Tuesday Night

It was cold*¹, below freezing in fact, I wrapped up really warm in my old winter coat and my lovely sheepskin gloves. I walk out of the house. I am meeting with some magicians in Kemp Town, Brighton, for a magicians open mic night. Tonight was going to be an important night read about it here: "New Years Resolution 2012".

Heading into town I felt how cold it actually was, so I walked as fast as I could to warm up. When I was about half way into town I had the disappointing realisation that I only had £5 on me. Stopping at the nearest cash point I was forced to remove my gloves and stop walking, it was cold.

I put the card into the machine, entered my pin number and decided £20 would be plenty. Put the card back into my wallet and waited for the cash...

...the machine spat the cash out of its mouth. It gave me one £10 note and one(!) £5 note. That only adds up to £15. I started to get annoyed (sure it is only £5, but I am getting ripped off by a robot!), but I guess I instinctively double check, so I took the cash and did a kind of one handed fan with it, I spread the fiver over the tenner, there was definitely only one of each. Then I looked closer.

Looking closer I realised that there were two fivers, perfectly square and held as one. Money isn’t as slippery as cards are, so when I spread the notes they were probably less likely to separate, and due to the cold my fingers were dry (and also less dexterous as they were so cold) so they wouldn’t grip the notes enough to provide the friction required to separate them.

I was fooled by a cash machine.

I guess I could argue that I wasn’t fooled, since I figured it out fairly quickly... but I was fooled enough to get wound up over it, and it wasn’t until after I had accepted that I only had £15 and was putting it into my wallet that I took the closer look. So I was well and truly fooled.

Why was I fooled? Let me know if you have any theories, here is mine:

I was fooled for two reasons.

1. It is not physically possible for a cash machine to perform a double lift. Well... apparently it is, but before this happened it wasn’t possible. In fact it was inconceivable to me, so I just couldn’t even consider that the two notes were being displayed as one.
2. The machine wasn’t intending to deceive me. I knew that the machine didn’t mean to deceive me so I couldn’t consider that it would, instantly jumping to the simplest solution (Occam’s Razor *²).
3. Not an actual reason, just an observation – the cash machine was so casual about it! You would never suspect that this robot, with such a casual attitude was setting out to deceive you.

Thoughts

With the first reason, imagine if we could make it physically impossible for us to be able to perform a double lift (or any other sleight, move or method). Would this prevent the audience from ever suspecting it? Obviously we would have to indirectly prove that it was impossible, we couldn’t overtly draw attention to it, but I think if the conditions proved that a double lift was physically impossible then there is no (or very little) risk of it ever occurring to a spectator that maybe the magician was secretly holding two cards.

Following on from that, what if we considered which methods an audience was likely to suspect and then made all of those suspected methods physically impossible? What would they suspect then?

The second reason intrigues me. Magicians set out to deceive their audience. Perhaps deceive is a strong word, magicians set out to entertain their audience with the use of deception. The audience knows from the start of the performance that the magician is going to deceive them so perhaps they are on their guard. Even if they are not on their guard they are aware of the deception at some level.  

Hypothetically if the audience was not aware that you were planning on deceiving them how would this affect the outcome of the trick itself. Would it be more likely to fool the audience? Would it increase the experience of magic for the audience? Would it prevent the audience from looking for a method or solution and just allow them to enjoy the performance?

Is this how con men work? Although we are not aware that they intend to deceive us they do it anyway.

In regards to the third reason/ observation I will post my thoughts on this and its connections with the study of martial arts separately.

Lessons/questions to take from this (please respond with any thoughts/opinions):

1. Always check when taking cash out of your wallet that you only took one note.
2.  How can we indirectly prove that a certain method is physically impossible?
3. How can we present a trick, but eliminate any perceived intention to deceive?

*¹ I have a weird relationship with temperature, much to the annoyance of my colleagues I spend all day in the office (all through summer and winter) with my window wide open, the fan on, and my shirt sleeves rolled up and often I am still too hot.
When I am at home I wrap up warm, usually in a big woolly jumper my girlfriend knitted for me, and still I sit here shivering and asking if she minds me turning the heating up – her response: put on another jumper.
Most people would put on my sheepskin gloves and immediately feel their hands get warmer, but my hands feel colder when I am wearing the gloves – I accept that this is all in my head and the gloves are probably good for my overall warmth.

*² The principle (attributed to William of Occam) that in explaining a thing no more assumptions should be made than are necessary.
How can Occam’s Razor be applied to magic?
In creating a trick perhaps it can help us create the cleanest and simplest solution.
In terms of performing a trick it could help us to figure out what solution (if any) an audience is likely to suspect.