Ben Highway Effect
Tom has offered up a crisp tenner, but the Performer has waved it away, asking instead that Tom holds it, folded into a tight packet, in his hand, and Tom obliges. At this point any magicians in the audience might be expecting the Performer to divine the serial number - but he’s doesn’t.
Instead he asks Tom to call out a random sequence of letters and numbers which are jotted down. Incredibly enough upon comparing the two it is seen that Tom has, with near-perfect accuracy, managed to divine the serial number of his own note. And what’s more, he has no idea how he managed to do it!
Insight
Students of cognitive psychology will be one ahead here: the clue is in the title, which is an allusion to “The Serial Position Effect”. This is a term that refers to how the placing of a piece of information within a string of data affects the recall of it. Specifically, information at the beginning and the end of a list is more likely to be remembered than that in the middle.
To understand the importance of this we must first turn to the Requirements and their preparation...
Requirements o A banknote that is common to your locale.
o A spiral-bound notebook (the pocket-sized ones are ideal for this) complete with a front and back cover.
o A pen.
Preparation
Open up your notebook and on the first page write the sequence that the serial number on your note takes. An English note’s serial number, for instance, is made up of two letters followed by eight numbers. You would therefore write down:
Two letters, eight numbers
This done, turn to the second page and duplicate what you wrote on the first, ensuring at least some similarity between the two. If you are using a ballpoint pen you can follow the indentations it made as a guide.
Now turn back to the first page and write the serial number of your note. However, it is important that you do not make an indentation of it on the page beneath, so either place something between the pages or, ideally, switch to a soft-tipped pen.
“The Serial Position Effect” states that people are more likely to remember the information at the beginning and end of a string of data. Thus you omit the first and last digits (and, for
good measure, one in the middle) -these will be filled in during the Performance with your Participant’s actual numbers. These gaps are represented by an underscore in the example below:
_ C4218 _ 96 _
At the risk of overstating matters, this is how your notebook should look:
Close the pad up and put it in your pocket along with the pen. Have the banknote folded into quarters and into your right pocket from which it can easily be palmed. With these actions you are ready to perform.
Working
Toss the notepad and pen onto the table. Pay them no attention, casually slipping your hands into your pockets and finger palming the folded note in your right as you enquire:
“Anybody got a tenner?” (or whatever your note happens to be).
If one is forthcoming take it and as you fold it into quarters (to match the one you have finger palmed) continue:
“As well as a magician (insert description of your choice here) I’m also a student of Psychology, and one of the great things about being both a student and a magician is that I can ask to borrow a ten pound note and nobody has any issue offering one up...”
At this point perform a false take, apparently taking the folded note in your left hand. In reality, you retain it in your right as your left approaches and pushes its note to view at the finger tips. Ditch the borrowed note as your left hand misdirects by holding up the switched-in note. With a nod towards its lender:
“...so, thanks for that!”
Make as if to pocket it but let on you’re only joking and press it into the lender’s palm, closing their fingers around it.
“Of course I’m kidding but that stress response -small as it was -which you
experienced at the thought of possibly losing your money is what we need for this to work. I’m just going to ask you to keep hold of your money and don’t let anybody get at it. Another aspect of being a student is you get to watch a lot of daytime television. Countdown has always been a popular choice, and so I thought we might play our own game based loosely upon the show.”
Note: If you are no longer a student (or look young enough to pass as one!) but wish to use this patter, it’s a simple matter to switch to the past tense and speak as if these were things you did when you were a student.
“You know, it’s the game where the players choose letters and numbers and have to try and make something out of their choices, and if you do well enough you win a prize - ten pounds...”
This last is naturally said tongue in cheek.
“This game, much like Countdown, does have its rules however. I have them here somewhere...”
Pick up the notebook. You need to turn to the second page without making your audience aware of the fact that this is not the first page of the book. This is easily done by lifting up the front cover and the first page of the pad nearest to you (like you might have caught a double with a pack of cards when you began in card magic -and I know you did at some point!) and then revolving the pad beneath them over and on to the top cover. Angling the pad so that everybody can see what is written on the second (supposedly first) page you indicate that your Participant needs to say two letters followed by eight numbers.
Close the pad by reversing the actions you made to open it before realising that it might be easier if you wrote down what they said. This time however you open the pad in the conventional manner to the first page, being careful not to flash what is written on it this time.
“Now, it’s important that you say this without really thinking about what you are going to say; whatever two letters and eight numbers come into your head just say them and keep going. Try to get a nice range, but don’t consciously think about it.
Okay? Excellent. Thirty seconds on the clock... Go!”
These words are suggestive of an intuitive approach, but really you don’t want them paying too much attention to what they say because you’re about to show them a largely different string of digits and pass them off as what your Participant said.
Remember that your audience does not know where you’re going with this -look back over the words and you will see that they imply your Participant is, like the actual Countdown game, going to try and put the letters and numbers together to make a word; not that the sequence they call out will be the effect itself! They therefore have little reason to try and remember the exact sequence your Participant calls out.
So you write down what your Participant says where applicable (i.e. in three instances) and mime the rest. For the last digit you tilt the pad down so that everybody can see it.
This is okay because you really write down what they say, and what is nice is that your Participant probably won’t be focusing on the pad (eye accessing cues and all that) and your audience will probably be focusing on the Participant. So the image they see when
they finish calling out numbers and look to the pad will lead them to think that you have been openly writing what they have been saying the entire time, in which case you couldn’t
“Now the last number, again take a moment—what do you want it to be?”
The word “again” of course implies that your Participant was thinking carefully about each choice, making it all seem very fair and above board.
Deliberately write whatever number they say and drop the pad on the table.
“I said this was like a game of Countdown and it truly is in the sense that you were trying to structure something of relevance. Now if you were asked to talk about the qualities of that note you’d probably describe its value and the way it felt, mention that it had a serial number and a watermark but beyond that you’d be hard-pressed to give any more information, correct? Let’s go back to that serial number -you already know more than you think you do about it: it’s made up of two letters followed by eight numbers... and I’m hoping that mild stress-response we induced earlier will have heightened your senses and lead to a recall of information about that serial number which not even you knew you knew...”
We continue by beginning to suggest that they wrote down the numbers themselves:
“If you take a look at what you said and wrote down and then just look at the serial number on your note you’ve been holding all along...”
It’s important that your Participant re-familiarises themselves with “what they wrote down”
first because when they then look at the note they will see, pretty much, the same sequence. (Contrast this with the other approach in which they look at the note first and see a bunch of meaningless data before looking at the notebook -the former approach is the stronger, I hope you’ll agree.)
I’d advise you to avoid saying something like “please re-familiarise yourself with what you said/wrote” because that implies that it’s likely they would have forgotten what they said - which would allow you some sneaky leeway. Always remember that the strength of this effect is derived from the notion that somebody would realise if there was a discrepancy between what they said and what was transcribed. In most instances this is completely untrue, nothing more than a cognitive bias.
Other options for the revelation patter include:
“Thank you. It’s okay, you can relax now. And those were things that just came to you, without any—right, it was quite a subconscious approach to it all. Excellent, that’s just what we needed...”
This is to take their mind off the letters and numbers: you associate them with a state of tension and so by transitioning into a different state (one of relaxation) you shift attention away from what your Participant has just said. Because of “The Serial Position Effect” they will likely remember the first and last digits, but we have that covered.
With Multiple Participants
When there is more than one person watching you can have somebody else write down what your Participant calls out. Best to choose your two people who probably don’t know each other well to cover any discrepancies between their handwriting and your own. You need to alter the preparation at the start, writing the serial number in its entirety on the first page and having your Participant write down what is said on the next one. It is a simple matter to secretly move to the first page and have the serial number there called out.
If You Cannot Borrow the Ten Pound Note
... Simply use your own! Adjust the patter line accordingly. If you do use the “prize” patter then make sure you let your Participant keep the note at the end, otherwise you would be implying that they don’t get to keep the note because they didn’t do well enough!
“The Serial Effect originally appeared at www.Online-Visions.com
Approaches
A little piece of card magic I occasionally perform is; spreading a deck before somebody, I have them take a card, look at it and hide it out of sight. Now, the card isn’t peeked and neither is it forced; the cards aren’t marked and the deck isn’t stacked. And yet, with no fishing, I know that card and can reveal it how I like and my audience is suitably astonished.
Writing up this effect got me thinking about all of the ideas that seem outlandish but work surprisingly well in practice. Too often I feel that magicians and mentalists restrict themselves to conventional methods and the notion that the effect, as perceived, must actually occur. Granted, this is a good way to go about matters most of the time, but some amazing effects can be produced by taking the road less travelled.
“The Serial Effect” is one such example, if I may so myself. I’ve long enjoyed serial number revelations, but always thought how much more incredible it would be if it was my Participant who revealed the serial number on their own note without knowing how they did it. I considered a few methods and, though viable, felt there was a simpler approach. It was simply a matter of taking it and working with it to make it as deceptive as possible.
The core methodology of the effect exploits the very human tendency to overestimate our own perceptive and recollective faculties, and places it within a presentation engineered to give our Participant and audience no real reason to even try and remember the letters and numbers they call out. Finally nobody really wants to ruin the effect because you’re making somebody else the star, a nice change from the typical perception of a magician.
If you’re still wondering how that card effect worked then you’re making the same assumption that I rely upon my audiences to make; when I had a card selected, the deck was face down. Of course it’s only natural that audiences would come to this conclusion because that is what the context implies: I make a fuss out of not seeing the card and having them hide it from view, presumably with the intent to reveal it, which would only be magical if I didn’t know what it was.
But the truth is, if you perform a few card effects beforehand in which the identity of the card isn’t important (e.g. an ACR or sandwich effect etc.) then when you spread the deck face up and have one taken your Participant isn’t going to feel the need to hide the card. If you then square the deck and look away as you ask your Participant to look at it, and then have them hide it you can go into a reveal and most times they’ll be amazed. Sometimes they’ll realise what’s happening and you can simply play it off as a semi-joke (as was the original intent of this piece).
It’s not the most necessary application of lateral thinking (just as well to have the card forced, or peeked, or determined through a marked back or a stacked deck, or even fished for) but it does serve to illustrate the point. If ever you find an effect you’re working on becoming weighed down by an increasingly complicated handling or contrived actions, remember you can take the most direct and seemingly obvious approach to an effect, but, with the right touches, transform it into a miracle, and one which is simply performed.