Utopian Prediction And Other Mysteries
by Alex Blade

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Effect

Now available in booklet!

Utopian Prediction:

A week before the show, the magician posts a sealed envelope to a member of the audience with explicit instructions that it not be opened before the night of the show, and requests that they should be sure to bring it along with them. On the night, the spectators are seated and the performer states how, "...weeks in advance, I mailed an envelope to a member of the audience here and asked that she bring it with her tonight". She is called up on stage carrying the envelope where she confirms that no one but here has touched it or had access to it, and that it has been sealed the entire time. She is then directed to open up the envelope and take out what is inside.

Magician: "Inside there is a folded up piece of paper, please remove it and read what it says."

The spectator does so and reads aloud:

'On Wednesday 15th of July, on page 9 of The Daily Mail, the third word along on the second line will read : DEMAND'

Another member of the audience retrieves a copy of The Daily Mail, the date confirmed, and turned to page 9 where – sure enough – the 3rd word of the second line is 'demand'.

Note: The above effect uses no gimmicks, no stooges and no switches. The magician never once touches the envelope or the newspaper during the performance. Any newspaper can be used, with any part of it being predicted.

Shy:

The magician presents the spectator with a set of five ESP cards, displaying a circle, a star, a pair of vertical wavy lines, a square and a cross. He explains that ESP stands for Extra Sensory Perception, and that in the early 1950's it was widely believed that these cards could be used to determine ones psychic ability. The magician goes on to describe a popular experiment called the Rhine Test where a participant would be given a card face down and would then proceed to match it up with a set of their own cards, without ever looking at the original. The results were astonishing, with selected partakers getting correct results 80%-90% of the time.

The spectator is then asked to choose three of the five cards and push them forward, face up, on the table. The magician picks up a blank card and, without saying anything, writes something on one side an holds it face down in his hand. The spectator is then instructed to think of two of the chosen images and put his or her index and middle fingers on the selected cards. The magician smiles to himself as he turns his card over revealing that he has drawn the exact same symbols as the spectator selected.

The magician then picks up another blank card and proceeds to write something down on it again. Once more, the spectator is asked to place their finger on one of the two remaining cards, whereby the magician turns his card over showing that he once again guessed correctly.

The effect can then be repeated.

Note: This is not an elimination process. The symbols the magician writes down will always be identical to the ones the spectator places his/her fingers on.

Polaroid:

An envelope is given to a spectator with the request that it never leaves their sight. The magician then removes five business cards, labelled 1-5, from his pocket and lays them face down on the table. The spectator is asked merely to place their finger on top of one of the facedown business cards. Their chosen card is turned over – a three – and the other cards are all shown to be different.

The performer then pulls out a handful of change (can be borrowed) and asks the spectator to choose either heads or tails. The spectator chooses 'heads' and the performer continues, stating that the spectator is going to make a blind choice. He/she is invited to drop the handful of coins onto the table repeatedly. When the coins fall, some land heads side up and some tails. Per turn, the coins that are tails-up are discarded and the dropping is repeated with the remaining heads-side-up coins until there is only one coin left, for example, the 10p.

Finally, a deck of cards is brought out, spread across the table and the spectator is instructed to freely select one (no force). Let's say, the 9 of Spades.

The magician recaps what has just happened. The spectator has freely chosen a number, a coin and a card, all through different means. The spectator is asked to remove the envelope from the beginning and, without the magician touching it, empty the contents onto the table. The spectator does so to find inside the envelope a Polaroid photograph showing a large number three, a 10p coin and the 9 of Spades.

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