"As a creator, I have a tendency to pass up on 99% of all releases and instead only take interest in those which offer me a fresh set of tools to play with...If you are looking for a wonderful impromptu mental mystery to add to your repertoire, or are looking for some new techniques to play with, you won't be disappointed here!" -Michael Murray
"I had no idea how he could have any valuable information...The more I thought about it, the more perplexed I was. It was IMPOSSIBLE. There was absolutely no way he could know anything." - Madison Hagler
It's called
Fauxlogical, and it is diabolical. Why? Well, while laymen spectators will definitely enjoy the basic routine (and will definitely be fooled), this ebook was designed as a challenge experiment: Take a well-known plot (actually two plots) in mentalism and design a routine that could fool spectators who know the plot backwards and forwards - mentalists and magicians.
In essence, this routine is unapologetically designed as a rope-a-dope for mentalists who want to perform a routine for their peers at the magic club that "appears" to be run of the mill, but then gives them a surprise that will cause them to think and say, "Wait a minute..."
What is Fauxlogical? Well, it's not just a one-off routine. It's an ebook in two parts.
"Fauxlogical is a lovely addition to this genre of effects. It's the sort of thing I really enjoy because it can be performed completely impromptu and adds further options to your toolkit." - Sudo
SECTION ONE:
The first part is a very familiar effect, a which-hand routine using the liar/truth-teller "engine." But that's where it ends. Even though they know you are using the logic puzzle to "get" them, your colleagues still won't know how you did it. How? Because it is a brilliant new method? No. In simple terms, it will fool many of them because the method is far more, shall we say, analogue. Yet, they will be trapped in their own knowledge of a thousand routines like it. The logic questions are crucial, but they are not the core method. How can that be?
"RedDevil showed me this, and I was sent down the rabbit hole only to emerge without a clue. This is a very clever use of simple principles that are not the ones that you assume are being used. This is certainly a magician fooler, but not at the expense of the experience for laymen." - Mark Chandaue
SECTION TWO: THE SWITCH(ES)
For those of you who like to collect neat little mentalism tools and principles, you are going to love this part. Section Two is a tool chest treatise on "Switches" of multiple objects.
Contents in Both Sections:
- Four Routines:
- Fauxlogical
- Zombie Faux-Quivoque (FOE QUA VOKE) -- Designed as both a routine for laymen, but also a conversation piece for fellow mentalists. If the latter, the mentalist spectator is given four coins and has a series of choices that look like Equ*****e. But each time, the performer corrects himself and gives the spectator a fair and defined choice instead. In the end, the performer proves he can divine the choices every time.
- Right-Left Roulette -- The spectator is given 4 coins and told that three of them are poison and only one single coin is safe. Three business cards are on the table the entire time, and the last one has a coin hidden underneath. She chooses one of the four coins in a very fair manner and is even allowed to change her mind in the end. Even so, the coin under the card matches her ultimate prediction...and saves her life.
- Faux-as-I-Faux -- The performer and spectator each hold four different coins, two in each hand, standing back to back. The spectator arranges the coins freely in any hand she chooses. Demonstrating his skill to influence her choices, the performer invites her to play a game of blind do-as-I-do, moving coins from one hand to the other...and free choices are commanded by the spectator. Even so, they impossibly end up with the same coins in each hand.
- Coaching Clinic in Section Two on the use of multiple tools that you can use with coins and small objects (and other things) for mentalism routines.
(I do not believe anything is 100% foolproof because human beings do unpredictable things sometimes. With that said, this basic routine as described above is self-working if you follow the instructions. So let's call it "virtually" foolproof.)
1st edition 2020, PDF 138 pages.
word count: 27657 which is equivalent to 110 standard pages of text