One of the most talked about effects at the 2006 Mindvention. It virtually fooled anyone who saw it. Since then over 5000 copies of Blindsight have been sold world-wide. It has become a classic of mentalism and used by some of the biggest names in mentalism. In fact, one performer was able to book a $10,000 gig by performing this one trick alone for the decision maker! Yes, Blindsight is that good.
This routine is now available in a Do-It-Yourself PDF and can be easily made up in a few minutes.
Effect
Performer patters that Blindsight is the apparent ability to see colors and shapes which cannot be seen. You offer a simple experiment. The performer introduces four ungimmicked colored cards: Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow. These in turn are placed into four opaque manila envelopes and mixed so the spectators do not know which color is in which envelope. You ask a participant to point to any envelope. Free choice, no magician's force of any kind. You hold it up and ask him what color he thinks is inside. Assume he says Blue. You write "Blue" on the envelope. This is
repeated three more times with the participant freely pointing to any of the remaining envelopes. Each time he states the color he thinks is inside and the performer writes it on the envelope.
Performer fans the envelopes out allowing the participant to see the names written on each envelope. Magician states he only needs three envelopes for the first part and for the participant to remove one envelope and place it off to the side. Let's assume he discards the envelope
with the word Yellow written on it.
The other three envelopes are opened one at a time, the participant has correctly guessed what colors were in each envelope. This is pretty amazing in itself, but the kicker is still to come.
The performer says nobody could have known which envelope the participant would discard off to the side. The participant, not the performer, picks up this envelope and opens it. Of course the correct color card is in it, but wait; there is a slip of paper in it and it reads: "THE YELLOW
ENVELOPE WILL BE THE ONE YOU DISCARD!"
The performer can then show the other envelopes are empty, in fact all the envelopes can be examined.
Here are the facts:
- NO Two-Sided color cards
- NO Nailwriters or Boonwriters
- NO Secret Writing
- NO Switches
- NO Sleights of any kind
- NO One Ahead or One Behind Methods
- NO Gimmicked Envelopes
- NO Magnets
- NOTHING SECRETLY ADDED OR TAKEN AWAY
- Color Cards are not gimmicked in anyway
- Only 4 Cards are used
The choices are completely free. As clean as it gets. The handling is designed in such a way that spectators and magicians will be unable to backtrack and discover the method.
Note that the original Blindsight was designed for close-up and the handling is different from Blindsight 2 which was designed for the stage. Do not confuse the two.
Look what others are saying:
"The directness and simplicity of Blindsight is surpassed only by its impressive cleverness." - Michael Weber
"The elegantly simple method behind Blindsight opened my eyes...even my third one." - Docc Hilford
"I changed my mind three times and Devin still nailed me! He then showed me the method and I was the perfect mark!" - Bob Sheets
"Without a doubt, this was the best effect of Mindvention 2006." - JHEFF
"I recently had a one-on-one meeting with a decision maker who was looking to hire me for a $10,000 engagement. I pulled out Blindsight and performed it for her. Her jaw just dropped. She said, 'I want you to perform that for our people. That was just freakin amazing.' Blindsight is the kind of reputation-making effect that allows you to amaze real-world audiences. In short...GET IT!" - Robert Marsi
1st edition 2013, 16 pages.
word count: 6322 which is equivalent to 25 standard pages of text