Reviews: Read What Jeffrey Whiting Is Saying
Thayer's 21st Century Mindreading Act
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Jeffrey Whiting (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Wednesday 06 May, 2026)
As a keen devotee and practitioner of Two Person codes, I’m always interested in historical methods of this particular branch of mentalism.
Carrington’s 21st Century Act, originally known as the Psycho Act, offers an innovative take on the concept of coding and Q&A. Rather than use 26 separate codewords for the 26 letters of the alphabet, you only have to learn 4 code words, plus 5 prefixes…greatly reducing the learning curve for an act of this nature.
The use of these prefixes also gives you more flexibility in coding with NATURAL sentences rather than some stiff, overly formal dialogue. Likewise, conformation codes are sent with 10 codewords and 2 prefixes. For certain doubled letters/numbers and specific questions, additional words are suggested.
Of particular interest to both historians and modern mentalists are the lists of typical questions and queries. They are arranged logically with alphabetical, common sense abbreviations ie BS (Business Succeed?)
It’s not all-encompassing, or claims to be, but it’s more than enough for real-world applications.
If you come across a question you can’t code, just ask them to see you for a private session later!
I’m reminded of a similar situation with Volta’s Question & Answer act, which gives codes for 180(!) questions - encyclopaedic but too unwieldy for practical purposes, in my opinion.
Disadvantages?
This ISN’T an article act, although Carrington does suggest how to use it as such, but counsels it’s more of a “knockout” ending rather than a full feature!
And yes, some of the language sounds archaic and awkward today, but with his structure, I’m sure any neophyte code act can adapt it to their purposes
The Master Code
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Jeffrey Whiting (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Wednesday 16 April, 2025)
Robert Nelson was one of the most prolific, and knowledgeable, writers in the field of Mentalism.
As an aficionado of two person telepathy acts, I bought this book to add to my collection.
Nelson has produced a carefully graduated course for anyone wishing to learn this specialist act, and brings the benefit of experience to the course as well.
There are certain parts of the code that may appear quite “stiff” to modern audiences. Times change, and the detailed footnotes in the text reflect this and offer the reader additional information or resources to personalise and modernise their act!
I especially liked the section on coding questions to the medium; Nelson has drawn on the pioneering works of C A Conlin to give you a list of 99 most common questions, and useful subdivisions for further elucidation.
Even if you never perform a Q&A act this way, the list of probabilities will help your Cold Reading!
Despite its generous 150+ page length, and encyclopaedic tone, Nelson’s book does not cover certain “positional” codes or silent ones. However there’s more than enough information here to create your own.
I’d throughly recommend the book for both the collector/archivist and the serious mentalist.