P.A.T.H.S. by
MATT MELLO
P.A.T.H.S. by
MATT MELLO
No part of this publication may be duplicated, copied, or transmitted in any form without written, explicit permission from the author. Copyright © 2017 by Matt Mello 2
Table of Contents
Opening Thoughts...........................................................................................................................4 Path I..............................................................................................................................................6
Player One…………………………… One………………………………………………………… ………………………………….…………………….… …….…………………….…10 10 Player Two………………………………………………………………………………….…… Two………………………………………………………………………………….…… 12 Birthmonth.....................................................................................................................................14 Path II...........................................................................................................................................16
Triangulation………………………………………………………………………………… Triangulation………………………………………………………………………………… ..… ..…19 …………………………………………………………...…………………………... ...… …23 Path III…………………………………………………………...………………………… Card Coding…………………………… Coding………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………...… ………………………...…25 25 Codex…………………………… Codex…………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………… …………………………….… .…27 27 Intersecting………………………………………………………….…………………………… Intersecting………………………………………………………….…………………………… 28 Anagram Architecture………………………………………………………………...……… Architecture………………………………………………………………...……… .…31 Alphagram…………………………………………………… Alphagram………………………… ……………………………………………………… ………………………………… ……..37 ..37 Closing Thoughts…………………………………………………………………………… Thoughts……………………………………………………………………………... ...… …48
3
Opening Thoughts
I’d like to start by thanking you for purchasing this work on progressive anagrams. It’s the first book that I’ve written on the subject, and I hope that you’ll glean glean some useful, practical information from the paths that I’ve treaded. For most mentalists, the biggest issue and pet peeve with progressive anagrams is the act of fishing or guessing the letters. I can tell you that this was why I steered clear of them for years. There have been some attempts to cover the process of guessing random letters, but I still felt that most were far too obvious, and not n ot particularly inspiring. The first record that we have of using a progressive anagram within a list of words dates back to 1920, developed by a man named Stanley Collins. His original concept has remained relatively unchanged amongst magicians since its creation. Atlas Brookings is well-known within our mentalism community for his work on progressive anagrams. His material offers some of the best and most thorough thinking on the subject to date. The way that he uses them is to be admired and studied, as many of his thoughts could be incorporated into the concepts conce pts from this manuscript. P.A.T.H.S. is an acronym for “Progressive Anagrams Through a Hidden Sequence”. Sequence”. All of the approaches taught in this book are well hidden within the framing of the demonstrations, which I believe is vital to their deceptiveness. My initial approach to progressive anagrams came from an idea that I was working on with psychological forces called c alled “Targeting” , which I recently released in my manuscript, The Grey Area. Area. I just had a feeling that the presentation could be applied in some other way, and thankfully I continued working at it. After thinking and tinkering with ideas, I came to the realization that this could be a perfect method to deceptively perform a progressive anagram right in front of a person. The pieces just fell together, and I suddenly had a fully formed system for working with any anagram. The processes are completely covered by our simple instructions and actions. Everything is perfectly justified. perfectly justified. The given presentations seem to make the effects even more difficult, while simultaneously making things easier, helping to disguise the standard m ethod. 4
Along with the teaching of my personal approaches to this kind of work, I’ll also be teaching be teaching you a couple of anagrams that I love. “Player One” and One” and “Player Two” are Two” are Nintendo anagrams. “Player One” is One” is only for characters in the Super Mario Bros. universe. “Player Two” Two” expands the anagram to pretty much any common Nintendo character that they could think of. I haven’t seen anyone perf orm orm this before, and I particularly enjoy the presentation of having them pick their players. I also teach a basic anagram for months of the year , as I find the effect of guessing a person’s birth month to be more interesting than guessing a star sign. Unless your participant really believes in astrology, accurately guessing their birth month will have far more impact than guessing a star sign that they might not relate to. Though, I do teach an interesting star sign divination effect near the end of the book. There are also a few other branching anagrams that I teach, each with their own unique touches that I think you’ll you’ll find to be highly interesting and thought provoking. “Triangulation” is something that I’ve never seen applied to progressive anagram work, and work, and I think that it will spark inspiration in many of you. “Alphagram” will likely have the most hype surrounding it, and it’s something that I’m very excited to share with you. Because of this, I’m sure there will be a desire to skip ahead and read it first, first, but I would suggest working your way through the chapters as I’ve outlined them, in order to slowly grasp and understand the concepts before progressing into the more complex pieces. Of course, c ourse, this is only a suggestion, as I’m sure some of you may have already skipped past this opening section to dive right into the material. I can’t say that I blame you. From the beginning to the end, these approaches truly look as if we’re we’re peering straight into our participant’s minds participant’s minds and thought processes. Very few demonstrations of prop-less mentalism look this clean, and are this lethal le thal in application. It’s my hope that if you’re someone who doesn’t particularly enjoy progressive anagrams, that P.A.T.H.S. will be a helpful guide into this wonderful world of word working. Along the paths we go.
Matt Mello
5
Path I
When working with progressive anagrams, the first thing that most of us focus on is hiding the sequence of guessing letters. This is because when we get a mix of “yes” and “no” answers with no real pr esentation esentation or justification for why we’re we’re asking, it looks like blind guessing. With my approach, our questions aren’t just just being asked as a way to guess. Any Any “yes” or “no” answer that we receive serves a logical purpose within the given presentation. presentation. I’ll I’ll give an example using a person’s birth month, but “Path I” could be applied to nearly any progressive anagram. The process starts where every branching anagram does, by asking for a volunteer who’s fairly confident with spelling, followed by naming a specific category. “Could you please think of the month that you were born?”
Our next instruction sets up the entire sequence and forms the backbone of this approach. “I’d now like you to think of a few other months to try and confuse me. Every time I snap my fingers, I want you to think of a different month.”
We now slowly snap our fingers four of five times, instructing them to change to a random month on each snap. “I think that should be good enough. I now want you to look out in front of you, and imagine those random months you’ve chosen a re being projected onto a screen. ”
We appear to study the participant, adding, “I think I can see a few months coming through pretty clearly, but I’m a little hazy on one or two of them. Are you having a hard time remembering all of the months you thought of?” You’ll You’ll find that the participant will almost always forget at least one item that you’ve asked asked them to think of during this snapping sequence. They are being asked to remember four or five months, colors, or any other thought in rapid succession. They will naturally forget one, or even two of their choices. We can then take advantage of this common occurrence. Appearing to get in their head during this opening section only helps to add to the believability that we’re we’re truly seeing what they’re they’re imagining. 6
In any case, after they’ve confirmed that they’re having a hard time remembering one or two of the months, we say, “That’s perfectly perfectly fine. All of your thoughts are still locked away in your subconscious mind. Focus on relaxing your conscious mind. Take a deep breath and look at me. Excellent, that’s already a little better. I can see them coming through a bit clearer. Just give me a moment to look things over.” We look into our participant’s eyes, and then at the empty air in front of them, as if truly visualizing whatever months they’ve they’ve randomly randomly chosen to think of. We now ask, “Yes or no, is there an R in your birth month? Please take your time to go through the spelling in your mind.” They will answer either “yes” or “no”. or “no”. Let’s assume that they say, “No.” We then say, “Okay, so that means I can get rid of this one.” We appear to grab a single word (month) that we’re visualizing in the space between us, and toss it away to the side. If they had said, “Yes,” we would have said and done exactly the same thing. I’ll continue with the finer details in a moment, but I hope that you all have big smiles on your faces, as you should now instantly have a basic understanding of this approach. From the audience’s perspective, it should appear that we’re genuinely seeing and interacting with the participant’s thoughts. When we ask about a particular a particular letter, it seems as though we’re asking in order to eliminate and eliminate and differentiate between the options that we see before us. We’re looking over their personal selections, selections, and we’re we’re appearing to naturally go through each month that they’re visualizing. visualizing. When we finally bonk them in the brain by revealing their birth month, it makes the process seem even more real, that we must have been going through their four or five random choices to have correctly arrived at their selected thought. Essentially, this approach allows us to perform an anagram openly in front of our spectators. When I’m ‘seeing’ letters in the air, I’m genuinely I’m genuinely visualizing my progressive anagram. As our participant has no understanding of the workings of an anagram, that we can discern a specific thought with only a few questions asked, it organically organically sells the idea that we’r e really going through the few thoughts that they imagined.
7
At the same time, we’ve we’ve asked them to think of these extra months months as a way to try and ‘confuse’ us. To them, them, it appears that we’re we’re making things harder for ourselves, while truthfully, it helps immensely in making the process invisible. Picking up where we left off, our participant has said “no” to the letter (R) being (R) being in their birth month. We’ve then appeared to swipe away one of the months. Continuing through our progressive anagram, we look over the ‘months’ months’ in the empty air for a moment, and then ask, “Is there a Y in your birth month?” “Yes,” they say. “I thought there might be. be . That means I can remove this month.”
We grab and swipe away a second month. For this letter , we’re we’re seemingly removing a month they’ they’re re imagining that doesn’t have a (Y) in it. We look over the ‘months’ months’ again, as if trying to find a letter that could help to further narrow things down. We say, “This should be the last one. Is there an A in your birth month?” “No,” says our participant. “Okay, then this has to be the one.”
Grabbing an imaginary month, we bring it to the center of our attention. “You know, I had a feeling from the start that it was this month, but I kept second guessing myself.”
We write “July” on a piece of paper and place it into their hand. They say their birth month aloud, “July” and then turn over the paper and react to your unparalleled mental prowess. I hope that you can see the power of this subtle shift in presentation. The process can be applied to practically any progressive anagram. The only anagrams where I feel this doesn’t really doesn’t really work are ones where we need to ask for more than five letters. Certainly, we could snap our fingers six or seven times, and have them think of seven or eight items, but I think less can sometimes be more when it comes to progressive anagrams. Though, I will cover a way that we can easily include more letters within a branching anagram in “Path II”. II”. Overall, these approaches are very simple, but they do take a certain amount of confidence and believability to pull them off.
8
The audience must believe us when we say that we’re we’re seeing a variety of items coming through. This is subtly suggested with the use of our “forgetfulness” “forgetfulness” ploy, taking advantage of the fact that they will likely forget at least one item. As I mentioned, this really gives weight to the belief that we’re actually in their head and doing this for real. They must believe us when we swipe away an item. They must believe that it actually contained the letter they rejected, or that it didn’t didn’t contain a letter they confirmed to be in their word. Their belief comes directly from our belief. We must really try to envision these items. Act as if the words are really there in front of you. This is easy, because we actually are visualizing a set of months and letters. Always take a few moments to look over these ‘imagined’ imagined’ words. Don’t act as if they’ve all just popped into view in an instant. Once they’ve appeared, we must now pretend to be genuinely looking over their choices, looking at the letters and finding connections, so that we can cut it down to their specific thought. The psychology behind this demonstration is perfectly logical. It plays like the real thing. If you could truly peer into a person’s mind and view their random thoughts, it’s it’s possible that that you might sift through them in this way. Now that you understand the workings of the “Path I” approach, I’ll walk you you through a couple of progressive anagrams to use it with. for more
[email protected]
9
Player One
We begin by asking a person about their childhood, and if they played a lot of video games as a kid, specifically Nintendo games. After a bit of healthy nostalgia, we propose a demonstration. “I want you to imagine that you’re playing Super Mario Bros. and you’re going to p ick your player. You can choose to play as any character, but preferably one that most people would know. And please be sure to include the entire name, whether it be a ‘junior’ or some type of royal title. So if you thought of Bowser Junior, you would want to spell out ‘junior’ in your mind. O mind. Okay, kay, so pick your player.”
Give them as much or as a s little time as needed to choose.for choose.for more books boo ks and dvds contact
[email protected] “Now, we’re going to play a mental game. Whichever player you’ve chosen is the one that you’ll stick with, but I’m going to have you go through four or five other character s in your mind to try and confuse me. So, allow a new character to come into your mind. Focus on it for a moment, and now think of another character…and ch aracter…and another…and one more.” Snapping our fingers, we instruct them to change the character each time, finishing by saying, “I think that should be good enough. I now want you to look out in front of you, and imagine all of those characters are being projected onto a television screen.” We look at them, studying their blank expression. We then look at the empty air in front of them. “Okay, I can see four characters coming through very clearly, but I’m not as positive on the fifth. Are you having a hard time remembering all of your chosen characters?” okay , all of your thoughts are still They will confirm this statement, and we can add, “That’s okay, in your subconscious mind. Just take a deep breath, and focus on relaxing your mind. Very good! Things are already coming through a bit clearer. Just give me a moment to think things over, so I can try to work out which one of them is the player you’ve chosen.”
Further studying the ever so interesting empty space, we appear to look things over, and then bring our attention back to the participant. We now go into the “Player One” branching One” branching anagram, which is displayed on the next page. 10
Player One
“
R
A
no
”
no
yes
O yes
O
WALUIGI
YOSHI
no
MARIO
yes TOAD
E
W
no
yes
yes
W
WARIO
no
PRINCESS PEACH
yes
BOWSER
no
BOWSER JR.
11
no
LUIGI
Player Two
This addition extends the “Player One” anagram to almost any common Nintendo character. Which, after our instructions, really only includes four more cha racters. “I want you to imagine that you’re playing a Nintendo game, and you’re going to pick to pick your player. You can choose to play as any Nintendo character, but preferably one that most people would know. And please be sure to include the entire name. So if you thought of ‘Bowser Junior’ Junior ’, you would want to spell out ‘junior’ in your mind. Or, if Or, if you thought of ‘Zelda’, the full title would be ‘Princess Zelda’. As I’ve just named them, I would prefer if you didn’t choose either of those characters. With this in mind, please pick your player.”
This basically leaves us with all of the Super Mario Bros. characters, as well as: Link, Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, and Kirby. One of the only other characters that could be named is Fox McCloud from Star Fox, Fox, but I’ve I’ve never had someone think of him. Our inclusion of the line, “preferably one that most people would know” pretty much eliminates him as a common choice. I’ve only had Kirby chosen every now and then. Most of the time, if they choose someone outside of the Super Mario Bros. universe, it will be Donkey Kong, even though he’s technically featured in certain Mario games. Link is also a choice that comes up every so often. I decided to make Zelda an example to include the ‘princess’ title in the character’s name, because I’ve had people mistakenly think that Link’s name is Zelda. It also solidifies soli difies the instruction that should they choose Peach, it should be Princess Peach. With our primary targets being Link, Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, and Kirby, the common denominator between all four of these characters c haracters is the letter (K). So, if we ask about the letter (K) and they say “yes”, we can proceed into the provided anagram. If they say “no”, we go directly into “Player One”. One”. We could even reveal that they’re thinking of a Super Mario Bros. character at this point, but I prefer not to mention this, as it suddenly destroys the illusion of there being a larger selection field of any Nintendo character. marshalexander01@ gmail.com
12
“Player Two”
K
no
(proceed to “Player One”)
yes
G
no
R
no
yes yes KIRBY
I
no
DONKEY KONG
yes
DIDDY KONG
13
LINK
Birthmonth
On the next page is a basic, branching anagram for the months of the year. An interesting attribute of “Birthmonth” is that the final two options at the end of any branch begin with either a straight capital letter, or a curved capital letter. Because of this, when we reach the end of a particular branch, and we have two options left, we can ask, “If the first letter of your birth month was capitalized, would it be curved at all?” Depending on their answer to this question, we would either name the option with a curve in the first letter, or the one made up of only straight lines. So, if we’ve anagrammed the months down to “June” and “August”, if they say “yes” to the first letter being curved, we know that they’re thinking of “June”. If they they say “no”, then we know they’re thinking of “August”. This presentational idea of asking if a letter is a curved or straight letter is not original to my work, but I can’t recall seeing recall seeing it used in an anagram sequence. It isn’t particularly my favorite method to progress through an anagram, but I’ve become a big fan of this sort of approach. At the end of this manuscript, the “Anagram Architecture” chapter covers a myriad of different ways that we can move through an anagram without needing to specifically say a letter aloud. “Alphagram” then takes this concept to a whole new level. When we apply these ideas alongside the variety of paths that I teach in this publication, it can make for some of the most deceptive presentations for progressive anagrams that we can perform.
14
“Birthmonth”
R
no
Y
A
no
yes
JUNE
yes
A
yes
no
JULY
AUGUST
MAY
M
no
Y
B
no
yes
B
yes
no
yes JANUARY
OCTOBER
FEBRUARY
C
no
T
no
yes yes
SEPTEMBER
B
no
MARCH
yes
DECEMBER
15
NOVEMBER
APRIL
Path II
will “Path II” II” will
explo explore re a variat variatio ion n on “Path I”, as well as a concept concept with with branch branching ing anagrams anagrams that I’m shocked I haven’t seen published before. This This is the idea of mixing multiple categories within a single anagram.for more books
[email protected] The closest work that I’ve seen to this is by Atlas Brookings, though I haven’t heard of him mixing multiple categories into a classic anagram as I’ve done here. done here. Using this concept, not only does it make their choices seem even broader, but we can target their chosen category, as well as their specific thought within that category. As you may already comprehend, this idea of combining categories can sometimes lead to the creation of quite large, branching anagrams. The two that I’ve provided provided can get us to any thought in only four letters, but it’s possible that some anagrams you develop may require you to guess a larger number of letters. This is where I would suggest making a slight adjustment to the process in “Path I”. Personally, this is my favorite approach to this kind of work, and is what I find myself using most often. Instead of asking the participant to think of other items, we ask that they imagine random letters around their word. Once the participant is focusing on a thought, I say, “I now want you to imagine a bunch of random letters around your word to try and confuse me. Every time I snap my fingers, I want you to let a random letter of the alphabet pop into your mind.” We now snap our fingers maybe ten to fifteen times, instructing them to change the letter each time. Because of the vast number of letters going through their mind, there will be no way that they’ll remember every single letter that letter that they’ve thought of. “Okay, I can see some letters starting to come through. Is there an A in your word?” we ask, as we appear to grab a single letter from the empty space before us.
Let’s assume that that they say, “Yes.” lit tle bit bolder than some of the others.” We can add, “I thought so. That letter was just a little
16
This line about seeing any confirmed letter as a little bolder is a nice subtle convincer of what we’re doing. “What about the letter B? ” we ask, as we grab a second letter from the air, “Is the letter B in your word?” “No,” they answer. “Okay…I wasn’t sure about that one. It was fairly bold, but not quite as much as some of the others. Let me look things over for a moment. ”
We toss away the (B) (B) and ponder the ‘letter s’ we see before us, and simply and simply continue through this process for whatever number of letters we need to finish our anagram. I would suggest only using the “ bold” bold” and “not as bold” lines once each, each, on the first “yes” and “no” responses responses that we receive. From then on, if they say “yes” they will just assume that I’ve seen it as bolder than some of the others. If they say “no”, they the y will assume that I wasn’t sure about that letter, but was just checking. After our first two comments, the the audience should have a good idea of the apparent “process” we’re going through. It’s much better to then let the suggestion take suggestion take over that this is what we’re we ’re doing the entire time. It leads them down a false trail, giving them the sense that they understand how we’re we’re going about deciphering the thought. So, just a quick recap: In “Path I” we’re appearing to visualize and eliminate the other thoughts they’re imagining they’re imagining by finding connections between the words. In “Path II”, it looks like we’re working our way way through all of the randomly thought of letters that are clouding their chosen word. We’re asking about a letter they’ve thought of in order to to locate the decoys. This approach of having them randomly think of letters is much quicker and more natural than asking them to go through ten to fifteen random thought tho ught of items. Another interesting thought is to use this approach alongside something like Ouija Ouija by Fraser Parker and Ross Tayler, or some of their th eir most recent work in Second Coming . After getting the first two letters, if the third letter could be a couple of different options, we could proceed into the “Path II” process and then guess the most probable letters that we think it might be. I also like that it stems perfectly into the original Ouija process. Ouija process.
17
The difference is that instead of naming letters aloud , we have them think of their letter, followed by a bunch of random letters which we try to filter through. Finishing this process, we should more than likely have enough information to guess the entire word or name. teach you my “Triangulation” anagrams, with the full presentation of the “Path II” approach. I’ll now
18
Triangulation
I call this one “Triangulation” because I’ve combined three different categories into one anagram. I’ve designed a male and female version of this demonstration, which will perhaps offend some of you, but you, but that isn’t my m y intention. This is just one example of a combined anagram that I enjoy. There are many others that can be devised. “We’ll start with a simple exercise. I want you to We begin the demonstration by saying, “We’ll think of a random thought. So, you could think of a color in the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, or purple. You could think of a type of jewelry you might wear, or your favorite season season of the year. You decide. When I snap my fingers, think of something.” SNAP
“Have you got something in mind? Very good, now please imagine that word is written in the air in front of you. But, I want you to imagine random letters around your chosen word to try and confuse me. So, every time I snap my fingers, I want you to allow a random letter of the alphabet to pop into your mind.”
We now snap our fingers at least ten to twelve times, giving them instructions to continue to change to a different, random letter on each consecutive snap. When we’re finished with this process, we look over the air, trying to visualize the letters that they’re sending. After surveying the floating ‘letters’, we ask for the first letter in the female “Triangulation” anagram, as we grab it from the air. “Is there an N in your word?”
They say, “Yes.” We then boldly state, “I thought so. It was just a bit bolder than some of the other letters I’m seeing.” We grab a second letter, “Is there an I in your word?” “No.” 19
“Okay…I wasn’t sure about that one. It was fairly bold, but not quite as much as some of the others. Let me look things over for a moment.”
We throw away the (I), looking over the remaining ‘letters’ in the air, and then grab a third letter, asking, “Is there an R in your word?” “Yes.” “Okay, I think this this should be the last one ,” we say, as we grab a final letter, “Is there an O in your word?” “No.” “Perfect, let me see what I can do here. Can I have you focus on whatever category you chose?”
We talk to ourselves a little bit under our breath, as we grab a few letters, and appear to place p lace and arrange them into an invisible word before us. We then write the word, “GREEN” on a piece of paper, and place it facedown in their hand. You’ll notice that the scripting of this demonstration makes it seem like we’re allowing them to think of anything. anything. Of course, they will naturally think of something within our three named categories. But by reframing the demonstration, we can say, “You had a free choice to think of any thought from any category you could think of. There is no way that I could have known what random thought you would have picked. For the first time, can you say the word you were thinking of?” “I was thinking of the color green.”
They flip over the card and we have something nearing a miracle. This is one of sixteen destinations de stinations that this anagram can lead us to, but it seems like much more. For the male version, the only difference is the categories that we name. We ask them to think of a simple, basic shape, restricting their number of choice to only a triangle, a square, a circle, or a rectangle. We also give them the option to think of a type of transportation vehicle. We say aloud, “Like an “Like an airplane, that sort of thing. ” We mention this choice so that they know to to spell out “airplane” instead instead of just thinking of the word “plane”. “anyth thin ing g with with The The fina finall optio option n that that we offer offer on the male male side side is a popul popular ar spor sport. t. I specif specify y “any removee possi possibl blee choic choices es like like “golf “golf ” or “b owli owling ng ”. for more teams…lik teams …likee voll volley eyb ball all , etc ” to remov
[email protected] 20
“Triangulation” (FEMALE ) N
no
R
no
A
yes
W
yes
U
yes
no
no
L
yes
RED
W
BRACELET
L
no
no
BLUE
yes
FALL
YELLOW
WATCH
SUMMER
yes
PURPLE
I
no
R
no
yes yes
A
T yes
GREEN
AUTUMN
ORANGE E
no
S
no
RING
yes yes SPRING
S
no
no
WINTER
yes
EARRINGS 21
NECKLACE
“Triangulation” (MALE) T
no
C
no
U
yes O
no
R
yes no
I
yes
no
CAR
R
no
BASEBALL
yes no
yes
yes
CIRCLE
SQUARE
BUS
AIRPLANE
yes
R
no
L
no
HOCKEY
yes SOCCER E
no
O
no
N
yes
yes
L
no
BOAT
TRAIN
yes yes FOOTBALL C
no
R
no
BASKETBALL
yes yes TRIANGLE
A
no
MOTORCYCLE
yes
RECTANGLE
22
no
TRUCK
Path III
This path makes use of something that I call the ‘progressive negatives’ ploy. ploy. It’s a It’s a quick way to go through a different type of progressive anagram, and it can be used as an easier method to track multi ple ple participants’ thoughts participants’ thoughts at the same time. In this version, the spectator never has to say “yes” or “no”. Instead of asking them to answer our questions, we say, “I’m going to say a few random letters, and when you hear a letter that’s in your word, I want wa nt you to say stop.” The basic idea consists of finding and asking for unique letters within any set of possible choices. As we narrow down the list through this procedure, more unique u nique letters come into play. The moment that they stop us, it will give away their chosen thought. We may choose to have them say “stop” aloud, or we could instruct them to close their eyes when they hear a letter in their word, telling them to focus foc us on its location in the word. I’ll explain the progressive p rogressive negative ploy negative ploy with a simple example using only one category. Let’s assume that we ask a person to think of a day of the week. In this example, we would set up our list like so:
Thursday Friday Saturday Tuesday Sunday Wednesday Monday
23
The letters that we would name, in order, would be: H, I, R, T, U, and S. (H) is a unique letter, in that it only appea rs in (Thursday). (I) is a unique letter that only appears in (Friday). Because we’ve gotten rid of (Friday) and (Thursday), the letter (R) now becomes a unique letter in (Saturday). (T) is now a unique letter in (Tuesday), which then makes the (U) a unique letter in (Sunday). Of our remaining two days, we say the letter (S), (S), and if they stop us, they’re they’re thinking of (Wednesday). If we go through our entire list of letters without them stopping us, we can now guess (Monday) while apparently receiving no useful information from our participant. To help cover this letter naming sequence, we use the approach from “Path II” of having them imagine random letters around their chosen word, every time we snap our fingers. We can then start naming the ‘random’ ‘random’ letters that we see, and when they stop us, we will instantly know their thought of day of the week. Be sure to take your time as you go through the list of letters. We don’t want to go too go too fast and not give a person enough time to go through the letters in their mind. Just grab the letters at a slow, but steady pace. On its own, with only one category, I don’t think progressive negatives are quite are quite as deceptive as they could be. But the ideas that I’m about to share demonstrate a couple couple of ways that we could incorporate this progressive negative ploy into our work.
24
Card Coding This is a simple way of applying the progressive negative ploy to discover a card a participant has thought of from a small chunk of cards. The concept can also be applied to a tossed-out deck routine, which, in many performances, can actually remove some of the dual reality in the effect. We’ll start with a close-up close -up performance, where we force a spectator to take a pack of seven cards. We do this by riffling down the side, asking them to say “stop” at any point, and riffle forcing to the top card in our small stack. We then count out seven cards and give them to the spectator. While we turn away, they are instructed to shuffle the small pack of cards and just think of one. They then close up the pack and put them into their pocket, or return them to the deck. The seven force cards that they looked at were:
Eight of Clubs Ace of Hearts Two of Spades Three of Diamonds Ten of Clubs Four of Hearts Queen of Diamonds
Ask them to focus only on the value of the card, ignoring the suit. They would be instructed to spell it in their mind, and then imagine a bunch of random letters around it, as per “Path II”. The sequence of unique letters that we would call is: G, C, O, H, T, and R. Whichever letter they stop us on will point us to their selected card.
25
I would also suggest performing this with multiple people. Give them the small pack of seven cards, have them shuffle while we look away, and each person chooses one card. We can now go through the letters, and when each person stops us or closes their eyes, it will tell us each of their cards in succession. Once they’ve alerted us to the letter, we ask we ask them to focus on where the letter is in their spelledout card, but not to mention where it’s located. Following this sequence, we ask them to focus on the suit. They don’t need to say anything out loud for this, as when we learn their value, we automatically know their suit. I think this extra piece helps to take some heat off of the letter naming sequence, sequence , before we finally reveal all three of their thought of cards. “Card Coding” could also be used within a tossed-out deck sequence. Toss out the gimmicked pack to three people and ask them to stand. Going through the letters, we can learn who is thinking of what. In some scenarios, this will eliminate the dual reality commonly associated with this demonstration. In other cases, you may get only two people thinking of the same card. You could then openly reveal the unique card, followed by using the Hoy principle on only those two participants.
26
Codex
“Codex” takes
this progressive negative concept and applies it to more of a book test effect, but we can present it in multiple ways. As an example, we could have a single single piece of paper that we’ve handwritten a note on. We give a spectator the note, ask them to think of a longer word on the page, and then they give it back to us and we read their mind.
Our force words could be anything, as long as they are longer than the other words that appear on the page. Let’s assume that we write a note that features five longer, force words: Jumping Conditioning Trampoline Irrational American So, asking a person to think of a slightly longer word in the note, the letters we could name are: U, D, P, and T. Once they stop us, we know which word they’ve mentally selected. We could also have a notebook which we’ve filled out out entirely, repeating those five words throughout the book so that no matter which page they choose, they will see one of our force words.
27
Intersecting “Intersecting” is an amalgamation of almost every approach and concept in this book. This is a unique method and procedure to allow three different participants to think of something, and we can then target each individual thought.
We limit their choices to three categories: a basic shape, a day of the week, or a season. Of our three participants, each is instructed to pick their own category and think of something. We handle this selection process by turning away and saying, “Whoever wants to think of the shape, please point to yourself, now. Whoever’s going to think of a day of the week, please point to yourself. And whoever is remaining, will you pl ease think of your favorite season?” For this approach to work, we need to then psychologically force a circle, a square, a rectangle, or a triangle on our ‘shape’ participant. The reason for this will be made clear shortly. Upon turning around, we ask the group to imagine their chosen words in the air. Intently focusing on our subjects, we say, “I’m not sure who it’s coming from, but I can see the letter E near the end of one of your thoughts. I’m fairly certain it’s the very last letter. Who’s Who’s thinking of this?” Someone will identify themselves, and we will instantly know that that they’re thinking of a shape, a shape, as we’ve psychologically limited their choices to four shapes that end in the letter (E). We can now use any path we wish to discover exactly which shape they’ve chosen. I might start by saying, “Think about which category you’ve picked, but don’t say it out loud. Is there an I or a C in your word? ” Based on their answer to this question, we can learn their thought of shape through this simple anagram. Alternatively, I would suggest using my “Targeting” approach to simply force a circle. I
no
yes C
C
Square
Rectangle Triangle
Circle
28
Assuming I’ve used the anagram to learn their thought t hought of shape, I would commit the shape to memory, but I wouldn’t reveal anything yet. We now have two people left, and we need to figure out who is thinking of the day of the week, and who is thinking of a season. We can figure this out by saying, “I don’t know which of you it is, but I’m seeing the letter A near the end of one of your words, maybe the last or second to last letter.” Whoever identifies themselves as thinking of a word with the letter (A) in this position will be thinking of a day of the week, because every day ends in (DAY). I would make use of the progressive negatives to learn the exact day that they’ve picked, picked, using the “Path II” approach of having them imagine letters around their word. Call the letters in the order I earlier discussed : H, I, R, T, U, and S. Whenever they stop us, it will alert us to their c hosen day of the week. Our remaining participant will be thinking of the season. I would suggest playing this last one up to seem more difficult. Ask them to think of different items from each category in order to try and confuse you, using the approach from “Path I”. We can then go through a simple anagram for the seasons, appearing to filter our way through their random thoughts. R
no
M
no
FALL
yes yes AUTUMN S
no
WINTER
yes
M
no
SPRING
yes
SUMMER 29
At the end of this entire process, we can write down all three thoughts, ask each person to say their thought aloud, and we can finish with our accurate revelations. If you wish to design your own version of “Intersecting” , the only obstacle to overcome is the fact that our final anagram can’t contain an item ending with (E) as the last letter, or an (A) as the second to last letter, which puts limits on our options. We could also choose to ask about the letter (D) or (Y) at the end of the chosen day to offer us more options, but it still puts restrictions on our third anagram. For instance, we couldn’t use a month as our final anagram, because ‘June’ and ‘May’ would mess with the cueing from the shape and the day. Likewise, we couldn’t ask about a color, because ‘purple’, ‘blue’ and ‘orange’ all end in (E). This is just something something to keep in mind should you wish to substitute the ‘season’ ‘sea son’ anagram for some other category. It’s also possible to use this concept with only two categories, which can help to make things a little simpler. For instance, one person could think of a day of the week, and a second person could think of a month. We ask about the letter (D) near the end of the word, and can learn who’s who’s thinking of the day, and can go through the progressive negatives with this person. We can then go through a branching anagram for the month, finishing by easily revealing both randomly thought of items.
30
Anagram Architecture This chapter isn’t related to any one particular path. It’s dedicated to the little details that we can employ in preparation behind the scenes, aiding in making this work look as seamless as possible. Designing and building my anagrams, I like to construct them out of items which can be cut in half, especially when mixing categories into one anagram. If the subsequent lists can also be cut in half, and so on, we can get through the entire group in the most efficient manner. In the female version of “Triangulation”, “Triangulation”, when we ask about the letter (N) it either confirms eight choices, or removes eight choices. The next letter in the path breaks those eight remaining choices into four, then two, and finally our final choice. This approach takes a sixteen item list and gets us to any finishing point in four letters, or a thirty-six item list in five letters. Obviously, this won’t always work, but you would be would be surprised how often it can work out with any given number of items. A common trend with progressive anagrams is to design them to start with the most common frequency of letters, in order to get as a s many “yes” responses as possible. They’ They’re typically structured this way because without a solid presentation of why we’re naming letters, letters, we want to get as many “yes” hits as possible. But “Andy “Andy””, from the Jerx the Jerx blog, blog, brought up a great point about anagrams that I wholeheartedly believe in, which is that the more “no” answers we receive, the more deceiving the overall experience becomes for our participant. If they say “yes” repeatedly on a number of letters, they’re clearly giving us information. If they say “no” more often, then it feels like they’re giving giv ing us less information. Correctly guessing the word after seemingly receiving no useful information is much more powerful and fooling. Because of this, I prefer to focus on getting rid of as many items as I can, as quickly as possible, instead of being worried worried about getting as many “yes” “ yes” responses as possible. I do, however, think it’s smart to call out letters out letters that are featured in the highest frequency within a given list of words, when we get towards the end of an anagram. For instance, in Mind, in Mind, Myth, and Magick by Magick by T.A. T. A. Waters, the end of his “Signse” anagram has us ask for the letter (Q) to differentiate between “Sagittarius” and “Aquarius”. As the letter (Q) only appears in “Aquarius”, if they the y say “yes” it seems rather obvious what their star sign is.
31
In that scenario, I would rather ask for the letter (G), as it could then apparently be Gemini, Virgo, or Sagittarius. Sagittarius. It isn’t so immediately o bvious that the letter gives us all of the information that we need. I think this is something important to keep in mind should you enjoy creating your own anagrams. I also try to use the first letter of a word as infrequently as possible, as I feel like that seems to give things away even more to a participant, but sometimes this is unavoidable. These next few ideas wer en’t en’t initially planned to be taught in this publication, but this work just didn’t feel complete without complete without their inclusion. I had also intended to withhold “Alphagram”, “Alphagram”, but after deciding to share the following thoughts, I’ve chosen chosen to hold nothing back in this project. In “Birthmonth”, “Birthmonth”, I explained how the last two months in any branch could be identified by asking if it begins with a straight or a curved letter. This idea of getting rid of choices without verbalizing a specific letter helps to more discree tly eliminate options. The following thoughts push this idea further, offering a few different solutions to the endgame of narrowing down our list of options. These are some of the more deceptive ways that we can progress through an anagram without needing to call any specific letters. The first thing that I want to share is one of my favorite starting questions, because it seems completely innocent. I simply begin my anagram sequence sequenc e by asking, “Is there a letter repeated in your word?” If they say “yes” it will get rid of some items, and if they say, “no” it will get rid of other options. If we were asking about colors, this would either confirm or eliminate: green, yellow, and purple. Using the male version of “Triangulation”, “Triangulation”, this “repeated letter” question quest ion cuts the list perfectly in half, and can then get us to any destination destination in only three letters, but I’ll share a way that we can cut it down to only needing to say two letters. I’ve sometimes asked, “Is this a long word… mor mor e than six letters?” By asking the above question, we could also cut the male “Triangulation” list in half. Something else that I’ve worked into anagrams is asking, “If the first letter was capitalized, would it look the same in lowercase?” I may give a couple of examples to the participant. For the letter (A), they would say “no”, because from a capital to lowercase, it looks different: (A) (a) For the letter (O), they would say “yes”, because it looks exactly the same whether capitalized or lowercase: (O) (o) 32
I’ve also occasionally asked, “The second letter isn’t a vowel, is it?” or whichever letter position might give us the most mo st information. I’m not as big a fan of this question, as a s it seems to give away too much useful information. When guessing a birth month, we could ask, “Is there a popular holiday that’s celebrated during the month you were born?” Only June, August, May, January, and September don’t contain common holidays that everyone will know about. You could casually ask this question at the very beginning of an anagram, and subtly remove some options. I would typically only use this when guessing a person’s birth month. Sometimes people can get the months and the holidays confused, but they will often be aware of any holidays that occur within their birth month. Another concept that I’ve very frequently made use of in progressive anagrams is Derren Brown’s “repeat it it ” ploy. When we come to our last two options on a branch, we can say, “Repeat your choice in your mind, over and over, like March…March…March.” If we get a hit, we have a clean reveal without needing to explicitly say another letter. If it doesn’t hit, we merely write down the other o ther option and give it to them to turn over and read. Instead of using Mr. Brown’s “repeat” out, “repeat” out, we could also use Peter Turner’s “wash principle “wash principle” ” at the end of our anagramming. The point is, whenever we can remove the need to name a specific letter, we should use it. If we work to apply these tips and techniques to our progressive anagram work, we can make them significantly more deceptive to our audiences. On the next page, I’ve provided an astrology astrology anagram that makes use of the “repeated letter” question, combined with Derren’s “repeat it” ploy it” ploy to get through the entire list of star signs with only one or two letters needing to be named. I’ve also included another way to construct the male version of “Triangulation” as “Triangulation” as well as a new variation of the female version, so that you can see the impact of employing these techniques.
33
“Astrology Anagram”
?
no
A
no
VIRGO LEO
yes yes ARIES LIBRA C
no
G
no
TAURUS AQUARIUS
yes
yes
SAGITTARIUS GEMINI
S
no
CANCER CAPRICORN
yes ANAGRAM KEY PISCES SCORPIO
?
“Is there a letter repeated in your sign?” “Repeat your sign over and over in your mind, like….”
34
“Triangulation 2.0 (Female)” (Basic Shape/Favorite Season/Common Type of Jewelry)
?
no
N
no
E
yes E
no
yes no
SPRING
SQUARE
RING
HEART
STAR WATCH
yes yes WINTER TRIANGLE N
no
C
no
yes
SUMMER FALL
CIRCLE BRACELET yes
C
no
AUTUMN EARRINGS
yes
RECTANGLE
ANAGRAM KEY
NECKLACE
?
“Is there a letter repeated in your word?” “Repeat your word over o ver and over in your mind, like….”
35
“Triangulation 2.0 (Male)” (Basic Shape/Sport/Vehicle)
?
no
T
no
R
yes N
no
yes no
TRUCK
HOCKEY BUS
CAR
yes yes
BOAT
SQUARE
TRIANGLE TRAIN T
no
C
no
yes
BASEBALL AIRPLANE
SOCCER CIRCLE yes
C
no
FOOTBALL BASKETBALL
yes
MOTORCYCLE
ANAGRAM KEY
RECTANGLE
?
“Is there a letter repeated in your word?” “Repeat your word over and over in your mind, like….”
36
Alphagram This is one of my favorite methods to discover a letter that a participant participant is thinking of, and it’s probably the piece that I’m the most proud of in this book , as it was the hardest to conceive. As it sounds, “Alphagram” is a method to perform an anagram through the English alphabet. It took a lot of work to get this demonstration into its current state. I had tried and failed for years to develop something like this. I could never quite crack the code and get everything to work out exactly how I wanted it to. Never being one to quit, over the years I compiled a list of questions that tha t I could ask in order to anagram through the alphabet, eventually finding a starting question that helped to split up the letters exactly how I had envisioned. The other hurdle in this demonstration that I always knew would need to be overcome, regardless of finding a way to build the anagram, was the reason for why I was asking these questions. When I developed the “Path II” approach, my mind started to spin with the possibilities, and I immediately got to work on “Alphagram” “Alphagram” again, eventually cracking the anagram over the course of the next ne xt few days. Had you entered my home during the creation of this system, you might have mistakenly thought I was Russell Crowe auditioning for A Beautiful Mind . There were literally piles of papers everywhere covered with questions and arrows and letters and symbols. Any sane person would have thought I was crazy. But at the end of my lunacy, I finally had the “Alphagram” that “Alphagram” that I had been attempting to build, along with a logical presentation to help cover the process. Let us examine what the demonstration looks like. We could technically guess a word with any number of letters in it, but due to the length of the process, I typically ask a person, “Please think of a three letter word. You could even change your mind a few times to see that there are actually quite a large number of options.” When they confirm that they’re they’re thinking of a word, we say, “Very good, please focus on the first letter of your word. I’d now l ike you to think of a few random letters to try and confuse me. Every time I snap my fingers, let a random letter of the alphabet come into your mind.” mind. ”
37
Snapping my fingers seven times, I study study the participant’s eyes, stating, stat ing, “Excellent, I can see about seven or eight letters coming through, but we need to narrow it down to the one that you’re thinking you’re thinking of. If you imagine your letter as capitalized and lowercase, does the letter look exactly the same? For instance, a capital and lowercase M look the same, but a capital and lowercase J are similar, yet technically look different.” As I say my example letters (M) and (J), I’m drawing them as capitalized and lowercase in the open air, so that they can properly visualize what I’m explaining. This explaining. This is the only instance where I take the time to do this, clarif ying ying those two individual letters. I’ll explain why after showing you the anagram. Let’s assume that they say, say, “Yes.” When they do, we grab two ‘decoy’ letters, tossing them away as we say, “That gets rid of these.” We then ask, “Is the first letter you’re thinking you’re thinking of positioned somewhere from A to O in the alphabet?” alphabet?” Once again, our participant answers with a “yes” response, and we grab two more letters and remove them. “Imagining “Imagining the letter capitalized, is there a straight line in it ?” we ask, as we draw a line straight up and down in the air.
On this question, the participant replies, “No.” We eliminate a few other ‘letters’ from the air, and then we’re finished with this particular this particular letter. Jotting something down on an index card, which we don’t allow anyone allow anyone to see, we continue on. You’ll notice that the process will flow much quicker now that we’ve gone through the procedure and explanations once. “Now, please think of the second letter of your word. And once again, as I snap my fingers imagine a few other other letters around it to try and confuse me.”
We snap our fingers six or seven times. “You’re doing great. Once more , imagine this second letter capitalized and lowercase. Do they look exactly the same?” “No, “No,” our participant answers.
We remove a few letters from the air, saying, “That eliminates these letters.” “Focus on your capital letter. Is there a curve to it at all?” 38
As we say this, we draw a curve in the air like a backwards (C). “No,” they answer again, and we remove one letter. “Is the letter positioned posit ioned somewhere from I to Z?” “No,” they answer, and we remove two more letters.
Astutely tapping our chin, we study the remaining letters for a second, asking, “Is there a line across the top?” “No,” they answer for the last time.
We remove the remaining ‘decoy’ letters, letters, and then make another note on our index card. “Finally, “Finally , please think of the last letter of your word, and a few other random letters.”
Snap seven or eight times, look over the ‘letters’ coming through, and continue with, “For the last time, capital and lowercase, do they look the same?” “No.”
Remove some of the options. “Is there a curve to the capitalized letter?” “Yes.”
Eliminate and and toss away another two ‘decoy’ letters. letters. “Is the letter positioned some where from J to Z?” “Yes.”
One decoy letter is removed from the bunch. “And finally, is the curve at the bottom of the letter?” “No.” “Excellent, then it must be this one, but I’d like to be absolutely sure. Can you just say the whole word in your mind, now? Just repeat it to yourself, over a nd over.”
I study their lips and their eyes, before commenting, “Perfect. I think I have it right. You’ve really done an amazing job.” job. ” I scribble something onto the index card and place it writing-side down down onto the participant’s palm. 39
“Could you please say whatever random word you thought of?” “Car,” says our participant.
We instruct them to flip over the index card, revealing the word ‘CAR’ clearly written on the other side. Our participants will often think that there's no way that we could have eliminated all of their decoy letters to discover what they were thinking of, so when we in fact do reveal their thoughtof word, it seems absolutely impossible and mind blowing. I understand that this can seem like a lot, but it really plays incredibly well. On the next page is the framework of “Alphagram”. “Alphagram”. I’d suggest that you just do a quick overview for now, and then continue reading to learn the full details and further extensions of the system.
40
“ALPHAGRAM”
“Caps/Low Same?”
no
“Curve to the t he letter?”
no
“Somewhere “Somewhere from from I to Z?” Z?”
no
“Is there a line across the top?”
yes
yes
no
H A
yes
“Line across top?”
no
L N
E F
yes
yes
I T
“Somewhere “Somewhere from J to Z?”
no
“Vertical line?”
yes
no
G
yes
“Is the curve at the bottom?”
no
R
D B
yes
J Q
“Somewhere “Somewhere from A to O?”
no
“Curve to the letter?” (W and Y example)
yes
“Is the curve near the top of the letter?”
no
yes
P S
no
“Does it rhyme with the letter E?”
yes
yes
“Is there a straight line in the lett er?”
no
O C
yes
M K
41
W U
V Z
no
X Y
Having seen the design of “Alphagram” you may be feeling a little overwhelmed, but but if you’ve ever memorized an anagram, this is no more difficult to learn. There are actually a few simple tricks and mnemonic features built into the anagram that can aid in our purposes of memorizing the letter positions, as a s well as discovering exactly which letters they’ve chosen. During your brief examination of the anagram, anagram, I’m sure sure you noticed that nearly every branch actually ends with TWO letters. Although this is the case, you’ll find that more that more often than not, you’ll be you’ll be able to easily work out the chosen word, but we can go one step further. We can typically figure out the word due to the fact that all of the vowels are separated, being paired with a consonant. The vowels will very often give away what the word is, and there will typically only be one “common” word that would work with the given set of letters. This is why I jot things down on the index card, in order to quickly work out the word at the end. But, if you want to be absolutely sure of their letter choices, choices, I’ll now cover a way that we we can anagram every branch down to a single, individual letter with one more question. We’ll start with the vowel pairs: HA, EF, IT, OC, WU, and XY For any one of these vowel combinations, we could simply say, “Okay, we we have two letters left, a vowel and a consonant. Is it the consonant that you’re thinking of?” If we’ve arrived at the end of the branch (HA), and they say “no” to our question, we know that they’re thinking of the (A). If they say “yes” we know that they’re think ing ing of the letter (H). The same would apply to any of the other vowel pairs. Now let’s examine all examine all of the consonant pairings: DB, LN, JQ, VZ, PS, and MK (DB) – “We have two letters remaining. Does the letter make a closed-lipped sound when you say it?” it?” (LN) – (LN) – “Is the line across the bottom?” (JQ) – (JQ) – There There will never be a time when we won’t be able to figure out if they picked they picked (J) or (Q), straight line across the top?” top? ” but we could ask, “Is there a straight line (VZ) – (VZ) – Again, Again, there will never come a time where you won’t be be able to discern which letter is needed, but we could ask about the number of lines in the letter. I’ve never needed to. (PS) – (PS) – “Does the letter make a closed -lipped sound when you say it?” or we could choose to ask, “Is there a straight line, as well?” Either would indicate (P) if “yes”, “yes”, and (S) if “no”. (MK) – (MK) – “Does the letter make a closedclosed -lipped sound when you say it?” The only remaining letters in the alphabet are (R) and (G), but “Alphagram” leads us directly to those specific letters, so there isn’t an isn’t an additional question needed. 42
You may choose to include these finishing questions, or you may choose to write things down and work things out at the end. With the (CAR) example, our end pairings would be: OC, HA, and R Our possible word options would be (CAR) or (OAR), and I would place my bet on (CAR) being the choice every time. But, if we wanted to be sure at the end of the process, we could simply ask, “The first letter is a consonant, consonant, correct?”
This would immediately make it clear which word they were thinking of, eliminating the need to ask the other two questions. Alternatively, we could use the out of writing ‘OAR’ and then crossing it out with a line and writing ‘CAR’ above above it. If it is ‘OAR’ , then we can at least prove that we had considered it. One of the only instances where I go all the way through for each letter is if I don’t do n’t have have something to write on, and I’m attempting to follow follow everything in my head. Otherwise, I typically just anagram it down to two letters and trust that I’ll be able to puzzle it out. Now that we’ve covered how we can get every branch branch down to any individual letter, let’s examine the inner workings of “Alphagram” to “Alphagram” to give you a full visual understanding of what’s what’s taking place as we ask our questions. Our starting question of comparing the capitalized and lowercase letter breaks the alphabet into two groups. This question was the key to cracking this system, as it cuts the alphabet into one group of fourteen letters, and a second group of twelve letters, which can then be broken down fairly evenly. To ensure this outcome, I give an example of the letters (M) and (J), only because some people could could confuse whether or not they’re they’re exactly the same. Some might write a capitalized (J) and a lowercase (j) without a line at the top of the capital, or without a dot at the top of the lowercase, in which case they would look exactly the same to them. This is why I write this particular letter in the air as an example of letters that aren’t the same. The same thing can be said for the letter (M), in that it’s usually usua lly sharper as a capital letter and curved as a lowercase letter (m). Because of this, some people may say that they look different, which is why I include it as my example of letters that are the same. The letter (W) is covered under the same (M) example to be included as a letter that looks the same. The (W) is used as an explanation in its own branch, which you can find listed on the anagram, where I ask “Is there a curve to the letter?” When I ask about the curve on this branch, I use ,
43
(W) as an example, curving the bottoms so that it’s included in the curved group, group , evenly dispersing our remaining letters. I also add (Y) as a n example of a straight letter. After giving the explanations for these letters, I typically don’t mention them again, trusting that they’ll remember my examples. examples. Following our “Caps/Low” question, we are left with these two groups: Caps/Low Different: Aa Bb Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Ll Nn Qq Rr Tt Caps/Low Same:
Cc Kk Mm Oo Pp Ss Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
Depending on if they say “yes” or “no”, it will tell us which group to progress into, and the next question to ask. The rest of the questions mostly concern the location of the letter in the alphabet, i.e. “somewhere “somewhere from J to Z” or ask ing ing about a specific shape to the letter. It should be said that during every question where I ask about a particular line being either straight or curved, I’m always drawing always drawing things out in the air in order to avoid any confusion for the participant. Just study the given letters, and then make a motion where the curve or straight line should be positioned. Another important thing is to be sure to specify that they focus on the capitalized version of their letter. I pretty much remind them to capitalize it on every question that involves asking about the shape of it. If they imagine it as lowercase, this can drastically affect the anagram on many levels. For (I), when we ask about a straight line across the top, if they’re imagining (i), they would say “no”. This mistake This mistake can happen with many other letters, as well, so always reiterate for them to focus on the capital letter on any question asking pertaining to a straight line or a curve. This next tip will help you to memorize the letter positions. Eventually, when we’ve progressed through a few questions, we can start to bundle some of the letter pairings together in order to make simple words that we can memorize, instead of trying to remember the random scattering of letters across the entire anagram. At the very bottom of “Alphagram”, “Alphagram”, we have the letters (MK) and (OC). Instead of imagining these as random letters, I put them together in my mind to create the word (MOCK). I then ask the question about a straight letter, drawing a vertical line in the air, and can simply remove whichever letters letters don’t work. We could then progress one level further further to learn the exact letter, if we wanted to.
44
Although this isn’t a word, for the branch of (PS) and (WU), I remember the ‘word’ (WUSP). ‘word’ (WUSP). I ask about a possible curve near the top of the letter, and if they say “yes” I can remove (WU). At the top of the anagram, for (IT) and (LN), I imagine the word (LINT) and can then ask about the straight line across the top of the letter to p rogress to the final two letters. For (HA) and (EF), we could remember the fake word, (HAFE). For (JQ) and (R), I think of the word (Joker), but I imagine it spelled, (JoQR) For (DB) and (G), I visualize (DeBuG) There isn’t a real shortcut for shortcut for (VZ) and (XY), but as they are the only remaining letters in the alphabet, all near the end, they are fairly easy to memorize. But I suppose you could make up a weird word, like (VZYX), (VZYX), pronounced like “physics”. Due to these groupings of letters, letters, this basically leaves us with seven “words” that we need to anagram towards. From there, we can ask the remaining question, or questions, to funnel us further through the anagram. All that’s left is to memorize the order o rder of questions based on the “yes” and “no” responses. This will take some time, but as I stated earlier, “Alphagram” is no more difficult to memorize than any other anagram. It just takes a little bit of mental effort, which we shouldn’t shy away from as supposed “masters of the mind”. mind”. Though, Though, if you’re someone who struggles with memory work, you could also make a crib sheet with an abbreviated version of “Alphagram”. “Alphagram”. All of the letters would be on there, but I would have symbols to represent any questions that I need to ask, like a simple curve or a straight line, (A-O), (J-Z), etc, indicating exactly what I should be asking about. I would print this onto an index card, and would place it second from the top of a small pile of index cards. By turning the top index card sideways, I can write information on it, as well as glimpse the “Alphagram” anagram below. I would always recommend putting in the effort to memorize the anagram, so that you can have it ready to go at a moments notice, but this cheat sheet can act as a saf ety ety net if you’re uncomfortable with memory work. After sharing “Alphagram” with Madison Hagler, he suggested the following addition to the word selection on the next page.
45
Instead of asking them to just think of a three letter word, say, "I'd like you to think of a three letter word. Please make it an object that you could draw or touch rather than something abstract." Asking them to do this dwindles down the options greatly. For instance, if I know the first letter is (H) and I’ve I’ve just just said to think of a three letter word, here are some possible options: Hat, His, Hot, Hen, Hit, Him, Her, Ham, Hop, Hip, Hog, How, Has, Hey With the instructions to make it a tangible object o bject that they can draw or touch, the list becomes: Hat, Ham, Hen, Hog, Hip Of these choices, (HAT) is almost certainly going to be their word, but it has helped to eliminate certain word options entirely. Aside Aside from a three letter word, I’ve I’ve also considered using this to guess a name, after learning the first two letters and the very last letter. I would recommend anagramming all the way down to a single letter in this scenario, so that there’s no second guessing gue ssing yourself on a particular starting letter, etc. I would also suggest that you make use of the CUPS principle, or something similar, to learn the total number of letters in the name. Any additional bits bit s of information are helpful. Sean Beard also provided some interesting thoughts on presenting this sort of name guess as a type of graphology demonstration. Instead of studying their handwriting to learn about personal traits, we just use the letters of their name, claiming that our names can affect our personality, and that the shapes and sounds and positions of the letters can have an impact on our behavior. Having asked about a straight line or a curve to a particular letter, after they reply, we could ask, “And is this person very straight -forward, or more round-about round- about and soft spoken?” This additional question appears to cover the reason for asking our previous question, aside from just narrowing down the decoy letters. lette rs. Because we’ll be repeating the questions, I’d advise advise that you only make these types of comments the first time that you ask about a unique quality of the letter. Afterwards, just let them assume that we’re we’re continuing to make judgments make judgments based on their the ir answers. At the end, we could provide a brief cold reading before revealing the full name. In a scenario where it could possibly be a couple of names at the end, another interesting tidbit to add, after learning the first, second, and last letter of the name, is to say, “It’s muffled, but it sounds like (blank), (blank) , but there’s a beat in the middl e, so it may sound slightly different for some reason.” Sean gave an example from his own experience using this statement, where they picked the name “Camdyn”, but he guessed “Cameron”. The line about the name being a bit muffled in his mind perfectly covered the slight miss, and still produced a powerful reaction.
46
One last thing that I wanted to mention was the idea of possibly using this concept within a category, as a replacement to a traditional anagram. Providing a simple example, we could ask about a color of the rainbow, and then use “Alphagram” to learn the first letter, and subsequently the entire word. For certain categories, it may involve using this system on the first two letters in order to learn the full word. Though, you could also combine combine this with the “repeated letter in the word” question to try and narrow things down first, following it up by using “Alphagram” on one letter to learn their selection. If you decide to do this, I would propose that you ask the questions and receive the answers verbally on the first letter, followed by having them answer the questions only in their mind for the remaining letters. Since the first letter will often give away the entire word, the other letters are all presentation and performance. I would demonstrate d emonstrate a similar process for the second letter, le tter, but have them answer in their mind, followed by a different process on the third letter, perhaps just repeating it mentally, over and over. This will help to further disguise the procedure on o n the first letter. Personally, I prefer to keep the concepts separated, using “Alphagram” to guess a random short word or name, and using a traditional anagram to progress through a category, but I always like to cover as many options and additional thoughts as possible for you to consider. With that being said, that’s that’s pretty much everything much everything that I have to divulge on this piece, and it’s certainly a lot to take in all at once. I would recommend reading this chapter a couple of times, familiarizing yourself as best as you can with this system before attempting to memorize anything. The more comfortable you are with the workings, the easier it will be to learn and execute.
47
Closing Thoughts We’ve treaded the paths and have emerged from our journey, having likely only dipped our toes We’ve in the water. I hope that you’ve found this this to be a satisfying treatise on the subject of progressive, branching anagrams. I sincerely believe that this book contains material that can ca n help to change the opinions of those who find anagrams to be too obvious, or those who have been unhappy with some of the previous work on this topic. I’ve seen many releases many releases where there is almost no focus focus on the presentation. Because of this, it’s obvious that we’re embarking on a lengthy fishing expedition, expedition, as there’s there’s no apparent process for our audience to latch on to. For progressive anagrams to play effectively, we must at least attempt to to disguise the guessing game we need to play. I personally feel that the paths in this book help to successfully achieve this ideal. I understand that some of the memorization required to perform these demonstrations can seem daunting, but if we take our time with them, everything is learnable. Some of the best advice that I can give a person trying to memorize a progressive, branching anagram is to make flash cards. I typically write them out on computer paper or a similarly large pad of paper, so that I can really visualize everything e verything on a larger la rger scale. This T his is a trick that I find to be immensely helpful. If you can focus on memorizing the anagram visually, visually, then you can just go through everything openly in the air, which I find to be easier. Just the act of writing it out yourself on these flash cards can be more helpful than simply reading it. Make a page for each individual block of the anagram you’re trying to learn, learn, and take it one step at a time. Be patient with yourself while learning a new anagram. I think one of the biggest mistakes we can make is to use an anagram before we have it truly committed to memory. It just kills your confidence in relying on them. Make your flash cards, take your time memorizing the information, and then either use it enough to never forget it, or refresh yourself every now and then. If we can retain the directions through the maze of paths in our mind, we will always be able to perform powerful, direct demonstrations of mindreading with nothing on us.
48
I personally think that progressive anagrams have a lot of untapped potential. It’s one of the purest forms of mindreading that we have available to us, and it truly deserves a lot more attention and use amongst our fraternity. Hopefully this manuscript will add something useful to your current approaches to anagram work, or if you’re a naysayer a naysayer to their deceptiveness, that this will reshape your thinking on them, and get you started along the right path. It’s been a pleasure pleasure being your humble guide through this field. Sincerely,
Matt Mello
49
