HUMINT INSTRUCTIONS :: PHILL SMITH
Thank you for buying HUMINT. The HUMINT coin is a fun, versatile and stylish prop that adds an extra logical punch to truth and lie routines. Included with the prop is a small bundle of the cards I use for my The Biz peek method - this is a little practice set, I recommend using your own business cards. Featured here is my presentation, I’m sure you will find your own.
EFFECT: “In my quest to learn as many ways as possible to work out what people are thinking I started studying interrogation methods.” “Not waterboarding or any of the nasty stuff, the methods that the military, police and intelligence services use that actually work. I actually met and worked a little bit with a guy who used to be a professional interrogator, and he explained that the trick is just getting people talking. They have this suite of ways to win people over, psychological tactics, and they just get them talking around the subject. Now, some of what they say will be true, some of it lies, and they have to be able to work out which is which and then combine all this varied information to find a core of truth. It’s actually an incredibly specific skill set and the people who can do it have quite a tight knit community. I never broke in, but he did give me this…” You produce a coin, which on one side bears the legend TELL A LIE, and on the other side says TELL THE TRUTH. “This is part training exercise, part pub game played for pints, and we’re going to play it now. Let’s pretend you are the subject of the interrogation. I want you to think of an object, it could be any object in the world, something small like the crown jewels, something big like, I don’t know, Tokyo. It could be Mount Rushmore, it could be an F1 car, it could be the Pope’s hat. The only condition is that it needs to be something where 1
HUMINT INSTRUCTIONS :: PHILL SMITH
when you say what it is, everyone here knows what it is, so nothing impossibly obscure. Don’t tell me what it is, but do you have something in mind? Great.” “Now, depending on the situation, the outcome of this game could determine either the fate of the free world, or who buys the next round, so to keep it fair, I want you to write down what you are thinking of on here.” you had them a business card from a pile of cards wrapped with a band and a pen. “I’ll look away and when you are done turn it face down so I can’t look.” This they do, and you place the face down card into the centre of the stack of cards and (cleanly showing both sides) table the stack. “OK take the coin. Here’s how this works, I’m going to play a kind of 20 questions, except after every question, once you have the answer in mind, you flip the coin and if it says tell the truth, you say the real answer, if it says tell a lie, you tell me a lie. I’ve got to work out what’s a lie, and what’s true, and hopefully synthesise the central truth, and work out what you are thinking of. Here’s the first question… This object: is it larger than a cow? Think of the answer, then flip the coin.” As they flip the coin you slide out a blank card from the stack and put the rest in your pocket. You put a tally mark on the card. “Question one: Is it larger than a cow?” They think for a second. “No.” “OK, so the first one is a gimme, you aren’t used to lying like this so the first one is always glaringly obvious. It is larger than a cow, but good try. Next question, remember think of the answer, then flip the coin: could you hug it?” They flip the coin, you write another tally mark. “Yes.” “Weird, so that one is true, so it’s bigger than a cow and you can hug it. Tough one. So,
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HUMINT INSTRUCTIONS :: PHILL SMITH
next question, remember think of the real answer then flip the coin. What did you have for tea yesterday?” They flip the coin. “Fish and chips.” You look them dead in the eyes for an uncomfortably long period. “You know, there’s actually a lot more going on in this interrogation than I’ve lead you to believe. That was question number three.” You draw the third tally mark then cover the card and write something on it, before turning it over and sitting back. “OK, the truth this time, what was the object you were thinking of?” “A giant redwood.” you nod. “And that’s how you save the free world, and win a pint.” You pick up the tabled card and show that that is exactly what you wrote.
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HUMINT INSTRUCTIONS :: PHILL SMITH
METHOD: The method here is my (ingenious) The Biz peek, a really flexible utility method for learning what someone is thinking. Here’s how it works. You have a dozen or so cards in a pile with an elastic hair band around them. One of these is handed to the punter to write or draw on, and you turn away. As you are turned away you hold the pile of cards and prepare them in a specific way: at the end nearest to you you get a break above the bottom card. At the far end you open the stack in the middle and hold it open with your thumb and first finger. This isn’t a sleight or anything, you are literally facing away so you just set it up and visually check it is all OK. You turn back and pick up their face down card. You slide this into the break you are holding at the back of the stack, but the visual illusion (and what you say) is that it is going into the middle. It’s a very strong illusion. This done you IMMEDIATELY turn the pile over (so that within the stack the writing is now facing up and is on the card second from the top) and put it on the table. You are, without saying, showing both sides. This is beguiling (and messes with magicians) because if anyone suspects a peek you are making it super clear that one is not being done. You remove all heat from the stack. (This insertion 2nd from the bottom with a gap held in front to visually imply where the card is really going is kind of an upside-down version of a variation of Marlo’s Tilt Move by my spooky-eyed buddy Dr. Jon that he called Zilt (like a Z Tilt, see?) Thanks Dr Jon!) The actual peek of course DOES happen, but not now. My goal with The Biz is to leave it as late as possible in the process to do the peek, and to find a spot with the maximum visual misdirection. In this case that is provided by the first time they flip the coin. Everyone will want to watch that and of course the punter in question will be looking carefully to make sure they don’t spoon it up. As they do this you casually pick up the tabled pile of cards in the right hand and tilt it towards yourself. Your left hand comes 4
HUMINT INSTRUCTIONS :: PHILL SMITH
across and you slide the top card out as both hands are moving, immediately turning this card around to a. draw the eye of anyone watching you and b. show that it isn’t the written on card, which I think people somehow suspect. With this card removed, the card facing you now has the writing on it, clearly visible. You table the single card you just drew out as you simultaneously peek the writing and pocket the stack in either your shirt pocket or your inside jacket pocket or your outside breast pocket, or your shoulder holster or whatever. Basically this left chest area is ideal because it means the stack has to cross your centreline and hence your gaze, so it is natural to look at it, but realistically, any pocket is fine, even if you want to drop it in your purse or handbag, or even place it in your tabled wallet etc. Even tabling the stack again is fine if you can manage the grabbers in your audience, but ideally you want it out of their view so there is no reminder of it. That’s essentially it, you have got your full card peek, and because of the structure of what’s happened it is almost completely invisible. The band around the cards is intended not only to keep everything compact and manageable, but to preclude suspicion of any cards-moving-around shenanigans. Clearly you can’t cut or move the cards within the packet. I love The Biz, it is gimmickless and sleightless and yet still extremely deceptive. Using the inverted Zilt move means that the card is placed automatically and by building your presentation around structural misdirection you apply a powerful coating of stealth to the peek. Where to get the cards from? I buy the blank cards you got in the pack from this site: http://amzn.eu/dchkgIj This is an Amazon UK link, not something I sell, it’s not an affiliate link, and I’m sure you can find something similar through your own local Amazon service.
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HUMINT INSTRUCTIONS :: PHILL SMITH
PRESENTATION: What I’ve shown above is a more commercial version of the routine with the three comical questions. You will doubtless find your own. My original routine essentially played the game for real, and I used the questions to communicate my journey through the logic of the game to their answer. It is loose, jazzy in it’s flow, and it *feels* real, but of course it also takes a while. I generally reserve that presentation for more informal times when I think people really want to play. It can be fun at a party to play in parallel with a conversation. If I am performing in a commercial situation I would be more likely to blow through the three question version.
THE COIN: My goal in designing the coin was, above everything, to create an interesting, intriguing object. Its existence logically leads to the routine - if you hand the coin to someone or show it to them, they will pick it up, ask about it, and you have a natural way to flow into the presentation. “Oh that? Actually there’s a funny story to that, I got an email from someone who had seen me perform my mind-reading stuff and wanted to know more - now normally I wouldn’t get drawn into that, but he was an interrogator for military intelligence and he suggested that if I told him a bit about what I do, he’d tell me a bit about what he does…” Now, the coin has a secret that is not used in the routine I generally perform. If you spin the coin, it will always spin down with the LIE side facing up. This is cool, but of limited use as a method because any routine which hinges on this as a method becomes very fragile, because there is no easy way to spin the coin to convincingly show the other side does come up sometimes - the audience’s assumption will be that the coin always lands on LIE, which sucks because it does.
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HUMINT INSTRUCTIONS :: PHILL SMITH
In cabaret situations you can demonstrate the spin and then miscall the result, but IMO it is still a fragile method. In my opinion the coin is best used as a presentational gambit rather than a methodological core. Being quite a conversational performer I like to have a presentation which details the origin of the coin, ie. to answer the question of wtf it actually *is*, and the Interrogation presentation is a nice organic way of doing that. The design is kind of intended as a Challenge Coin for an un-named military intelligence unit (Google ‘challenge coin’ if you want more details to flesh out your presentation), but it isn’t explicitly that. If you prefer a more pared-down presentation, you could just introduce it as part of a game you play to help learn to spot when someone is lying. This skips some of the mythology of the object, but gets to the meat a bit faster. I hope you have fun with the coin, however you end up using it. I’ve been pleased with the manufacture and I think that if nothing else it’s ended up as an intriguing little object. Good luck putting it to work, and thanks again for supporting the project.
Phill Smith PHILL SMITH, 2017
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Copyright © 2017 by Phill Smith All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. www.miscellaneousmiracles.co.uk 7
