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    Max Maven - Contimental PDF

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    Babrikowski Lucas
    The magician has a spectator think of a country in Western Europe or Scandinavia without saying it out loud. The magician progressively guesses letters, getting yes or no responses. Based on the letters and responses, the magician can determine the country using a memorized table mapping letters to countries. With only two "no" responses, the correct country can often be determined through a process called progressive anagramming. The effect looks like real mind reading to observers when performed convincingly.

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    Max Maven - Contimental PDF

    Uploaded by

    Babrikowski Lucas
    421 views3 pages
    The magician has a spectator think of a country in Western Europe or Scandinavia without saying it out loud. The magician progressively guesses letters, getting yes or no responses. Based on the letters and responses, the magician can determine the country using a memorized table mapping letters to countries. With only two "no" responses, the correct country can often be determined through a process called progressive anagramming. The effect looks like real mind reading to observers when performed convincingly.

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    The magician has a spectator think of a country in Western Europe or Scandinavia without saying it out loud. The magician progressively guesses letters, getting yes or no responses. Based on the letters and responses, the magician can determine the country using a memorized table mapping letters to countries. With only two "no" responses, the correct country can often be determined through a process called progressive anagramming. The effect looks like real mind reading to observers when performed convincingly.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    421 views3 pages

    Max Maven - Contimental PDF

    Uploaded by

    Babrikowski Lucas
    The magician has a spectator think of a country in Western Europe or Scandinavia without saying it out loud. The magician progressively guesses letters, getting yes or no responses. Based on the letters and responses, the magician can determine the country using a memorized table mapping letters to countries. With only two "no" responses, the correct country can often be determined through a process called progressive anagramming. The effect looks like real mind reading to observers when performed convincingly.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
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    The passage describes a magic trick called Contimental performed by Max Maven where he is able to determine the country a spectator is thinking of through a process of progressive anagramming.

    The magician has a memorized list of countries associated with letters. By getting yes or no responses from the spectator regarding guessed letters, he can determine the country with only two no answers.

    The principle is called progressive anagramming.

    Contimental by Max Maven

    This is my not so literal transcription of Maven’s effect Contimental as


    performed by him on video.

    Effect: The magician chooses a spectator in the audience. Here is what he


    says.

    “Madam, I’d like to take a trip to Europe with you—a mental trip.
    Let’s go to any country in Europe—I’ll even give you Scandanavia. Let’s just
    not pick a country in Eastern Europe, the names there change every week.
    So, I want you to think of a country in Western Europe or Scandanavia. Got
    it? Good. Now visualize the name of the country. Now I want you to focus--
    you’re kind of jumping all around there—focus on the letters. You’re still
    jumping around there, all right let me try, I’m going to try to get the letters
    here, but they may come in a little jumbled.”

    “I’m receiving an A,” says the magician. The spectator nods her head
    yes.
    “Good. I’m also receiving an N.” The spectator nods her head yes
    again.
    “And I’m also getting a D.” The spectator embarrassed for the
    magician laughs “No.”
    The magician, surprised, replies playfully, “Ooh, this is going to be
    more difficult than I thought. Focus clearly please. Okay, I’m getting what
    looks like an R.”
    The spectator again says No. The magician in mock outrage says, “I
    thought you were a nice person! Okay, let’s forget about words. Maybe
    you’re a more visual person. I want you to think of some strong image
    associated with the country. It might be an image of an important place of
    interest, or maybe what the clothing looks like, any strong visual image. Got
    it? Ahh, good that’s much better. I’m getting the image pretty clear I think.
    I’m going to write the country down on this pad. What is the country you’re
    thinking of? Spain? Yes, that’s just what I wrote.”

    And indeed as the pad is turned over, it reads Spain.

    Method: This principle is called progressive anagramming. The


    magician can tell which country is chosen based on the spectator’s responses
    to his guessed letters. Believe it or not, with only two No answers, the
    correct country out of 20 can be determined. The performer must memorize
    the following table (another option is to have this crib sheet attached to the
    side of the marker the performer uses to write his prediction):

    Call out capital letters until you get a no. Then call out small letters until you
    get a second no. The country at that letter will be the answer. If you reach
    a country with a line next to it, stop there even if you don't have two nos yet.
    A
    l Sweden
    g Liechtenstein
    i Luxemborg
    -- Belgium

    N
    l Austria
    t Wales
    i Portugal
    -- Italy

    D
    r Spain
    e Norway
    c Germany
    -- France

    L
    -- Denmark

    E
    o Finland
    h Scotland
    -- Holland

    R
    -- England
    I
    -- Netherlands
    S
    -- Ireland

    -- Switzerland

    Let’s try a couple of examples: You say A. Spectator says No. So now you go
    to the small letters underneath the A. So you say L. Spectator says yes.
    You continue right under the l, so you say G. Spectator says yes. So you
    continue with i. Spectator says no. Since this is your second no, you know
    the correct country is directly opposite that letter i. You now know the
    answer is Luxemborg.

    Let’s try another. You say A. Spectator says yes. So you go to the next
    Capital letter. You say N. Spectator says no. So now you go to the small
    letters under the N. You say L. Spectator says yes. You go to the next small
    letter, you say t. Spectator says yes, you go to the next small letter you say
    i. Spectator says yes, now you see a line under the t. The line tells you that
    you’ve reached the correct answer even though you have only got one no
    answer. You tell the spectator their answer—Italy.

    Another one. A, yes. N, yes, D, yes. L, yes, E, yes, R no. So you go directly
    under the R and there is only a line. That means you have got the answer—
    England.

    One last one, then play with it yourself. A, yes, N, yes, D, yes, L, yes, E, no.
    So you go to the small letters under the E. O, yes, H, no. You’ve now got
    two no answers so you must be at the answer—Scotland.

    This can be a very powerful effect, but it does take some selling, otherwise it
    just looks like a guessing game. When you make the first statement, nod
    your head up and down to try to get agreement or disagreement without
    specifically asking for it. Be playful about the spec stumping you, set up the
    expectation that you may not be 100% accurate. Also, as I indicated in the
    Effect section, if the two No replies are coming fairly early in the process, you
    can declare failure and switch modalities to the visual. This can be quite
    effective.

    A warning: not every Western European country is listed here. Some notable
    missing countries are Greece, Iceland, Cyprus, Malta, and the United
    Kingdom. If you are worried about this here are two suggestions that might
    help:

    By setting it up so that you and the spec are going on the vacation trip
    together, you should get one of the less obscure countries.

    You can simply eliminate the United Kindgom or Greece as possibilities by


    saying “Let’s go to a country like England or Greece. Pick a different country
    where we might enjoy vacationing.”

    It takes a while to get this down, but once you have it, it’s an awful lot of fun
    to perform, and it looks like real mind reading.

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