By David Numen

by David Numen A “Let Your Mind Wonder” Publication

Dedicated to two people for very different reasons. Firstly, my ever-loving and ever-loved wife Christine who has been exceedingly patient in waiting on me “making it”. This book is our own little piece of immortality and might be the key to the first step. And for completely different reasons, the shadowy mentor mentioned within these pages, without whose help, kindness, guidance and generosity I wouldn’t have had half the education in mentalism which I’ve had and this book wouldn’t be half the book it is!

Imagine... Your participant names anything they see. They are left in no doubt that they have had a completely free choice – in fact they can even change their mind. They pick up your cell phone which has been in full view and left untouched by you throughout. You instruct them to go to the video folder and they will see one and only one video. They play the video and it is a video of you correctly predicting what they would choose. That’s the ultimate version of Cellular Forecast and I am sure you will agree an impressive and powerful effect. There are many other applications and in fact before we get to the ultimate version I want to take you on a journey with a few detours, so please be patient…

Introduction You have in your hands what I hope you’ll find to be a useful and inspirational tool. Coming up with this idea was a complete surprise to me as I don’t really consider myself terribly creative – perhaps this is down to a lack of focus. Anyway, when I came up with the basic version of this effect I was quietly chuffed but also didn’t think it was earthshattering. I shared it with a shadowy man who I consider a friend and a mentor and he thought it was brilliant – not only that, he hadn’t heard of this application before. After that I started to think about other directions the effect could be taken in and the result is what you are holding here. I have seen a few recent releases that I personally consider to be outright rip-offs of old effects or else very weak basic ideas that have been lifted to higher realms by guest contributors. Whilst I have no doubt that others may use this as a springboard for even greater effects, I am pleased enough that the idea is sound as it stands and as original as these things go – I mean the concept of a prediction is hardly original but the method of predicting is, I believe, a new one. So let’s start at the beginning – the basic effect and method. I am sure that once you have read the basic version many of you will be well ahead of me in terms of further applications but in the interests of completeness and giving you your moneys worth I will take you down that path anyway.

Basic Effect Your spectator freely selects a playing card – there’s no way they will consider this a force, it really is fair. You direct them to your mobile phone and instruct them to navigate to the folder where the videos are kept. In that folder they will see one and only one video. Instruct them to press play – the video shows you correctly predicting the exact card they would select.

Method My wife recently bought a brand spanking new mobile phone and I played around with it for a while thinking there must be some kind of effect I could use this for – but other than Andrew Mayne’s “Ghost Vision” I couldn’t think of any other than a basic “force a card and show you have correctly predicted it with a video”. Like so many things, the idea went to the back of my mind where, for once, it cast a line and caught a fish! I was thinking about the problem of how to cleanly show a video of yourself somehow predicting the named card and instead of the usual dull, hollow, clanking sound I get when I try to come up with ideas I actually had a real, honest to goodness, I-don’t-think-I’ve-seen-this-before idea. Now comes the confession. The effect description contains a small white lie – a fib. It’s not even a fib, more of a fibbette. Unfortunately it was one of those situations where to be more explicit would have involved uncovering the dastardly secret so I took a deep breath and held something back. You won’t always have a video as your prediction. Wait! Don’t write me angry emails saying you’ve been conned. Yes, you won’t always have a video as your prediction BUT the other options - ALL of the other options - are every bit as strong as the video. It’s just that the video is the nicest sounding one for descriptions sake and I had to go with that for the ads. You do forgive me, don’t you?

You see, the idea struck me that there’s an opportunity to use the various functions of the modern cell phone as what we mentalists often coyly call “outs” (but, as the wonderful Paolo Cavalli correctly states the correct term is “outcomes” – “outs” being something we use in the event of something going wrong whereas an “outcome” is something already mapped out on our journey). It also struck me that ALL the potential obvious outcomes looked, in and of themselves, to be a natural place for the modern mind marvel to keep their prediction. I started off with 4 basic outcomes and as soon as I realized I had 4 outcomes I immediately thought of the 101 Deck. Let’s deal with the outcomes first and then I will deal with the deck for those lovely people who may not know what it is. All modern phones have a number of options and in fact you can easily have 5 or 6 outcomes. To begin with, however, we are going to use 4. By using the functions of the cell phone in this way you can cleanly direct a participant to the relevant folder and show that your prediction is the ONLY item in that folder. To prepare, start off with the video folder and create a video of yourself predicting the first of the four force cards. Simple. Make sure that this is the ONLY video in the folder (hey, you are a mentalist, it shouldn’t be that hard a sacrifice to get rid of all those little porn clips your buddies have sent you considering what you’ve done to wallets over the years!).

Then get a nice clear snapshot of you holding a jumbo version of the second force card. Place this in the photos folder of your phone and make sure that this is the ONLY photo in that folder. Send a text to yourself from another phone predicting the third force card and make sure this is the ONLY text message in that folder. Finally, make a notepad/diary entry for today predicting the fourth force card and make sure it is the ONLY diary entry for today (obviously you will need to change this every day, but show some commitment will you!). Now for the deck. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, the 101 Deck (sometimes called the Bagshawe or Koran deck) is a brilliant creation which allows you to force one of 4 cards in a really clean and fair manner. If you are going to make this yourself you are going to need 6 decks of cards. Firstly decide on which 4 cards you’d like to have as your force cards. It’s best to go for lowly spot cards and ensure none of the force cards are distinct or memorable (such as the Ace of Spades or the Queen of Hearts). Remove these 4 cards from each of your 6 matching decks. Now, from one of the decks extract 28 indifferent cards – avoid having the mates of your force cards among these (i.e. if you have a 4 of Diamonds as your force card, don’t use the 4 of Hearts as an indifferent card).

Intersperse these indifferent cards with each of the force cards in rotation – so for example if your force cards are the 2H, 4D, 5S, 6C then place a face up indifferent card on the table and on top of that place the 2H face up then another indifferent card then the 4D, another indifferent card then the 5S, another indifferent card then the 6C, another indifferent card then start with the 4D again, repeating the cycle. If you’ve done this correctly you will have 4 indifferent cards left over. (If you haven’t done it correctly then you are not only duty bound to remove yourself from all mentalism boards but you will have nightmares of big naked beardy mentalists mud-wrestling for a month.) These 4 indifferent cards go on top of the deck. You now have a deck which upon a casual spread will appear normal. You can have the spectator start dealing cards face up from the top and once they have dealt 4 cards you can instruct them to stop any time they feel like it. Now, because they have already dealt 4 cards it is highly unlikely they are going to go heavy on the dealing and therefore they will not pass more than one cycle of the force cards. However the force cards cycles are well apart and it’s unlikely that your participant will notice any repetition, even if they dealt 20 or 30 cards. If you find the participants DO notice the set up of the deck then you are either performing for a smart ass magician or else you are performing for people you do tricks for all the time and both groups are people who will look toward catching you out.

Anyway, don’t waste this on those people, save it for REAL audiences with REAL people. Also, in an attempt to assuage any fears you may have about using such a deck I refer you to the final chapter “Worries”. Back to the effect. You can also have the participant cut the cards before dealing – this takes away the subtlety of the 4 indifferent cards at the start of the deck but then creates an illusion of greater randomness. So with the deck set up in this way you can have the spectator deal and stop and wherever they stop you will either have facing up one of the force cards or an indifferent card. Obviously, if you have a force card facing you then that becomes the chosen card (“the one you stopped at!”). If it’s an indifferent card then the next card is one of your force cards and THAT becomes the chosen card (it is, after all, still “the one you stopped at!”) So to perform the effect, take out your cell phone and place it in full view on the table and your 101 deck. Have the participant deal or cut and deal the cards as described until they decide to stop. If you have the mental acuity to keep track of the cycle of force cards you can be in a position to know which card is next (should the participant stop on a face up indifferent card). This adds another layer of deception because you can reveal the prediction without actually knowing the card (as far as the audience are concerned).

Once you know the force card you are then able to direct the participant to pick up your cell phone and casually ask them to navigate to the relevant folder. It is, I think, important that you are very casual and offhand about this to make it sound like, say, a text message is the most natural place for you to keep your prediction. This is so as not to have some wag suggest that they look at the other folders on your phone. I personally think the effect is so strong that it is unlikely anyone will think of asking but it helps to be prepared. And, again, check out the chapter headed “Worries” for what I think to be an important point in covering ourselves in mentalism. Effect is over, take a bow, grab your phone and head home, or even better use the time honoured but much overlooked technique of hitting them with something else before they have a chance to think about what they’ve seen! I had this much worked out when I sent the idea along to my shadowy mentor. I thought he’d like it as a cute little effect but was taken aback when he said he thought it was brilliant. This set me thinking again and I had another application for the basic set-up…and then another and the whole thing kind of snowballed to the ultimate version which you will find later in the manuscript. Before I go onto the other applications I’d like to give you some more options to make the card choice even freer and also one which enables you to do the effect without a set up deck.

Alternative Force Deck Handling You could have all the force cards marked on the back – you don’t need to be able to identify which force card in particular, just whether or not any given card is a force card. The participant can then shuffle the deck freely and cut. If you see a force card on top, then use that, if not get them to cut again. Chances are very high that you won’t need the deck cut too many times before one turns up.

Without the Force Deck After I came up this basic version and my mentor gave me encouragement, I thought a bit more about the possibilities. One obvious point which struck me was that if you didn’t want to carry a force deck with you (and the obligatory matching normal deck you can switch in to do other effects with) then you could use a normal deck. Just be prepared to force 4 cards and have 4 more freely selected. I am sure you know various methods but I personally would probably use the riffle force – alternating force card with indifferent card. I do use the classic force a fair bit whenever I perform casually and by having a bank of four force cards in the middle you could probably get away with doing what Canasta did with a stacked deck and having them touch one and taking 8 cards together but later when you recap you talk about “any 8 cards”. You could even force 4 in this way and get another 4 selected by someone else from various parts of the pack. Once you have 8 cards on the table you can then use “Equivoque” in a really free and easy manner. You can have the cards dealt in a row and assigned numbers one to eight with all the force cards being odd. You ask them to name odd or even and you respond accordingly – ditching the even if they say odd (“Okay, odd it is!” says the mighty mental marvel) or ditching the even if they say even (“Okay, first elimination”). Again, this is sketchy because you really should know this stuff already.

This procedure leaves you with 4 force cards and you can do whatever the hell you like with them! In fact, I prefer this version to the force deck version simply because the ending allows you to be that much more fair and free. They can decide on one card and you can use all your acting and presentation skills in building up this choice or allowing them to change their mind before the absolute final choice is made. Once the choice is made, you are home and dry to proceed as per the original effect. Just remember, it doesn’t matter how contrived the original 8 selections are so don’t sweat the fact that 4 of them have to be forced. The end result is a really fair procedure and the opportunity to change their mind should throw those enquiring skeptical minds way off the scent. And this freedom with the final 4 gives us LOTS of exciting options which leads us to the ultimate version to follow later. So, with that in mind why restrict yourself to 8? You could have several piles of 4 and use “Equivoque” to get down to 1, knowing full well that you have a really fair final selection procedure. One final option is to gimmick the 4 force cards and those of you who have Ted Lesley’s “Paramiracles” and T A Waters’ “Mind, Myth and Magick” should know exactly what I mean.

Cards Without Cards I Two further possibilities spring to mind before we ditch the cards and take the effect in other directions. What about having 4 common psychological card choices stacked up on your phone? Ask them to name a card and if they pick one of the 4, thank whatever deity you believe in and play as per the original effect. If they DON’T name one of the four, do a simple personality reading. The other cards without cards option, is to use one of the many verbal card forces. For me the greatest one that I have read and used is in Kenton Knepper and Friends’ “Killer Konceptions” under the title “Killer Killer”. It’s flexible in that it can be subtly adapted for different cards and it works! It’s also available on Docc Hilford’s “Real Mind Reading” video. Derren Brown has a couple but I personally don’t like the language used in them, however many people do like them. So, once you settle on your verbal force, try it out a few times. You will miss occasionally. See if there is a pattern – do you miss completely or do you miss slightly? If you find a common theme (and I did with the “Killer Killer” force) then you have 4 potential outcomes to use with the force. For example if your force card is the 6 of Clubs but sometimes people say “7” or “4” then use those as your outcomes and you truly have a miracle on your hands.

Cards Without Cards II For this idea I am indebted to the wonderful mind of PAOLO CAVALLI. He suggests that the 4 outcomes on the cell phone are natural places to store ones prediction for “Danson’s Diary Trick” or, as it is more commonly known in Mentalism, “Chronologue”. It’s not for me to spill the beans on method for this but the effect is that someone gives you a date and you show a diary which has playing cards written against each date. The cards are shown to be different on each date (but obviously with some repetition as there are only 52 cards and 365 days to fill). The participant looks up the date they chose and reads out the card – which matches your prediction. It’s a lovely effect – although it has a certain illogic but personally I have found a way that makes it work for me. Anyway, as Paolo says, the cell phone gives one a terrific way of presenting the prediction.

ESP Version So I had written up the card version and had some encouraging comments made which then caused me to think about the wider possibilities. ESP cards were the first of these ideas to spring to mind. This should be obvious – if you have 5 outcomes then great, use them all up predicting the various ESP symbols – if you only have 4 outcomes available on your cell phone then create a reasonable-seeming physical 5th out – maybe a tag attached to the phone? I am sure you can come up with hundreds of ways to have a 5th out. However, I think most cell phones have at least a diary, MP3 section, video, photo and text which gives you 5 outcomes easily. With this set-up you are, of course, ready to do a strong and direct ESP card effect. You can set out 5 ESP cards face up in front of the participant and ask them to look at each one carefully before deciding on one in particular. Whichever one they decide on, you can predict with ease and confidence! If you prefer, you can use a marked ESP deck and have the selection be a random one unknown to you as they mix the 5 cards and choose one. Again you have the option, as with the original effect, of playing up the opportunity to change their mind. Yes, it’s only a 1 in 5 prediction but it’s a strong one and a baffling one when you throw in the final chance to change their mind – and the additional fact that the card’s identity is unknown to you until AFTER you have directed them to the relevant folder of your phone.

If you want to fly by the seat of your pants don’t worry about having the 5th out – try it this way WITHOUT ESP cards. Draw the 5 shapes on a piece of paper and ask them to draw a line through (or circle around) one of the symbols. You have a pretty strong chance they will encircle one of the 4 predicted symbols but if they DO circle the missing link get them to circle ANOTHER one and another and another until only ONE remains. You lose the “you can change your mind” aspect of the presentation but if they happen to circle the non-force symbol first you can really play up each and every decision they make into a psychological nightmare for the participant. This could be quite an interesting ice-breaker depending on the social situation – you could claim to know what actions a person is likely to take and then bring out the symbol cards or else have the 5 symbols written down.

Designs For those who feel a 1 in 5 choice is too limited how about creating your own design deck? You can have 16 different designs and “Equivoque” down to 4 pretty easily creating the appearance of a much bigger choice. Again, once you are down to 4 you have plenty of byplay available with giving them opportunities to change their mind. Alternatively you can have a selection of targets for them to draw – words describing various simply drawn objects such as “cat”, “house”, etc. A simple method would be to use blank faced playing card stock and to take 32 cards. On half of them write a different object word and on the other half write the same 4 force words. Subtly mark the back of the force cards. You can then have the cards shuffled freely and cut and cut again – in fact have them handed out to one person after another until such time as you see one of the force cards on top of the pack. The person looks at the card and draws the object – you are then home and dry once again to show your prediction.

Drawing Duplication There are a few Drawing Dupe effects using indexes of the most commonly drawn items. House, Tree, Flower, Sun, Boat…you might need to experiment a bit with this to find the 5 or 6 most likely drawn objects in your area. Once you have settled on a list, set them up as your outcomes on your cell phone and you are ready to go. Tell your participant that you have a target image you are trying to send and ask them to draw something simple. Give them a small stack of cards because if their first drawing doesn’t match any of your outcomes then you are going to ask them to draw at least 2 or 3 more objects. If they have drawn a match for one of your predictions then you are home and dry and can direct them to your cell phone for an amazing climax. If it’s taken 2 or 3 goes before they got there (and if they draw 4 pictures there’s a VERY high chance at least 2 will match) then you need to Equivoque down to however many match and then go for a totally free choice to end with. Whilst the inspiration for getting the participant to make additional drawings should the first not match any of your outcomes comes from a Kenton variation on Max Maven’s Positive/Negative, I have been told that Alain Nu uses a similar dodge in his latest book.

Tarot Sticking with 5 outcomes (although there is the possibility of a 6th if your cell phone has a Calendar feature as well as the notepad/diary feature) I thought about how to force a tarot card (or rather one of 5) and this came to me. If you are prepared to wing it and be adaptable then this could play very well. Use only the 22 major arcana cards. Select 5 of these that you would like to use as force cards and set up your cell phone with 5 predictions (and/or mini-readings). Then set up your tarot cards with the force cards at 12 th, 14 th, 16th, 18th and 20th positions from the top of the face down pack (the set up can vary once you understand the concept but just use this as an example). Show the tarot cards, explain that these are the major cards and that today they will feel themselves drawn to one card in particular. If you can do a false shuffle and retain the order then do so – or at least do a false cut. Now ask them for a number from 1-22. If the give you any number from 12-20 you have a perfect result – they either deal straight to a force card or else it’s the next face down card. If they say 21 or 22 then just use whichever card they arrive at and do a mini-reading. If they say anything less than 12, have them cut the cards and deal to the relevant spot – guaranteed to get you to a force card.

Alternatively, ask only for a number from 1-10 and have them cut the cards before they deal – this should eliminate the problem of them choosing 21–22 and almost guarantee you hitting a force card. If you use a 6th out then you have an even better set-up and can have a force card at the 22nd position.

Heads or… Another interesting use for our multiple outcomes would be a very clean variation of Max Maven’s “Positive/Negative”. If you don’t have the original routine then I urge you to check it out – it’s brilliant. There’s an excellent variation in Wonder Words 3 which uses a superb linguistic twist to eliminate a small problem some may have with the original routine. There’s also another variation in Kenton’s “An Enchanted Evening” book which uses a real coin as your prediction in a way which can be very magical. The basic effect is that someone chooses an invisible coin and tosses it in the air – you then show you have correctly predicted the coin AND the outcome of the toss. A truly devious combination of two classic principles in Mentalism. Using our cell phone outcomes we can do the effect in a most direct manner. It will depend which country you are in and which coins are common. Here in “Euroland” we have 7 different coins in circulation. I would suggest you use as many of the outcomes as you are comfortable using – with the full gamut of 6 outcomes you can cover 3 coins being either heads up or tails up. For example, have a video of you holding a coin in the usual post-toss position and you could say to camera “Look – I’ve got a * euro coin heads up. This could be important later!” You could have a photo of the same coin turned tails up as your second prediction. An audio of you saying “I feel a heads up 50 centimo coin will be important later today”, etc. etc.

So with this set up of 6 outcomes you can easily cover 3 coins in both the heads and tails position. I would suggest you look up the original routines and try them out to find out which coins are most commonly chosen and make the 3 most popular ones the subject of your predictions. You can start the routine by having the participant bring out an invisible coin from their pocket…if they don’t bring out a coin which matches then it’s fairly easy to cover with a comment such as, “When this is over you might think to yourself that I lulled you into giving me a psychologically common answer so please bring out another 2 or 3 different invisible coins” and then “Equivoque” down to whichever ones match your outcomes.

Words You can, with as much or as little preparation as you like, have a word as your prediction. Remember, all you need to do is to have 4 force words mixed in with as many freely selected words as you can handle for the initial “Equivoque” procedure. An obvious idea would be to have a dictionary prepared with 4 short pages in order to force 4 words and have 4 or more extra free selections then you are ready to “Equivoque” down to the bank of four force words and have the usual extremely fair and free selection. OR those of you familiar with the “Autome” principle could use it in an interesting way by having descriptions instead of specific words and use 4 different books set up to force four different types of phrase. You could use this in a really impromptu manner in someone’s home by using the Hoy Book Test – get a glimpse at four different pages and remember the first word on each page. Excuse yourself to the bathroom where you set-up the 4 words as your predictions on your mobile phone. When you return you are prepared at the drop of a hat to amaze – just use two books, the one you checked out earlier and any other. Use the other to have page numbers selected and get the first word of each page you call out noted down. Do 3 or 4 straight ones, then a couple of miscalls as per the Hoy

routine, then a couple more straight ones and a couple more force ones. Another idea, this time using a book you are familiar with, is to be prepared to force a particular page in the book – a page you have already checked out and obtained 4 lengthy/ interesting words from and set-up as your predictions. Make sure there are 8 interesting words that would stand out and use the first 4 as your force words. In performance, have the participant write down the numbers 1 – 8 on a piece of paper. You then riffle force the page you checked out and ask them to look for 8 interesting words on the page and write them in against the numbers. This should result in the first 4 numbers representing the 4 force words. From that point it’s a simple matter to ‘Equivocate’ from 8 to 4 and go for the usual free final selection. Alternatively have the words written on separate cards – this would probably be easier to control as you could spread the cards out and mix them up – perhaps nail-nicking the force 4 cards. You are then ready to use our old friend “Equivoque” to get down to 4 force cards. Or else, a variation of the “PATEO” force. You touch two cards and ask them to eliminate one…repeat this two more times, each time you are touching two non-force items. Now, you are left with 5 items – four force items and one non-force. Have them split the cards into a pile of two and a pile of three and give you one pile – use whichever pile is all force cards and you can still have a powerful and psychologically gripping ending.

If the cards are face down you can announce “Whichever card you turn over is going to be the final selection – think long and hard before you make your decision as there is no going back” etc, etc. Build it up and you have another mental marvel at your disposal. Another alternative is to just have them write the 8 words down in any order against the numbers and be prepared to play around to get to your final outcome. For example they may write 3 of the words together – look for a pattern and play with what you get. This takes guts admittedly but so does much of the best mentalism and you could potentially make this something so free and fair-seeming, it will be talked about for years. If you are proficient at riffle forcing you could do this. Choose a page and from 4 different books use the first word or sentence on that page from each book as your predictions. Hand out the 4 books and use another book to riffle force a particular page. An audience member is asked to select one of the four book-holding participants with as many opportunities to change their mind as seems dramatically or comedically interesting. Ask the final chosen one to read aloud the first word or sentence and then reveal the relevant prediction on your cell phone. Another alternative is to have a switch pad with 4 force words written on one side. Hand it out blank side up to 4 people for them to write a word, then do the switch handing it to 4 more people…you are then left to “Equivocate” down to 4 selections and carry on as per the other routines.

Psychological Forces The use of the cell phone set-up enables you to radically increase your chances of hitting with one of the many psychological forces. Since you have 4, 5 or even 6 available outcomes you can cover the most common choices easily be it flower, colour, animal…whatever. Even if they are awkward and don’t mention one of the outcomes immediately, you can, as with the drawing duplication routine, ask for a few more examples and you are almost certainly going to hit.

Readings Any common psychological force can be used as a form of reading - name a flower for example, or name a colour. I am not going to go into the details of what to say as there are plenty of books and resources on the subject available for your perusal. However you have a fascinating tool at your disposal to both do a really cool reading AND have a baffling and impossible prediction at the end. Just set-up 4, 5 or 6 (depending on your preferences common answers to a psych force question – four flowers or four colours for example. When you are enjoying a drink with a friend and have lulled them into a relaxed frame of mind, ask them to name a colour. Whatever they say, do a reading based on the colour then mention “Actually, I just knew you were a blue (or whatever)” and reveal your prediction on the cell phone. You can build this up into a cute aura reading effect and heighten your chances of a hit by suggesting that a person reads their own aura. Talk about the different aspects of the aura and ask them to name 4 different colours. Chances are very high that at least two of their choices will match your predictions – once again use “Equivoque” to get down to 2 (or in fact however many actually match your predictions) and one final choice.

News Predictions If you are watching a sports game with friends or waiting on results of an election or anything with a limited number of potential results then there is no harm in preparing yourself with a set-up of possibilities as your cell phone out. Don’t mention anything to anyone beforehand, just make sure throughout the evening that your cell phone is clearly seen to be out of your reach and if the result is as you predict on one of your outcomes then you have yet another miracle to cause your friends to look at you differently! If you have a good knowledge and know, for example, that two teams playing each other at soccer are pretty evenly balanced then you can go for a more specific prediction – not just a draw, a win for one team and a win for another team but actually have the results…any kind of race, you can have the 4 or 5 (or 6!) favourites as your outcomes.

Headline Hunter This idea comes from the shadowy mentor I mentioned earlier. Normally in these routines a newspaper is selected from a bundle and a page selected from that newspaper. That page is torn into several pieces and one piece is chosen. You show you have predicted the correct piece. There are various routines of this description, one of the best being in “The Mind and Magic of David Berglas”. There are also some excellent variations in “Mind, Myth and Magick” by TA Waters. I’m not going to divulge any methods here as there are plenty of places where you can work out how to get to a specific page from a specific newspaper and yet make it appear random. The secret of the final part is that somehow you have switched in or added a bank of duplicate pieces. Using the Cellular Forecast system of multiple outcomes, imagine instead having 5 completely different pieces of newspaper (after going through the selection procedure of first having a newspaper then a page selected) and having the freedom to have any one of the 5 selected.

You could either be prepared with a bank of slips with the 5 force slips alternating with indifferent slips and have a number from 1-10 chosen for a final slip selection, or else you could have a bundle of slips, 5 of them being the various force ones and Equivoque down to those 5 and have one of those wonderful free final selections that using this system allows. If you are conversant with the Al Koran way of doing the effect (again, see Mind, Myth and Magick) then you could almost do the effect impromptu (as long as you had enough time to slip off to the bathroom to set up your outcomes on the cell phone).

Objects I am sure most of you are way ahead of me by now but here goes what I feel to be the ULTIMATE version of this effect. An assortment of objects is gathered and various choices made by your participant. The objects are whittled down to 4 and a final free choice is made – the participant being given the option to change their mind. They settle on one final object and of course you are able to show you correctly predicted it with your cell phone. Simplicity itself – just use 4 common items as your outcomes. A pen, keys, lipstick, money, purse, wallet, salt-shaker…the selections may vary depending on where you are likely to be doing this and for whom you are performing or else you might just use the same 4 basic items continually and if they don’t turn up when you gather the objects, just add in your own. It is a simple matter to “Equivocate” from 8 or even 16 down to 4. Remember you have the free choice at the end AND once the effect is over you can change history slightly by the use of subtle language to suggest that they could have changed their mind to ANY object rather than one of the final four. This can of course be used in any of the routines.

You can even do this without objects – just have the participant write a list of objects they think someone is carrying or hand out a stack of blank cards and ask them to write a different object on each one – you are bound to get a few hits. If you really think about this, and prepare yourself adequately, you can have a brilliant effect on your hands. Think about where you are going to be and where you are going to perform – think about what you can see, write down the first 4 things that come to your mind as it’s highly likely your participant will name the same ones. Be prepared to think BIG. Think about Berglas and his wonderful “Equivoque” routine. Think about Docc Hilford’s wonderful “E’voque”. Think about Max Maven’s work on “Equivoque”. You could quite literally have a spectator just call out something he or she sees and show your prediction on your cell phone. If they don’t say one of the outcomes straight away then don’t worry – you can say that you want to make this truly random as you don’t want them thinking that everybody picks the same obvious item. You are now set up for a truly spectacular piece.

Revelations I have been deliberately pedestrian when describing the predictions however it has been pointed out to me that you could have a number of interesting variations. For example, if you are using the card routine you could have a video of you slowly turning over the selected card. The text message could be one of those pictures made up of text and symbols creating an image of a playing card – the same for the diary entry. Your video could show you walking on a sandy beach and then kneeling down to draw something…the picture frame widens to reveal you have drawn the correct card (or object or word or whatever you are predicting). Again, think big. Think about Berglas doing a Drawing Dupe where he etched the image out on sand with a motorbike. For the DD version you could have a video of yourself saying you woke up this morning, looked out your window and saw a tree you had never really noticed before and now you can’t get the tree out of your head. For the ultimate version you could have a piece where you are on video saying something like “All day I have forgotten my keys and now all I can think about…where’s my keys, where’s my keys, where’s my keys”.

The cliché applies – this really is limited only by your own imagination – not just what to predict but how to make those predictions memorable and interesting and fun and intriguing.

Multiple Multiple Outcomes Paolo Cavalli and others have suggested that you could use more than one cell phone. Using two phones gives you the opportunity to have 12 outs (zodiac signs?). You could have 2 cell phones on your person and produce the relevant one – in fact you could have 6 outcomes on one cell phone and 6 on another and depending on which effect you are demonstrating you could be in a position to take out one of the cell phones BEFORE the final choice is made. Just split the choices in to two groups of 6 – one from each phone – and when you know which 6 they have decided upon you can bring out your phone and leave it on display until the final choice is made. Another suggestion is to have more than 2 phones set up around your person … here is the idea in the Shadow Man’s own words: “Just a thought, but imagine what could be accomplished if you had a second duplicate cell phone, or even a third? They are sufficiently small now that they can easily be palmed, so you could even have one on display on the table and then do a classic "sweep" switch (if a switch proved necessary) off the edge of the table and into your lap.” Whilst it certainly complicates what is already a strong effect, you just might find it worth the extra effort for the special effect you want to pull off.

Worries I think it’s important that as mentalists we are aware of our OWN fears and discomfort with methods and that alone can make your audiences suspicious. This is why, for example, I think people have bad results with what I think is a wonderful effect – “Kollossal Killer”. At time of writing there is a new product on the market whereby you have the EXACT card someone names in an envelope in your wallet. For me, personally, the set-up sounds ridiculous. If people can make it fly and they are happy to walk around with the set-up, then good luck to them. Moreover, if these people have better reactions with this than with KK then great! But it doesn’t mean that KK is a weak effect and this other effect is better – not when so many people I know use KK and get strong reactions (it’s one of those things I do that people unquestionably take as real). I strongly suspect that those failing with KK just don’t like the “off by one” principle and this discomfort somehow translates to the audience hence the effect becomes something of a damp squib. I and many others PRAY for “off by one” because it is by far the stronger outcome and it gives you a double punch. If anyone wants to hear me on radio get a gasp from the host when I reveal the card, send me an email!

I digress but the point is an important one. Just as with “off by one” or with those who don’t feel comfortable with billets or center tears…be prepared to consider that the problem MAY lie with you. When I don’t like something but many others use it happily and get good results, I don’t immediately assume that they are wrong. I look at myself and what it is I don’t like. For example, there are certain peeks I am not comfortable with for various reasons but many people are happy to use them. I know that the discomfort I feel will come across to the audience so I just don’t use them. I think my reasoning for not using them is sound, but I cannot escape the fact that others use them and get good results, therefore I have to accept that either I get rid of my discomfort (not easy) or I use something else. What’s that got to do with this e-book? Quite simply, because I can see a couple of stumbling blocks that might prevent some people using the routine. Firstly, some of you may not be comfortable with the force deck used in the basic version of the routine. I have read a few comments by mentalists who are afraid to use the deck because they’ve been caught out with it. For me, there are only two ways you could get caught out using the force deck. One, you are performing for magicians or people who you constantly try tricks out on. These people are obviously going to test you and look for whatever they can find.

Yes, no doubt there are awkward people out there in audienceland who will look for ways to trip you up but hopefully you are as adept at spotting these types as you are at picking pleasant, compliant people as your participants. The second way you will get caught out is just by being uncomfortable with the set-up and overly worrying that someone will spot the repeated cards – just as a dog can smell fear, audiences can sense discomfort and if you act like something is dodgy, they will sense something is dodgy. The same applies to any discomfort you might have about your mobile phone – what happens if someone says “Let me see the other folders”. I personally don’t think it’s a terribly likely occurrence but your own fear that someone may do so might lead you to over-act when directing them to the relevant folder. Just act casual – direct them to the relevant folder in a way that makes it sound like “Of COURSE that’s where I’d store a prediction.” Rant over!

The 7th Wonder So there I was, lying in bed having not long finished yet another draft of this e-book when my wife (normally deep into her unearthly slumber by the time I get to bed) started chatting. We went over a few ideas, what I could do as a follow-up, what to have for dinner the next day etc, etc…when she came up with an idea so simple, so obvious and so brilliant that I could have bitten her thumb!* “If you can set up any MP3 as your ring tone, then why not have another vocal prediction set up…that way, if the person chooses that particular outcome just have them dial your cell phone number…” This, obviously, gives you a very powerful 7th outcome. And it brings up an important point – you really don’t want the phone ringing (whether you use this outcome or not) during the routine so get in the habit of setting the phone to go straight to answer phone or else make the minor investment and get a second cell phone to use exclusively for this effect.

* Something I once actually did whilst dreaming of being at a buffet where chicken legs were being served…I had only a vague memory of this dream when the next day my wife said “I don’t know why but I’ve got a really sore thumb”. The memory then surfaced – I had been dreaming of eating a chicken leg when I woke up and realized I was biting into my wife’s thumb…she hadn’t stirred luckily so I gently placed her hand away from my face and went back to sleep.

Farewell If you haven't gathered by now, Cellular Forecast can be used to reveal your predictive powers (or powers of influence, which is simply a turning of a prediction on its head) for any limited range force of six or less outcomes, with the benefit of allowing for a TRULY free choice among the outcomes. Armed with nothing but a cell phone, you will be ready to perform many of the classics of mentalism that previously required Himber Wallets, double envelopes, incongruous revelations of the less desirable outs, etc. With those thoughts in mind I will bid adieu with the deep and sincere hope that you have enjoyed your investment in this e-book. If anyone has any comments or suggestions they would like to make, then please email me on [email protected]. And who knows, one day there may be a sequel?

©David Numen 2007 No parts of this document may be reproduced in any form, without explicit written permission from the author.

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