The biggest number of comments I ever had on this blog were about Derren Brown and his phone-booth trick. I’m not sure what conclusion to draw, but here’s another post anyway.

I now have a follow-up trick of my own. Derren Brown, and his ilk (e.g. David Blane) have techniques for forcing, which is when the magician forces a particular choice from the participant without he or she realising it. See a simple card force here.

Get a bunch of friends together (e.g. visit a college or university) who have each other’s numbers in their phone address books.

Use a force to get one of the friends to think of, or select, one of their friends in the crowd. Then, use text-message spoofing (if allowed on the network) to send a text message between these two friends. The friend is amazed to receive a text message from the friend that he or she was thinking about.

Of course, this could be extended in all kinds of cool ways, like forcing the content of the message e.g. colour forcing, object forcing etc.

That’s my trick.

If you want to get some simple examples of mentalism (mind magic) to try with your kids, then check out Marc Lemezma’s site and books.

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