The Prodigal- Mentalism's Misunderstood Son -

By Atlas Brookings

Copyright 2012 Atlas Brookings.All Rights Reserved.

Prodigal

noun \pr-di-gl\Definition of PRODIGAL

1 : one who gives lavishly

2 : yielding abundantly

3: one who has returned after an absence

- From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Foreword

I'd like to thank all those who went before - especially Theodore Annemann, Tony Corinda, and Max Maven. They are truly the wise men of Mentalism.

I also want to thank Ben Harris, Dr. Todd Landman, Peter Turner, Derek Heron, Seamus Maguire, Aaron Alexander, Marc Paul, Jon Thompson, Greg Arce, and Banachek. They are some of the nicest people I've had the privilege to meet.

Lastly, I'd like to dedicate this book to my brother. We laugh and we clash and that has shaped our understanding. No matter the climate, whether times were kind or cruel, he was by my side. I've never known a better friend than my childhood playmate and he means more to me than I ever show him. No one knows me as he does and I will miss him terribly. Truth be told, I'm not ready to say goodbye...

- Section 1-

The Forgotten Art

Over the years, I have read opinions by a number of individuals regarding the use of branching anagrams. They hate them. They won't use them. The method is not sophisticated enough for a modern audience.

According to their arguments, there are essentially two problems with this method:

1. People can figure it out.2. People can't spell worth a damn, so it doesn't work.

I may be criticized for taking this stance, but I am going to flatly state that the above points are complete poppycock. Utter nonsense. The problem with the branching anagram lies with the performer, not the method.

That's right. I said it.

Now, before you dash to your utility shed and rummage around for your rope, pitchfork, and makeshift torch, take a moment to read a bit more. Then judge me.

Before carrying on, it would be wise to take a moment to introduce and demonstrate the branching anagram. The branching anagram is a method devised, as far as I know, by Stanley Collins in 1920 and has been tinkered with by numerous thinkers over the years. The principle at the core of the method is that a person can think of a word, and as long as there are a limited number of options to choose from, by discovering which letters are present in the word they chose, their word can be determined.

The branching anagram is therefore a means by which nearly any source of information can be cleanly revealed. There is nothing to write down or peek, there is no stooge required, it is a straightforward matter - think of something and I will tell you what it is.

In my opinion, this method is the most versatile in mentalism. Anyone inclined to disagree will most likely reevaluate their opinions by the end of this book, especially when we get to the section that discusses the psychological approach to anagrams.

For the moment, let's carry on to outline the working of the effect.

How would you like to be able to ask someone to think of a superhero, and then reveal who they were thinking of? I've used the branching anagram principle to create a means of doing just that.

Please look over the superhero test outlined below. You will note that you should begin by limiting your participant's choice to superheroes from the DC or Marvel universe, and will want to exclude the Punisher. Later on in this book, you will read about a number of excellent methods for excluding.

Super Hero Test: Specify that all should be leading characters from either the DC or Marvel Universe, and should be capable of sustaining their own magazine. Exclude the Punisher.

A r - Hulk

i - Thor

e - Robin

h - Wolverine

k - The Incredible Hulk

- Ghost Rider

N d - Flash

- Daredevil

M - Green Lantern

R b - Aquaman

- Batman

I o - Superman

- Wonder Woman

C d - Iron Man

- Spiderman

- Captain AmericaIf you are unfamiliar with the principle behind branching anagrams, you will no doubt be trying to make sense of this mishmash of words and letters above. If you understand how they work, you will be smiling in quiet approval.

For the unitiated, let me explain. There are two columns here. Throughout the book, you will see branching anagrams displayed in a similar layout. You will begin by moving down the left column. You will note that there are a blend of capital and lowercase letters.

Let us assume that in this instance, the superhero chosen was 'Spiderman'.

You will begin by calling the first capital letter on the left column. If it is acknowledged to be in the word that the participant is thinking of, you will move down the column to the next capital letter.

In this case, the letter 'A' is in the word 'Spiderman', so the next letter you will call is 'N', which is also there. You will now move to the column on the right. The first capital letter there is 'M'. This is also present, so you will move to the next capital letter, which is 'R'. When this is acknowledged to be in the word, you will move down to 'I', and when that is acknowledged, you will move down to the letter 'C'.

When called out, your participant will let you know that the letter 'C' is not in the name of the superhero they are thinking of. When this occurs, you will move to the first lowercase letter that is next on the list.

In this case, you will call out the letter 'd'. If the lowercase letter called is in the word, you will move vertically down the list. If it is not, you will move over to the right.

In this situation, when you call 'd', it is acknowledged to be there, and you move down the list. There are no more lowercase letters to call, and so you know the word chosen is 'Spiderman'. If the letter 'd' had not been in the word and you received a second negative reply, you would move to the right and know that your participant was thinking of 'Iron Man' instead.

You will note that in some situations you will run out of capital letters to call, with each being acknowledged as being a part of the word that was chosen. In the situation above, if the letter 'C' had been in the word, you will notice that carrying on down the list would yield no further capital letters. Instead, you would see that 'Captain America' was the only option remaining and must therefore be the superhero thought of.

This is the basic working of a branching anagram.

I do not doubt that you may be looking over this process and thinking to yourself the same two things that every detractor of this method has claimed - "People might be able to figure this out, and I'm not sure that I want to trust a method which relies on a person's ability to spell."

I again wholeheartedly repudiate these concerns as utter nonsense (especially when using the psychological approach) and if you will bear with me, now that I am confident that every reader has an understanding of what a branching anagram is and how it works, I will begin to expound on the one thing that opponents of the method lack - an understanding of how to perform the effect.

As my assertions have their basis in my experience, I have no choice but to make my arguments in the context of anecdotes from my own performances.

Like many of my generation, my first encounter with branching anagrams took the form of "Contimental" by Max Maven. I liked the idea, and, as often happens with the unitiated, I thought I had a great understanding of the effect and immediately set off to perform it. I was drawn, as are many performers today, by the idea of a clean direct mind read that required no paper, pens, peeks, sleights, etc. It looked like the real thing. I will say that I was young and dumb and had no idea what hard work these would be.

I hadn't bothered to memorize the effect, or to even read its working out loud. I made no associations between letters, so as to rationalize a miss (more on this later), I was completely unprepared. I thought I was clever, and would do this over the phone, blowing someone's mind in the process. I decided to call my dad.

I picked up the handset and dialed out. I asked him to think of a country in Europe. I didn't bother to subtly imply any qualifiers, set the effect into context, or take his age and range of experience into account (more on this later), I just jumped in. What do you think happened?

I missed the country as it had been dissolved due to the turbulent Europe that existed in my father's day. Furthermore, like the unprepared buffoon that I surely was in those days, I made the method obvious.

"Is there a C in the name of the country you are thinking of?"

"No? How about an R?"

I burn with shame as I relate this embarrassing incident. My performance of this effect was delivered with none of the style and assurance that comes with practice and preparation, and my father instantly guessed the method.

I sat dejected after I hung up. Again, like the amateur that I undoubtedly was, I began pondering this effect with venom in my heart. My inclination was to blame a sales pitch that failed to deliver rather than to examine my own efforts.

I didn't put in the work, and as a result, I failed. I understood the method, but not the performance of the effect, which was really the crucial thing. The blame rightly and properly stood at my own doorstep. But I didn't see it that way then.

I was disappointed, yes, and I gave up on the branching anagram for a few years. I wandered, as did the Biblical Prodigal, looking for easier paths, not ready for hard work. Eventually, I grew and matured, no longer daunted by laborious tasks.

Years passed, and I took note of this method once more. Initially, I was hesitant, but my performance skills had grown. I had a better understanding of the effort and concentration that went into making an effect shine, and I decided to apply that dogged determination to this principle, as the lure of true mind reading had captured my imagination.

To begin to succeed with it, I had to accept the idea that the fault for its original failure lay within my own imperfections. I have come to the conclusion that it is never pleasant to deconstruct one's own faults, but that way only lies improvement.

I therefore took the first step on a journey which has led me through many pleasant moments and, finally, to develop the psychological presentation style.

Things were not much better initially. I began by memorizing an effect. I had come to mistrust "Contimental", due to the constant changing of European makeup, but I did notice another little winner in Maven's repertoire - "Range Rider". After studying it, I

realized that I liked it better, and that careful use of language would allow me to script my performance to ensure that only certain states within the US could be chosen while later allowing me to honestly claim that they had been given a free choice of any of the 50 states.

And so I committed the thing to memory. I tried it out on a few people with limited success. I noticed that I was still fumbling a bit with my presentation, asking them whether they had a letter in their mind, rather than telling them that they did. The problem, I reasoned, with telling them that they had a letter in their mind was that they might not be thinking of that letter. I would be wrong. I'm supposed to be a mind reader - I can't be wrong, it hurts my credibility.

I put that problem to the side for a moment while I concentrated on another. I also wanted to obfuscate the method. I reasoned that while a body may be able to remember what letters were in one group of words, it was highly unlikely that they could do so for ten or fifteen different groups, and that if I could repeat different iterations of the same effect apparently endlessly, anyone who was trying to spot the method wouldn't be able to keep track of all the letters among all of the possibilities themselves, let alone suppose I could do it.

I'm pleased to say that this has proved true, especially with the way that I now perform these effects.

My real progress with branching anagrams came when I memorized my second one, which was my own creation. Rather than just learning the progression, I also began to examine relationships between the letters and created my own rationalizations for missing a letter. This was a huge step forward, as I knew I could be confident in every statement I made, while realigning any miss as a narrow miss, always asking them to concentrate a bit harder as we moved forward. Now, this is not the way I currently present, but it was the first step in the right direction and I have moved on from there. The principle of finding relationships between letters while memorizing the anagram was key, as it allowed me to build my patter while learning the structure of the piece. This patter then became second nature to me during performance because it was so well memorized, and there was no hesitating or stumbling.

I will give you an example of this early iteration of my performance method, one that still works very well for those who claim to be able to demonstrate psychic phenomenon. My newest iteration of this performance, which will be outlined later, is for those who present as "Psychological Mentalists".

At any rate, the psychic approach is outlined below:

"I see the letter 'A'."

This was a miss.

"No, this is not an 'A', but at first glance, it is shaped like one. I see how I made that mistake. Yes, this is like an 'A' but rounded at the top, and the downstanding leg kicks out a bit. (I use my hands to form an 'A' to an 'R' for them - done from their perspective, rather than mine) This is an 'R'! Yes, I am correct. Please focus a little harder as we move forward."

A miss is now shown to be a NEAR miss.

"Now this next letter is straight up and down. This isn't an 'I', is it?"

This was a miss, but the question was ambiguously asked, allowing me to back down and turn it into a hit. You always want to avoid two misses in a row, so this form of question is perfect for after your first miss, as if there is an immediate second miss, it allows the moment to slide by undetected.

"No, I didn't think it was, but again, we have a letter shaped very much like an 'I', yes, branching a bit more at the top, and without the lines at the bottom running perpendicular to the body of the letter. (Here, I gesture with my hands to form a 'T'). This is a 'T'."

The second I missed with the second letter, I knew the word. From that point on, I would then proceed to milk the remaining letters, pausing to ask for better eye contact, or asking them to take my hand, and then proceeding to correctly name each subsequent letter, and making a statement like "Good, our connection is getting stronger every moment, these letters are a lot clearer now." These little convincers help the subject to believe that a baseline was being established earlier, and the earlier misses are forgiven and forgotten.

Your presentation is important. You cannot bumble, mutter, or appear unsure. You must be bold, concise, direct, and appear immune to little setbacks. In fact, you should act as though they intrigue you, and that you burrow deeper out of sheer interest. I have noticed that the audience will take your cue, and if you don't feel confident, they will not believe what you are presenting.

I won't bore you any further with stories of my personal development. Rather, I will cut to the chase and outline the process that I have learned to employ in order to make this a convincing effect, real in the minds of all onlookers, with none of them even pausing to consider the method.

1. Do the work 2. Put the effect into context 3. Choose your subject well4. Source good material5. Exclude properly 6. Read body language 7. Stay consistent8. Always examine and improve upon your presentation

DO THE WORK

I firmly believe that when you are performing this sort of thing face-to-face, it cannot be beaten - so long as you have put in the work.

What do I mean by this?

A number of things really.

First, you must have the process memorized completely, and when I say memorized, I don't mean that you know where all the letters go and where they lead to. It isn't enough to simply know the recipe. You must have studied the interrelationships between all the letters, and have prepared your patter as part of this process of memorization. I suggest that as you memorize, you role play every single scenario with an imaginary volunteer. Go through not only every possible answer, but the introduction to the effect, along with your responses to misses.

For this to be effective, you must have decided which performance route suits your persona (psychic, psychological mentalist, etc.) and you must prepare your patter as you study the anagram. This patter, correctly developed as part of the memorization process, is what allows this effect to become real in the minds of your spectators. It enables you to perform without hesitation or stumbling, and takes the focus off of you and instead places it upon your spectator.

For instance, if you perform as a psychic, you will know (after some study) that a capital "A" and a capital "R" look similar, and you can alter your patter to make a miss into something very close to a hit. Or if you present as a psychological mentalist, you will know that at the end of the Superhero anagram, to mention that when you had them say the letters, they went so quickly at C and D, that you couldn't tell which it was, and "was that a C or a D?" is a question that fits naturally in the progression.

Additionally, it is not enough to simply memorize your anagram and patter, but you must review it in your mind daily, attempt to perform it daily, and move it along from your short-term memory to your long-term. When you perform it, critically review the performance in your mind, searching for ways to improve the organic feel of the piece.

As you become comfortable with your level of memorization, you will notice that you are more confident in your performance of the material, and will therefore take a few risks, slowly feeling your way to alternative performance options as you optimize the effect. As I did, you will begin a journey which has at its heart a simple anagram, but whose destination is an incredibly believable performance.

PUT THE EFFECT INTO CONTEXT

It always bothers me when people start into an effect that uses a prop without first explaining why the prop is there and why it should not appear suspicious. When

performed by amateurs, this lack of the most simple effort always has the effect of rendering the prop the center of attention. The same prop can be used by a master, however, and never come under the slightest scrutiny at all. This is because the master is careful to introduce the prop into the effect in a way that feels natural and doesn't attract any attention.

Despite the fact that anagrams are invisible, they must be handled in a fundamentally similar manner to any prop.

How do you do this?

Put the effect into context.

When you perform as a mentalist, you will inevitably have someone ask you to read their minds out of the blue. This can be difficult, but is easily handled if you are prepared.

As is noted in my work "The Real Thing", despite the fact that each individual tends to view themselves as unique, in reality, we are in fact largely homogenous creatures, raised in cultures that were developed over thousands of years with the sole aim being the continued peaceful existence of the group as a whole.

Consider the implications of this statement. In the context of Western culture, I don't have to be a mind reader to understand that if someone makes an obscene gesture at me, they are angry. I do not need to be a mind reader to know that a person with long hair is more likely to be a woman than a man. I do not need to be a mind reader to know that I will be considered uncouth if I go to a restaurant and eat a steak using only my hands.

By contrast, I can confidently say that gestures that are acceptable in our culture (consider the thumbs up sign, or the OK sign) are wildly offensive in others.

It is no difficult thing, then, to explain this fact to someone who asks you out of the blue to read their mind. You absolutely can read their mind, so long as you can find some basis of shared experience with them.

This is what I mean by putting the effect into context. As long as there is a shared background of experience, you should be able to extract meaningful information from their heads. Another simple example is to mention that if you were a mind reader, and someone who spoke only Russian wanted you to demonstrate your skills, you would be powerless to do so, as you have no shared culture. Your languages even differ so dramatically as to effectively block any intuition you may have.

Once you have explained the idea of context to them, you may then run across a number of optional categories, expressed as though you are volunteering potential shared experiences for them to choose from - colors, flowers, breakfast cereals, magazines, comic book characters, etc. (all are provided for in this text). Once they choose, then you have them think of something that fits into that category.

You then further set the scene by letting them know that a bond between the both of you is required. It does not need to be strong, but they must be willing to allow you into their minds, and be routing for you to succeed.

You are then ready to proceed into the body of the effect.

CHOOSE YOUR SUBJECT WELL

As one of the criticisms employed in regards to anagrams has been the inability of people to spell ruining the effect, it would be irresponsible to not take a moment to address that issue.

As I asserted earlier, where this does occur, it is (more often than not) a flaw in the mentalist's audience management skills.

Consider this:

Before performing this effect, it is usually possible to chat a little bit with your subject. If you take the time to notice, it is easy to get a feel for what level of education they are likely to have. Simply knowing what they do for employment will be a strong indicator of their level of education. In addition, the words they choose when speaking to you, the length of pause before they answer a question, the way they dress, their level of hygiene, these and myriad other qualities will tell you something about that person and from that, you can extrapolate how educated they are likely to be.

When performing an anagram, you should also encourage them to spell the word in their mind two or three times, from start to finish, partly to look for any hesitancy, and partly so that they can take a moment (sometimes under pressure from being in front of a crowd) to calm down and spell the word correctly.

If you get the sense that they are having difficulty, don't get flustered - instead, you can suggest they consult a friend, or swap to a written piece that you keep in your pocket for just such an occasion saying something like "Excellent! Believe it or not, but watching you just now has allowed me to learn a great deal about you and I think we can now try..."(A number of effects that work well in situations when you are confronted with poor spellers are listed in Section 2 - Branching Out), or abort the project altogether.

I recognize that it is not always possible to choose your subject. But it is always your choice what you decide to perform with them. If you get the sense that your participant is incapable of spelling accurately, don't attempt a progressive anagram effect with them, or perform one where the answers used are well known words (like months of the year). Another simple option is to JUST INCLUDE THE MOST COMMON MISSPELLINGS IN YOUR ANAGRAM! Just look at the spelling options for 'Dandelion' in 'Bracing Blooms' (see below).

In these situations, it again comes down to your capacity to know the routines that are available to you and choose the effect appropriate to the member of the audience that you are working with. In fact, Peter Turner argues - and quite cogently - that tailoring the effect to the person you are working with is the key to creating successful performances.

SOURCE GOOD MATERIAL

The key to sourcing good material is to find something that your participant will enjoy or has an affinity to already. In fact, the majority of the time, the approach you take with a participant should be based entirely upon what the circumstances dictate. If you see that they are wearing a superhero T-shirt, the superhero anagram is a great option. If you are dealing with a woman, you can ask them if they like flowers and if they do (which is likely) move into the flower anagram. By making what they think about relevant to them, the context is established, apparently not around your interests, but around theirs. This is important to making the effects work for you.

I also suggest that if you have time before a performance, and you know who will be attending, you should take a moment and spend some time researching your attendees online. Often, you can find out things about people's interests which can be easily turned into anagrams. For instance, a few minutes on a website like Facebook can reveal a participant's birthday. You can ask them to think of a month, anagram it, and then if they think of their birth month (which most people do), you can add their birthday as an extra reveal. I once asked a participant to think of the name of someone in their immediate family, and used the same approach to reveal it, with all the information gleaned from the internet.

The whole point of this section is to emphasize that what you perform should be what the situation dictates is most effective and impressive. You won't always decide this, it could be decided by something like someone's corsage or t-shirt. The ability to transition between anagrams is powerful and will rely solely on the work you put in beforehand and your memorization.

One more point - In reference to the concern raised in the previous section about spelling errors. It is wise to keep one of the written effects on you at all times. When the situation dictates, transition to that and use it when a situation involving a hesitant speller arises. This is part of sourcing good material. Be prepared to be dynamic in your presentation.

If you deem it best to make a switch to a written approach, let your participant know that you've learned something from their behavior just now, and would like to try something a little more difficult. Explain that you will turn your back and then have them run through the written option. The whole thing will apparently be made more difficult by the fact that you can't read their face and will have to do the whole thing by sound alone. Assert that you expect to make a few mistakes, but should get there in the end. As a result of this change in approach, they will be able to look at the paper the whole time and see the

letters that they are working with. Any spelling concerns will have been appropriately dealt with.

If you learn to manage your audience, you will always have greater success.

EXCLUDE PROPERLY

The beauty of the anagram is that you are able to present the effect in such a way that it appears that the spectator has a choice of anything in the world, when in all actuality, only a few limited options are available to them, and that is IF they can think of every single option in the time that you give them to do so.

So how do you prevent a person from becoming too creative?

One of the very subtle keys to presenting anagrams is to ask the subject you are working with to think of something, and then very quickly ask them if they have something. Push them along and make the process go quickly, and they will not have time to become too creative with the thing they choose.

After the fact, you will be able to correctly point out that your participant had a completely free choice of anything in the world. In all actuality, they had a free choice of anything they could THINK of. When put under time pressure, the reality is that their options are very limited.

In fact, the entire "Psychological Subtleties" series is replete with examples of times that demonstrate that when a person is asked to think of something, a good deal of the time, you will find that they arrive at a predictable response. The "Naked Mentalism" series further shows you how to use free association principles and cue words to direct their thoughts toward certain things by using suggestive patter.

For instance, If I were to ask you to think of an animal, I would wager that a good deal of you thought of an Elephant. However, if I were to change my patter and ask you to think of an animal that you would keep as a pet, the majority will likely think of a dog, with the rest thinking of a cat. Knowing the most likely choices in any given situation is the key to creating successful anagrams. As long as you know the top ten or fifteen choices, you will rarely fail to discover the participant's pick.

You can quickly see that when you create your own anagrams, your material is not as limited in scope as you may have believed.

Additionally, as you begin to create your own anagrams, you will discover that while you can create an anagram tree for nearly any block of text, you really dont want to have the spectator respond in the negative more than twice.

Sometimes, this will leave you frustrated, as you will want to present a subject, but will have two or three items that just dont fit into the anagram, but which are perfect for it.

Such is the case for the Looney Tunes anagram. When I created it, I didnt want to have more than two No answers, yet I could not ignore the characters that led me to those situations.

The question became: "What should I do in those situations?" The answer was simple - exclude the characters when you mention the subject.

I want you to think of a character from the Looney Tunes Cartoons, like the Tasmanian Devil, or Tweetie.

Because you've mentioned them, those choices are effectively taken off the table. however, in the Looney Tunes example, I was still left with one more answer I wanted to exclude. How could I exclude another, but in a different manner?

Easily. By spelling the answer you wish to exclude, but only AFTER the spectator has thought of it.

Right, now that you are thinking of a character, I want you to spell their name out in your mind, again and again, something like BUGSBUNNY.

This is not just an exclusion, but a means of creating an unforgettable hit. You will watch the spectator closely here and look for any reaction. If you just spelled what they were thinking of, you will see it in their face and have an undeniable triumph. If there is no reaction, then this is simply regarded as a moment of instruction, essential to the successful completion of the process.

If you create your own anagrams (instructions on how to do so are included at the end of the book), you will quickly discover that sometimes exclusions are required to ensure the smooth running of the anagram. Tweetie or Tweety? Marvin the Martian, or just plain Marvin? If you were considering a Star Wars anagram, what on earth do you do with C3P0? Is that an O or a zero?

Sometimes you will want to exclude to make sure that the rest of the anagram is not ruined by the inclusion of a character or word that often causes more trouble than they are worth.

Have a look at the Looney Tunes anagram in this book, and see if you can tell why the exclusions by mentioning and the exclusion by spelling were required.

READ BODY LANGUAGE

I briefly mentioned above that you will watch someones body language when you exclude by spelling, to ascertain whether or not you have guessed their word.

When you move into the body of the effect, you should also do this as you call each letter, as you will often be able to tell if a letter is correct before they even verbalize their feedback. This really is not as difficult as it sounds.

In fact, when you present as a Psychological Mentalist, if you have your participant call a letter for you during the presentation, you can very often tell if it has a place in their word or not this is especially the case when they have bought into the idea that their body language is your means of revealing their chosen word.

Making a judgment call on body language really is nowhere near as difficult or unreliable as it sounds, a fact that you will attest to once you have practiced performing anagrams for any degree to time. The real key is to trust your instinct as you watch your subject. If you are presenting with a psychic feel, after you call a letter, if you get the feeling they are about to say that it isnt there, change your mind and let them know that the vision is clearing - that it isnt that letter at all, but a different one. This turns a miss into a hit, and you get credit for pre-empting the miss without resorting to hearing it from them. This actually helps cement your credibility in the minds of the audience.

STAY CONSISTENT

When presenting an effect to the audience, it is far less likely that your method will be discovered when it appears to be the means by which numerous, rather than simply one, effect is accomplished. For instance, if I present a drawing duplication, and then a card effect, people are very likely to come to the conclusion that a different approach was used each time to achieve the desired outcome. They are then more easily able to deconstruct what they have witnessed and some will be capable of working out how the effect was performed.

Since one of the complaints regarding this method was that it was too obvious for todays modern audience, I would be remiss not to take a moment and explain how to obscure it within a presentation, and Ive partially touched on this in the paragraph above. When there is a lack of homogenous flow to a set, an observer can come to conclusions about your performance that differ vastly from what you would like them to believe.

However, you can easily avoid this situation by being careful to present your anagrams properly. What do I mean?

Let me illustrate. In my teenage years, I played a popular game called SNAPS. You would code a word to a confederate by starting a sentence with a consonant, and snapping the vowels in between.

After playing this for a while with my friends, the persistent ones could eventually figure out how things were done.

To obscure the method, I created variations upon the word code theme.

Because there were so many iterations of the code, a person who did not know how we played could never figure it out. As soon as they had a theory, the next performance (which looked exactly the same but operated on a different principle) would prove it wrong, and they would be left back at square one, trying to figure it out all over again.

So, how does this relate at all to anagrams?

I touched on it earlier. If someone sees distinctly different methods employed to achieve different results, the performance is not homogenous, and therefore something different must be happening each time. There is potential to reverse engineer what happened.

However, if what they see throughout looks and feels the same, but achieves different effects, then it is no different than it was with our childhood game. Their theories fail them and they begin to suspend disbelief.

Let me give you an example of a flawed performance. I could do a book test, followed by an anagram. The two lend themselves beautifully to each other. But if I reveal their word straight away from the book test, without naming letters first, then I am psychic one moment, but then have to apparently receive individual letters when I move to the anagram. Or if I take the psychological approach for the anagram, and then perform a book test, why on earth would I be able to reveal a word thought of as a whole but only letter-by-letter earlier? This lack of consistency will signal an alarm in the minds of the spectators.

I believe that this is part of why people have failed with anagrams. They are not consistent in their approach and do things that are out of character with the persona that they create.

What needs to happen instead is that the effects that they choose to perform must fit together as a block or cluster or set. I will often begin by using the three cup effect using the Hummer principle, and variations upon it that I devised and another by Greg Arce. This is an ideal fit to move into an anagram with a psychological approach. As I look at the person I work with, I tell them that I am establishing a baseline. I'll miss purposely on the first one or two guesses, and then begin to consistently correctly identify which cup an item is under as I evidently home in on their tells. As I do this, I keep strong eye contact with the participant while I put my hand over each cup. I make it genuinely appear as though I am watching them for physical cues that inform my conclusions.

I then move to a card effect I picked up from Corinda's "Thirteen Steps to Mentalism". and do the exact same thing - look into their eyes, ask them questions, and then reveal their card.

After that, I transition to anagrams. I apparently listen for changes in the pitch and timbre of their voice and watch for tells.

From here, I can move to a book test, confident that if a skeptic has realized that only a few words were optional out of the category I offered, when a whole book is used, there is no hope of guessing the word. I reveal in the same manner as before.

My set is homogenous and strong.

A spectator will have seen me go from telling where an object is under a cup, to revealing a chosen card, to revealing a word only thought of from a book or a category. Each time, the effect is different, but the method I employ appears to be the same. When they cannot apply their theory successfully to each effect that is demonstrated, they give up their theory and begin to believe I must be doing what I claim to be.

Looch's AREA book test is great for this anagram approach, as you instantly hit three letters in a row, and if you miss the fourth, asking openly what it was is not an embarrassment at all.

Additionally, there are a number of effects from Boudreau or Maven in which words are formed using lexicography cards. Any of these are great ways to apparently reveal words using what the audience will take to be the same methodology. Silent Running is a great effect to use, as you can perform it in such a way as to make someone believe that body language is the great key to discovering their card.

I could list many more options, but the point of this section is not to offer a list of suitable effects to perform with anagrams, rather to demonstrate the importance of creating something within an act that feels consistent. It prevents anyone from figuring out how something is really done, and as a result, they will truly begin to believe.

ALWAYS EXAMINE AND IMPROVE

As you begin to perform your anagrams, it is important that you always critique your performance. Determine what you did well, and where you still need improvement. While you are starting out, you should look over each of the steps I've just itemized and ensure that you understand each and are including each step as a part of your performance checklist.

Once you are comfortable with the content you are performing, tinker with your patter and change it where necessary. While you must recognize that your presentation ought to reflect your own distinct personality, please don't deviate from the process I've laid out until you have a functional knowledge of how these should be performed. Changes too early on in the process may result in terrible failure and the dejection that leads to prematurely discarding this splendid method.

Remember, no matter how well you are doing something, there is always room for improvement. If you take the time to put in the work (and that includes taking the time to conduct a post-mortem on every aspect of each performance), you will end up with something that is everything you want it to be.

Again, the eight steps are:

1. Do the work - memorize the outline AND create relationships between letters to use for your outs. Practice these daily in a sort of mental role-play.

2. Put the effect into context - why are they being asked to name a film rather than the name of a childhood friend?

3. Choose your subject well. Spectator selection is YOUR problem, not the audience's and you alone are to blame for mishandling them.

4. Source good info - if you doubt your participant's capacity for spelling, don't choose an anagram with words that are hard to spell - possibly instead use a paper effect like the fan letter. Find something that will appeal to your subject personally.

5. Exclude properly to create the illusion of a free choice within a larger group of selections or to create an early hit in dramatic fashion. Hurry your spectator when deciding on a word.

6. Read body language clues that identify a miss before the participant has an opportunity to announce it as such.

7. Stay homogenous - use the method in conjunction with other effects to enhance misdirection and pepper your other reveals with the same mindreading approach. This sows doubt in the minds of those who think they have worked out how you did it, but cannot apply those same patterns to what they have just witnessed.

8. Always examine and improve upon your presentation - have patter that works for you, created whilst memorizing and tested in live performance.

________________________________________________________________________

TAKING THE CORRECT APPROACH

I've referenced before that there are two basic presentations of this type of effect - that taken by the psychic, and that utilized by the psychological mentalist.

In this section, I will demonstrate and break down the differences between the two approaches. Each presentation will be based on the standard superhero anagram included earlier in this book.

Psychic Approach

"Hi there Kevin! I appreciate you taking a moment to try this with me. Now, as I have explained before, I am a mind reader, but it doesn't mean that I have access to every single thought that you have. In fact, I can only see what you are willing to share with me. On top of this, for me to be able to make sense of something that you are trying to send me, I have to be able to identify with it on some level of my own personal experience. So what I'm saying is that if I'm not familiar with the thing at least on some level, my responses are not going to be very clear or strong. So, the first thing I'm going to do is list a few things that interest me. If you share the interest, we can move forward from there."

"Sports, Horticulture, Art, Superheroes..."

"Ah! Superheroes it is then! Now, I confess that I don't know every single superhero, in fact, I've only read DC and Marvel comics. So don't get too far out in left field here, but I want you to choose a super hero that you think I will know. Someone like Professor X or Mr. Fantastic - though I don't really know anyone else on any of those teams, so please stick to someone who is a pretty big name. Anyway, don't mention them out loud, but please just think of them."

"Now, I want you to spell their name out in your mind, letter by letter. And when you are finished spelling their name, go right back to the start and start spelling them again. Once you've done that a few times and you feel that you've settled your brainwaves into a pattern, I want you to visualize each letter in your mind and start pushing them out of your head and toward me."

"Good. I'm getting some letters now. I'm not sure about order just yet, but I am picking up some distinct letters."

"You are thinking of an "A" in there."

"Yes, and an "N" as well."

"And there is an "M" also."

"This one isn't very clear, it looks like an "R" - does that sound right?"

"Great! Please focus a little harder. This next letter very clearly has a vertical line - it looks like an "I" to me."

"No, not an "I", it is rounding out - It looks like an "O" now."

"No, not an "I" and not an "O", but I see those parts very clearly. If I keep the portion that looks like an "I" and attach the part that looks like an "O" right here (Gesturing with the hands to make a capital "P" from the spectator's perspective) this looks much better. You were thinking of the letter "P", weren't you."

"Yes, I thought so. Our link needs to be stronger. Please give me your hand."

"This is so much more clear now. It is like it went from picking up signals with an antenna to being beamed straight to satellite."

"I see the letter "U", and an "E" as well. This is very curvy. An "S", and the placement of the letters is becoming much more clear. I can see it all now - you were thinking of 'Superman'."

Psychological Approach

I honestly believe that the presentational style I disclose here has the capacity to revitalize anagrams in mentalism. Please read through what follows a few times.

This is the approach I use, and I believe that it is the best. I have found that by following a visible process, the onlooker will begin to believe that something about the process they can see is the key to determining what you are doing. It provides misdirection without actually saying anything.

When I perform this, I will look into the participant's eyes very intensely, often interrupting them and asking them to go back to something they just said, and then running through it again. This provides a clue for the audience that I missed something important, or thought I saw something that I needed to double check. This simple act provides very strong misdirection.

"Alright now Greg, we are going to try something here in a moment that can be very impressive. I see that you are wearing a Fantastic Four shirt. I take it that you like superheroes? Excellent. To begin with, I'd like you to choose any superhero - don't tell me who they are, but please make sure that they are someone that I ought to know. And just so that you know where I am coming from, I basically only know Marvel and DC characters and only the bigger names from them."

"Now that you are thinking of a character, I want you to spell that character's name out in your mind several times."

"Greg, it is important that during this process, you keep strong eye contact with me and that you speak clearly and at a normal pace. Can you do that for me?"

"Great. Now, please say the vowels of the alphabet for me. A...E....I...O...U."

"Excellent. Greg, have you ever watched a show called 'Wheel of Fortune'? It is a game show, and in the final round at the end, they always give the contestant the letters R...S...T...L and N. Can you please just say those letters for me?"

"Hmmm. This is difficult. You are much harder to read than I initially thought you would be, but we can take a moment here and I can try to establish a baseline from which to work."

"Now, I may not be right, but I believe that you have an "A" in your chosen character's name."

"No? Interesting. Please do me a favor and say "A" for me again....right, I learned something there. Thank you."

"Please say 'R' for me."

"Okay, I feel that there is an 'R' - Yes? Excellent."

"And I felt confident about the 'I' also. Correct again! Good."

"And can you say 'E' for me? Interesting. I could be wrong, but I am not seeing the same signals for 'E' as I was for the other letters. I don't think there is an 'E' - am I correct?"

"I thought so! Now, to be honest, I didn't get anything that was overwhelmingly positive from any of the other letters. Would you mind please just quickly saying the alphabet from A to Z for me?"

"Wait, I'm going to have to stop you there - I very clearly got the letter 'B', it was obvious. Please carry on again from 'C'."

"Hang on again! I need you to repeat K through P for me, I saw a flicker of something there."

"Stop! You went so fast, that I can't be sure if this was an 'N' that I saw, or an 'O'. Can you please go through it a little slower?"

"You cunning devil! I wasn't clear because you have both an 'N' and an 'O' in your character's name - undeniable, it was obvious! Now, please carry on from 'P' through 'Z'."

"Right, I didn't get anything else there. So I have a 'B', 'I', 'N', 'O', and 'R'."

"Were you thinking of 'Robin'? Oh, excellent! That's just fantastic! It was a rocky start, but once I figured out your idiosyncratic tells, it got a lot easier."

You will note that rather than associate relationships between letters as in the Psychic approach (whether it be letter shapes or how close they are to each other in the alphabet), I appear to watch body language here, and I merely play off any miss as a part of the learning process. In fact, it is a good idea to ask them to repeat the letter for the second miss, sometimes two or three times before you finally smile, implying that you now know what it is that you missed before. Once you have the second miss, you know the word and can ask them to start again at the top of the alphabet, working their way toward the end. You can interrupt them and triumphantly declare that they tried to slip such and such a letter past you. Doing this for every remaining previously uncalled letter builds the credibility of this approach, and by the time you name the word, any missed letters that you called at the start have been long forgotten. This is partly because of the time gap created when you ask the participant to run through the entire alphabet for you.

When I choose to perform this again with the same participant, I will often say that I now have a solid baseline from which to work.

In all reality, however, we both know that in the second round, we will need to fish for letters. So, how do we cover that fishing?

Easy. Simply ask the participant to try to deceive you this time - throw out false tells, whether it be blinking, smiling, or scratching their face. They should try to deceive you. You then appear to see through their deception, but again, one or two misses does not do any harm to your credibility. Should this be repeated a third time with the same spectator, tell them that to make it more difficult, you will do it solely by listening to changes in their voice. Then turn your back and begin the process anew. Again, one or two misses does no damage to your credibility, as it seems to the audience that you are purposely raising the stakes each time and making the effect harder to perform.

Please note that I am not condoning repeating the same anagram with the same participant, just performing different anagrams with the same participant.

In summary, the steps to be followed when using the psychological approach are:

1. Have the participant name all the vowels2. Have the participant name the consonants R, S, T, L, and N3. Perform the anagram process under the guise of reading their body language4. Once the word is known, check for the potential of an associative reveal (more on

this below)5. Have the participant call the whole alphabet, confidently spotting the tells for

the letters in their word that have not yet been called6. Change up the performance if it is to be repeated ask to be deceived, or anagram

by sound alone, etc.

In addition to this, it is essential that you remember that the psychological approach only works because you appear to be receiving some sort of physical signal from the participant. Do not underestimate the value of this point - I have used this approach to baffle two trained psychologists who genuinely believed that pupil dilation was the source of my information.

You may also consider books on understanding body language as a useful source for character work. The following example serves to illustrate why, and ties back to the importance of creating effects that look and feel the same:

One day after one of my shows, I was approached by a group of people, each eager to ask me questions.

One of those in the group was a young lady, and inevitably the question she posed was along the lines of "How did you do" such and such. I explained to her that a lot of what I did during that particular experiment relied on my ability to pay careful attention to eye access cues and body language. If she was skeptical of my answer initially, the disbelief evaporated a moment later, as I had a wonderful opportunity to provide her with an impromptu demonstration of the ability to read body language to discern thoughts.

As the young lady came into the room, I noticed that she had been accompanied by a friend, who remained in the same spot at the back despite the fact that her more inquisitive friend pushed closer to me. I also paid close attention to the torso of each person. Both were fully facing me, but an examination of the feet told a story all their own. The young lady who was quizzing me had both her feet pointing directly at me, while her friend, positioned a yard or so to the rear, had one foot pointed at me, and the other at the door.

The proximity and foot cues of each party allowed me to infer details of what was going on in the mind of each person. When pressed for an example, therefore, of my assertions that I could read body language, I smiled and spoke to the young lady in front of me.

"Well, for instance, I can tell by your strong eye contact, the full exposure of your torso, and the placement of your feet that you are genuinely intrigued with your interaction with me, and could continue chatting with me for some time. By contrast, your friend, in the green shirt... (at this point, I gestured toward the young lady in the back) your friend is interested in what we are saying, but has more pressing matters to attend to and is anxious to leave. She is, however, too polite to hurry you along. As she has been kind enough to offer you a lift, I believe you ought to get going."

There were about a dozen people circled around me at this point, yet no face was more astounded than that of the young lady in the green shirt, as she confirmed that she was indeed offering her friend a ride and was in a hurry to get somewhere.

Remember, watch carefully, listen closely, and you can discern more about those around you than you would have ever believed possible!

The above example was pulled from my blog http://www.AtlasMentalism.blogspot.com and often lists resources that may be of use to mentalists.

There is one more incredibly valuable subtlety that I've developed as part of the psychological approach that needs to be addressed: The Associative Reveal.

The Associative Reveal

While this works very well for either approach, it is especially powerful with the psychological approach and ought to be included in your presentation whenever possible. The spectator cannot help but admit the association that was demonstrated here and the result is impressive.

This does not work in every situation, but when it does occur, the result is astonishing and unforgettable. Imagine that you are using the Muppet anagram and followed the suggested routine, excluding Pepe, Rizzo, Rowlf and Miss Piggy. You call out the letters 'E' and 'A', with an instant two misses. As a result, you now know that your spectator is thinking of Gonzo.

Rather than reveal the remaining letters one by one, you go back to the letter 'E' and insist that the spectator is mistaken. The letter 'E' is in the word they are thinking. You then run through the alphabet and call out the letters 'D', 'I', 'O', 'R' and 'W'. They admit the 'O', but insist that you are wrong on the others.

You then grab a whiteboard and write 'D, E, I, O, R, W'. Mumble to yourself before exclaiming in triumph and rearranging the letters on the board to spell "Weirdo". Gonzo aficionados cannot help but marvel at the association.

By revealing an associated word rather than the character thought of, you apparently delve further into your participant's mind and end up demonstrating, in the face of their consistent denial, the idea that you were being told something by their subconscious that their conscious mind was blind to - the revelation at the end is all the more powerful as a result.

Another example of this principle that I have employed has its basis in the Disney Films anagram. A spectator was thinking of 101 Dalmatians, and as I called out "S, I, L, C" and was led to the right film. When they denied the letter 'C' was there, I was insistent. I then ran through the alphabet again, insisting that her signals were altered and the consistency had changed. I was no longer receiving such strong signals for letters that earlier I had felt were hits.

I stated that I was clearly getting an 'A', 'C', 'E', 'L', 'R', and 'U'. She denied most of the letters, but when I wrote them on the whiteboard, puzzled over them for a moment, and then mused aloud that if the letter 'L' were repeated...

I then rearranged the letters to spell "Cruella", and pandemonium ensued.

When things had calmed down, I explained. "This sometimes happens. Where associations are strong enough, I get responses outside the realm of the purely conscious mind, and I get the thing that people associated with their thought."

As you begin to create them, you'll find that most anagrams can reveal alternative but linked thoughts, with the power coming from the fact that the original word is ignored, but the signals you've received are too strong to ignore. Because you ignore their original word, It further obscures the method.

It can also erase your earlier missed letters as you take a more dominant role and insist that the signals you are receiving are indisputable.

The trick behind an associative reveal is to find a word which is strongly and recognizably bound to a target on the anagram chart. In most cases, this is really not too difficult. As you begin to familiarize yourself with the anagrams included in this book, or as you create your own, take a moment to find associations and make note of them.

From there, it is merely a matter of altering your performance. Please try it as it is undeniably worth the effort.It bothers me that today, critics of branching anagrams will sing the praises of another method that looks clean, direct, and like the real thing. It is as though they are still seeking what they originally found but discarded or didn't want to polish or perfect.

As you will see in the pages that follow, this method is incredibly versatile and can be used to cover nearly anything, from songs on a favorite album to a word in a horoscope. A number of different performance ideas follow. Each represents an opportunity to blow somebody's socks off.

Whether they do is entirely up to you. I have never seen a method that can be used so subtly and convincingly by a serious mentalist, but so obviously and clumsily in the hands of someone that hasn't put in the work. As someone who loves this method, it is agony to hear it torn apart publicly by another mentalist who will probably tell you in private that they didn't really try all that hard to do the effect justice. What you get from this method depends entirely on how you prepare and the work you put into it.

Now, what do I recommend that you do if you still disagree with me?

Follow the steps I've outlined and go and prove me right.

- Section 2-

Branching Out

As Advertised

As promised, in this section, you'll find all sorts of anagrams and ideas for presentation. But before you move on to read anything else, I want you to really understand the depth of possibility that this method offers, so I've included a very strong idea first.

Imagine handing out newspapers to ten different people and asking them to turn to the classified advertisement section, circle one ad, then rip out the page and fold it up. You then take ten envelopes, and seal their folded ad into each one. The envelopes are subsequently freely mixed by the audience while your back is turned. One audience member then selects an envelope, opens it, and selects any word in the advertisement circled. You then proceed to reveal the exact word that they are thinking of.

The effect was inspired by Ed Wolff's "The Astral Ad". I didn't like the effect as written and I wanted to create a performance where once the ads went into the envelope, I was not involved any more. I wanted it to be "Hands off", and all the action and mixing and selection took place entirely in the audience. Additionally, I wanted the spectator to have a free choice of ANY word in the ad. I didn't like that another person selected it for them. It was while I was performing using branching anagrams, that I figured out a way to meet all the requirements I'd established for the effect. It occurred to me that if I could

perform an envelope switch, I could stack ten envelopes with the exact same circled advertisement.

I could then use a branching anagram to reveal the word my participant was thinking. It would look amazing to an audience.

So, I picked up 20 copies of the Little Nickel, which is a free local publication full of advertisements. It didn't take long to find a suitable advert.

I circled it using a sharpie, and similarly prepared the same page from ten different copies of the same circular.

After a few minutes work, I produced the anagram that follows:

A r - With

- Records

E i - Day

c - Marijuana

- Physician

L

n - Same

- Appointment

I - Referrals

V - Medical

N - Available

- Evaluation

I made sure that on the evening of the performance, I handed out my ten remaining copies of the Little Nickel, along with sharpies identical to the one I had used in my preparations. I know that you will be wondering about the envelope switch that I used. I don't want to endorse one particular method over another - there are a number of terrific methods available from many of the great thinkers in our industry, and which you end up using will depend on your situation.

At any rate, as the envelope was opened and the advertisement examined, I subtly directed my participant to ignore any numbers, and to ensure that they were looking at the circled ad and not any portion of the opposite side of the page where the ink may have bled through. They were to then concentrate on any word in the ad. I took a moment to point out that thousands of ads were available, but only one was circled. In addition, they had a free choice of any word in the ad. They could literally be thinking of anything.

I then began the anagram process. Within moments, I knew the word, and used an associative reveal to finish.

Due to the nature of the effect, you could repeat the performance the next day, and anyone attending the show again would be able to see the effect demonstrated with a different advert shown to be chosen.

It would be great if this example became part of your repertoire, but it is MORE important to me that it helps you to recognize the potential that branching anagrams offer the field of mentalism. They serve to add a subtle layer of deception to almost any effect.

And it is simple to create and memorize an anagram like this one very quickly.

Please understand me when I assert that anagrams offer myriad possibilities, and can help your mentalism transcend to a level you never thought possible.

I offer a number of routines in the pages that follow, but more importantly, when presenting these effects I offer tips and ideas whose aim is to stimulate your capacity for creativity.

Get a Clue

Is there anyone out there that hasn't heard of the game 'Clue'? It is such a fixture in popular culture that I highly doubt it. What follows are three anagrams, each easy to memorize, and each blend together to reveal a murder scenario created only in the spectator's mind. Just ask your participant to think of a murderer, weapon, and location from the classic game (not the newer versions), and reveal it in the manner you see fit. With some clever handwork, you can not only divine the spectator's thoughts, but if you have the actual game cards in your back pockets in a memorized order, they can be accessed and slipped into the envelope that comes with the game. Just keep your hands behind your back as you work, and then produce the envelope (apparently from your back pocket) allowing you both to read their mind, and then produce the envelope as a prediction or as proof of mind control.

Possible Murderers:

S - Mr. Green

O l - Mrs. White

- Ms. Scarlett

L - Mrs. Peacock

P - Colonel Mustard

- Professor Plum

Possible Weapons:

R d - Knife

c - Lead Pipe

- Candlestick

O - Wrench

V - Rope

- Revolver

Possible Rooms:

L n - Study

o - Kitchen

i - Conservatory

- Dining room

O r - Hall

- Library

R - Lounge

I - Ballroom

- Billiard Room

Cereal Killer

When performing this effect, be sure to exclude Cocoa Puffs and Life. You should also specify that you require brand name cereals, and not their generic or knock-off titles. You'll note that there are a few triple misses here. Where these have to be included to make your anagram work, make sure you confidently call out all the remaining letters that the words have in common before probing for the last letter.

E a

u - Fruit Loops (First say, I definitely see o,p,s, and r. Is this a U or a C?)

- Corn Pops

h - Raisin Bran

c - Alpha Bits

n - Lucky Charms

o - Captain Crunch

l - Cinnamon Toast Crunch

- Count Chocula

R

o

i - Apple Jacks (First say, I am definitely getting an S & A, is this I or J?)

- Wheaties

b - Golden Puffs

n - Cocoa Pebbles

s - Honey Comb

- Honey Bunches of Oats

S n - Cheerios

t

k - Fiber One ( I definitely see an f and b, is this a K?)

- Franken Berry

- Peanut Butter Crunch A

i - Reese's Puffs

c - Fruity Pebbles

o - Rice Krispies

n - Cookie Crisp

- Golden Crisp

D k - Grape Nuts

- Corn Flakes

H - Frosted Flakes

T - Golden Grahams

I - Shredded Wheat

- Frosted Mini Wheats

Berry Good

This is a great addition to 'Cereal Killer', as you can ask your participant to imagine their chosen cereal, and then imagine a type of berry sprinkled on top. Alternatively, you could use the 'Bearing Fruit' anagram included below if you so choose. The point is that you can combine anagrams to create presentations similar to the one used in the 'Get a Clue' anagram above to produce multiple revelations. Exclude Boysenberry when performing this.

R - Acai

B c - Grape - Currant E - Blackcurrant

A l - Gooseberry

u - Lingonberry

c - Blueberry

- Huckleberry

N s - Blackberry p - Strawberry - Raspberry

O - Cranberry

L - Marionberry

G - Salmonberry - Loganberry

Periodical Puzzler

This is a great magazine test. You can ask your participant to imagine that they are reading a magazine, and see an ad for a box of cereal. From here, you can move into 'Cereal Killer', add some fruit topping via 'Berry Good', and reveal the magazine, and the details of the ad pictured in their mind. Again, it is very easy to combine these anagrams for bigger and stronger revelations. Be sure to exclude any popular magazine that goes by an acronym (FHM, GQ, ESPN) as well as any dirty magazine. Then exclude Elle magazine, Vogue, and US Weekly by mentioning. Exclude Redbook by spelling.

A o

- Time i

- People s

- Prevention g

- The Economist h

- Rolling Stone d

- Southern Living - Good Housekeeping

I o

- Parents m

- Oprah d

- Taste of Home r

- Woman's Day b

- Woman's World

- Better Homes and Gardens

N e

- Maxim d

- Family Circle

g- Sports Illustrated

- Reader's Digest

M c

- AAA Living g

- Popular Science

- National Geographic

O e

- Family Fun

- Entertainment

E c

- Smithsonian

- Cosmopolitan

H - Game Informer

L - The Oprah Magazine

C - Ladies Home Journal

- Popular Mechanics

Silent Running

When Ben Harris released 'Silent Running', there were a number of different options offered to determine which card a spectator had chosen. For those who purchased the effect, I offer here another option, in each of the different keys. In addition to this, I include an anagram I created for when I present the effect. Silent Running excludes face cards, but this results in a missed opportunity when performing this effect for two people. When I perform this for a couple, I ask one to take an imaginary deck and split them into face cards and number cards. I then have them hand the face cards to their friend who mentally selects one face card. Silent Running is performed as it traditionally is and I use the following anagram to determine the selected face card.

E c - King of Diamonds

a - King of Clubs

d - Jack of Clubs

- Jack of Diamonds

A - Queen of Clubs

N d - Jack of Hearts

- Jack of Spades

D q - King of Hearts

- Queen of Hearts

P - Queen of Diamonds

I - Queen of Spades

- King of Spades

Silent Running - Key of 'C'

E t - Six of Clubs

- Two of Clubs

D n - Three of Hearts

- Seven of Hearts

I - Four of Spades

N - Eight of Spades

V - Nine of Diamonds

- Five of Diamonds

Silent Running - Key of 'D'

E t - Six of Diamonds

- Two of Diamonds

A r - Seven of Clubs

- Three of Clubs

H n - Five of Spades

- Nine of Spades

G - Four of Hearts

- Eight of Hearts

Silent Running - Key of 'H'

E - Four of Diamonds

A n - Five of Clubs

- Nine of Clubs

T - Seven of Spades

R - Eight of Diamonds

I p - Two of Hearts

- Three of Spades

- Six of Hearts

Silent Running - Key of 'S'

E - Four of Clubs

I - Two of Spades

N h - Six of Spades

a - Eight of Clubs

- Five of Hearts

D - Nine of Hearts

R - Seven of Diamonds

- Three of Diamonds

Superb Superheroes

This superhero test is the one listed at the beginning of the book. On the following page, I offer another version for anyone who feels that they would like more options to choose from. However, in my experience, it hasn't been necessary, as these are the characters that are most likely to be named. Remember to exclude the Punisher and limit the superheroes to big name Marvel and DC comic offerings.

A r - Hulk

i - Thor

e - Robin

h - Wolverine

k

- Ghost Rider

- The Incredible Hulk

N d - Flash

- Daredevil

M - Green Lantern

R b - Aquaman

- Batman

I o - Superman

- Wonder Woman

C d - Iron Man

- Spiderman

- Captain America

Superb Superheroes II

Here is a slightly larger list of options. As I stated earlier, where a triple miss is involved (as in Silver Surfer), stating the letters the final two options have in common first breaks up the misses and plays better overall. Also, exclude Namor and the word "the" from any superhero's title.

R a - Hulk

m - Flash

n - Gambit

b - Aquaman

o - Batman

i - Batwoman

- Invisible Woman

N e - Thor

o

d (first say I,L,V) - Silver Surfer

- Daredevil

d - Professor X

g - Red Hood

- Ghost Rider

A o - Nick Fury

e

- Robin

- Wolverine

E o - Mr Fantastic h - Iron Man (may also be Namor)

- Human Torch

T m - Green Arrow

s - Wonder Woman

i - Superman

p - Submariner

- Spiderman

C m - Green Lantern

- Martian Manhunter

P h - Doctor Strange

- Nightcrawler

I - Black Panther

- Captain America

Mentalism with Muppets

Anything with a link to popular culture makes a great anagram as it has broad appeal. When performing this, emphasize that the character must be someone that you will have heard of, and that the name that they spell out should be the name by which the Muppet is most commonly known. Exclude Rowlf and Rizzo by mentioning and Miss Piggy by spelling.

E a - Gonzo

l - Crazy Harry

i - Waldorf

c - Animal

- Camilla

R s - Fozzie

h - Bunsen

d - Sam the Eagle

f - Bunsen Honeydew

- The Swedish Chef

A o - Kermit

t - Floyd Pepper

c - Kermit the Frog

- Scooter

T

f - Beaker

- Fozzie Bear

N

s - Rizzo the Rat

- Statler

P - Gonzo the Great

S - Pepe the King Prawn

- Julius Strangepork

Tooned In

This is another popular culture classic, based around characters from the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes cartoons. For this to work cleanly, you must exclude the Tasmanian Devil and Tweety, as they can be spelled or abbreviated in so many different ways.

E u - Porky Pig

b - Daffy Duck

- Bugs Bunny

O r - Pepe Le Pew

v - Elmer Fudd

m - Sylvester

- Marvin the Martian

L

m - Roadrunner - Yosemite Sam

N - Wile E. Coyote

H - Speedy Gonzalez

- Foghorn Leghorn

Disney Dynamite

Because there are so many options to choose from, this effect is unbelievable and worth the effort to memorize. It kills the skeptics. Take care to exclude all shorts, digitally animated films and any sequels, and just focus on the original hand-animated films. Exclude All Dogs Go To Heaven.

A o

l (first say H,E,C,U,R,S)

- The Rescuers

- Hercules

n - Dumbo

e p (first say I,H) - Robin Hood

- Pinnochio

g - The Sword in the Stone

k - The Emperors New Groove

i - The Jungle Book

- The Lion King

T n - Bambi

d - Mulan

e - Aladdin

o - Cinderella

p - Alice in Wonderland

- Oliver and Company

E s - Tarzan i - Pocahontas

l - Fantasia

c - 101 Dalmatians

- Lilo and Stitch

H r - Sleeping Beauty

s - Peter Pan

- Treasure Planet

R o

- Beauty and the Beast

- The Fox and the Hound

S d - Brother Bear

l - The Hunchback of Notre Dame

m - The Black Cauldron

i - The Lady and The Tramp

- The Little Mermaid

L d - The Aristocats

n - The Great Mouse Detective

- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

U - The Three Caballeros

- Ducktales - The Treasure of the Lost Lamp

Presidential Prognostication

Here is another effect that requires quite a bit of memorization, but is definitely worth the effort. Before you can perform this, however, you must determine whether the president that your subject is thinking of was president before or after 1900. In "Cold", Dee Christopher outlined a great way to probe between two options. Simply ask something like "He wasn't president before 1900 was he?" and then follow with "Yes, I thought so" or "No, I didn't think so". You must also instruct the spectator to ignore middle names and initials and shortened first names (i.e. Teddy instead of Theodore).

A - John Tyler

E l - John Adams

i - Zachary Taylor

n - William Taft

c - William Harrison

- Abraham Lincoln

R n - James Polk

i - James Buchanan

l - James Madison

- William McKinley

N f - Chester Arthur

l - Rutherford Hayes

j - Millard Fillmore

- James Garfield

O i - Ulysses Grant

c - Martin Van Buren

- Franklin Pierce

S - Grover Cleveland

J - George Washington

M k - Andrew Johnson

- Andrew Jackson

F - James Monroe

- Thomas Jefferson

1900 - Present

O r - William McKinley

m - Warren Harding

j - Harry Truman

- Jimmy Carter

E n - Barack Obama

i - Lyndon Johnson

l - Richard Nixon

d - William Clinton

- Woodrow Wilson

R i - John Kennedy

- Calvin Coolidge

H n - Gerald Ford

k - Ronald Reagan

- Franklin Roosevelt

T - George Bush

I d - Herbert Hoover

- Theodore Roosevelt

- Dwight Eisenhower

Doctor Who Divination

I'm a fan of the television series 'Doctor Who', and I've used this effect a number of times at different conventions. Just ask your spectator to think of the actor that portrayed the Doctor that they like best. This is probably an anagram that will have better success in the United Kingdom than in the United States...

T g - Colin Baker

- Paul McGann

E m - Patrick Troughton

- Matt Smith

N c - Tom Baker

- Sylvester McCoy

I - Jon Pertwee

L r - David Tennant

- Peter Davison

C - William Hartnell

- Christopher Eccleston

Country Conundrum

This is my answer to Max Maven's 'Contimental'. You will ask your spectator to name a mainland country in the Western Hemisphere. Emphasize that this should be a mainland country rather than an island. Be sure to exclude El Salvador and Costa Rica through mentioning. Be sure to exclude Colombia by spelling, as it is a country whose name is often spelled incorrectly.

A i - Peru

c - Belize

h - Mexico

- Chile

U i

p (hit on N first, P could be rotated to be a lower case d)

- Canada

- Panama

b - Argentina

o - Brazil

- BoliviaE r - Guyana

g - Honduras

y - Nicaragua

p - Uruguay

- Paraguay

T n - Ecuador

r - Venezuela

h - Suriname

- French Guiana

S - Guatemala

O - United States

- United States of America

With A Paddle

When you guide the topic to fishing or geography, it is easy to introduce the subject of mighty rivers. For this anagram, you should exclude the Rhine and the Danube.

N m - Colorado

i - Thames

s - Columbia

p - Missouri

- Mississippi

E o - Indus

a - Orinoco

- Amazon

A i - Mekong

l - Seine

- Nile

G l - Snake

- Lena

S t - Rio Grande

- Yangtze

- Ganges

Bracing Blooms

As mentioned earlier in the text, sometimes spectator misspellings are unavoidable. Rather than be put off by it, embrace that fact and as you create your anagrams, make room for the most common misspellings of a word. You will note that the word 'Dandelion' is represented twice below. Once for the correct spelling, and once for the most common misspelling. When you are performing this, be sure to exclude Pansy and Snapdragon by mentioning one and spelling the other. If you are going for a psychological force of a flower, this anagram provides a great out for those times that you miss.

I e - Poppy

r - Peony

t - Rose

h - Buttercup

- Chrysanthemum

L a - Iris

r - Daisy

n - Aubrietia

- Carnation

D t - Lily

e - Tulip

a - Violet

- Clematis

N - Daffodil

E - Dandylion

H - Dandelion

- Delphinium

Fantasy Football

With this anagram, you must first determine which division the chosen team is in - AFC or NFC. You should be careful to limit the word thought of to the team name only rather than the city and the team. Exclude the 49ers and the Jets.

NFC TEAMS

A i - Cowboys

k - Lions

e - Vikings

- Redskins

E n - Rams

i - Falcons

t - Cardinals

g - Saints

- Giants

R h - Eagles

- Seahawks

C n - Bears

- Panthers

N - Packers

- Buccaneers

AFC TEAMS

N r l - Chiefs

i - Colts - Bills

a - Steelers

i h - Jaguars - Chargers

t - Raiders

- PatriotsA r - Dolphins

c - Browns

- Broncos

E - Titans

L r - Texans

- Ravens

- Bengals

Birthstone Bonanza

I love this anagram and I recommend that you learn it and perform it whenever you have the opportunity. I've worked out a number of presentations for this, and have included a quick description of my favorite. You must first memorize what every stone below looks like. Then, set yourself to the task of noticing them when you are out in public. You will note that they are almost always worn by women, and when they are, every time I have performed this, the birthstone they have worn (with the exception of diamonds) is the stone of their birth month. If I find a person wearing a birthstone, they are a great choice to perform this with. Begin by asking them to think of a loved one. Then talk about friendships and things that are precious to us, and talk about the value of the people we love. Having laid the groundwork, ask them to think back to the "...Birth of that friendship, its 'Birthday' if you will, and recall that 'Birthday' clearly". Now that birthdays are suggested to their mind, ask them to imagine a treasure chest, full of precious stones, and to imagine they were to choose one stone as a gift for their friend. They are asked to reach into that chest and withdraw the stone and just focus on it. The anagram process will then reveal the stone. Once you know the stone, allow a time delay (so they don't consciously link the month to the birthstone) and then name the month associated with the stone. "How does November have meaning for you and this person?" You can then finish by naming the participant's month of birth, as you have seen their birthstone already. I have included the month the stone represents in parentheses after the stone.

A i - Ruby (July)

o - Citrine (November)

e - Zircon (December)

u - Peridot (August)

- Turquoise (December)

E p - Diamond (April)

l - Topaz (November)

- Opal (October)

R

n - Amethyst (February)

- Tanzanite (December)

L n - Sapphire (September)

m - Garnet (January)

- Aquamarine (March)

D m - Pearl (June)

- Tourmaline (October) M - Alexandrite (June)

- Emerald (May

Veg Out

Anyone who has read Banachek's "Psychological Subtleties" series knows about psychological forces. And, pretty much everyone I've ever spoken to has had the same question "What if it doesn't work?" Well, one way of dealing with this problem is a very straight forward anagram. Begin by pattering about vegetables, and mention that you are especially fond of them, from the mundane like beans and peas, to the spicy like onions and peppers. Anyone who has "Psychological Subtleties" knows the vegetable likely to be named. Simply begin by spelling that one. It is either a hit or viewed as instructional for the anagram process that follows.

C a - Pumpkin

s - Tomato

r - Squash

h - Asparagus

- Radish

R a - Lettuce

b - Spinach

- Cabbage

O u - Celery

- Cucumber

L a - Corn

k - Carrot

- Artichoke

B - Cauliflower

- Broccoli

Fruitastic

This is another one that operates similarly to "Veg Out". Use it as an out for psychological forces if you like. Note that several spellings of "Tomato" are used.

A e - Kiwi

l - Cherry

i - Lemon

c - Lime

- Clementine

E m c

- Guava

d - Apricot

- Avocado

nk - Tomato

- Kumquat