Derren Brown - The Events

[Ben Hunter]

Has anyone else here ever been "hypnotised"?

Kinda, I "have", although I was a slightly drunk 16/17 year old or so at a party with much older people, and just went along with it for the laughs really. And then of course afterwards you can't really say that because you look a bit silly.

Sounds like you were rohypnotized.

[Kirk Bevins]

I love the fact that the adverts for tonight's show include a snowflake symbolising that the left hand side of the screen was frozen. (OK I know I got this from a link posted on here - I just find it genius).

[Chris Corby]

Has anyone else here ever been "hypnotised"? I have, and found it fascinating, but it wasn't until 18 years later when I read Derren Brown's book that I was able to confirm that my experience was not untypical.

Kinda, I "have", although I was a slightly drunk 16/17 year old or so at a party with much older people, and just went along with it for the laughs really. And then of course afterwards you can't really say that because you look a bit silly.

Jon was well under. I know. I was there.

[Jon Corby]

Has anyone else here ever been "hypnotised"? I have, and found it fascinating, but it wasn't until 18 years later when I read Derren Brown's book that I was able to confirm that my experience was not untypical.

Kinda, I "have", although I was a slightly drunk 16/17 year old or so at a party with much older people, and just went along with it for the laughs really. And then of course afterwards you can't really say that because you look a bit silly.

Jon was well under. I know. I was there.

Haha, I knew you were gonna come along and say that. I was completely and utterly conscious of everything I was doing, and was in full control the whole time. You can choose not to believe that if you like, but it's the truth!

[Gavin Chipper]

Who's to say that isn't what hypnosis really is? Read A Trick of the Mind. It's all about conformity.

I'm guessing by "not really hypnotised" Jeff meant "not in a trance" or some such. But yes, as Derren says in the book (which is actually called Tricks of the Mind BTW) the term hypnosis isn't properly defined and really covers a ragbag of mental states from "relaxed and suggestible" to "going along with it for a laugh".

In his book, Derren often underplays his own skills. It was ages ago that he read it, but I think he suggested that he didn't really know that much himself about what it is, but to reliably produce results must require a decent amount of insight.

Anyway, I think he's supposed to be hypnotising us to be stucktoyoursofa.com so that will be interesting.

[Kieran Child]

"in his book"

... all three of it.

[Gavin Chipper]

"in his book"

... all three of it.

The one mentioned in the thing I quoted! Where's the bobble of silencing when you need it?

[Kieran Child]

apologies. Only read the text and not the quotation.

[Craig Beevers]

Hmm well that was somewhat underwhelming.

[Kieran Child]

It had a 2. An average of 23 people would never throw up a 2. Ah well. I concede to you split screen people.

[Jon Corby]

Hmm well that was somewhat underwhelming.

Absolutely. I expected better tbh. Btw, when they were getting 3 and then 4 right - question how easy it is to tamper with the results when they're handing them in on bits of paper and one person is doing the summing. Actually, who was there when Paul Z did a similar adding-up trick....?

[Kai Laddiman]

Hmm well that was somewhat underwhelming.

Absolutely. I expected better tbh. Btw, when they were getting 3 and then 4 right - question how easy it is to tamper with the results when they're handing them in on bits of paper and one person is doing the summing. Actually, who was there when Paul Z did a similar adding-up trick....?

[Gavin Chipper]

That was an hour of bullshit.

[Matthew Green]

Wow you guys, I just assumed he used NLP to guess what the numbers would be.

[Chris Corby]

It had a 2. An average of 23 people would never throw up a 2. Ah well. I concede to you split screen people.

I think he said during the programme that people could pick minus numbers if they wished so it could happen. But unlikely.

But I apologise for my earlier post when I said that Brown would admit to the split screen trickery. He didn't. All his stunts were based on lies for the show. He had conceded recently that his Russian Roulette stunt a couple of years ago was a bad mistake and he wouldn't repeat anything like that again. Well he has and what on earth made a man who recently 'came out' say "We ignored the bonus ball. Bonus balls are for women and gays". Dickhead.

[Kieran Child]

^ I found that quite funny
Also not quite sure what you're saying about the Russian roulette thing there, but if anyone is going to call that a hoax, or say he admitted it was a hoax then I will get a bit defensive. It wasn't a hoax. He used a blank, which actually could still have killed him, but at any rate would have definitely caused some major burns.

[Michael Wallace]

Well he has and what on earth made a man who recently 'came out' say "We ignored the bonus ball. Bonus balls are for women and gays". Dickhead.

I think that's quite funny, tbh.

[Jon Corby]

^ I found that quite funny
Also not quite sure what you're saying about the Russian roulette thing there, but if anyone is going to call that a hoax, or say he admitted it was a hoax then I will get a bit defensive. It wasn't a hoax. He used a blank, which actually could still have killed him, but at any rate would have definitely caused some major burns.

Really? I'd say he used a phony gun that didn't fire at all. Again - why could the viewer not see the dude loading the bullets? Did he confirm afterwards that those were indeed the chambers he placed the bullets in? Not to my recollection. Then again, even if he did, the other guy could be a stooge, or they peeked on him loading, or the gun shows a subtle signal for a loaded chamber, or just... anything. Surely if nothing else this has shown that the guy will basically do anything to pull off an illusion. Which, of course, is fine. It's the people who are still going "I'm a bit disappointed with this if it was a split screen cos he doesn't need to stoop that low when he's so good at reading and manipulating people" that confuse me. When will they realise that's all a load of fog, and he will clearly do anything to make good TV? People aren't anywhere near as suggestible or readable to the degree he claims.

Edit: I thought the bonus ball line was funny too - in fact it's probably the most entertained I was all evening. Playing penney-ante indeed and saying it's "deep maths".

[Michael Wallace]

Blue! Blue! Blue!

[Kieran Child]

To John, people may not be as readable as he claims, but they are as suggestible. Have a read of 'psychological subtleties' by Steve Shaw and you will get a feel for just how predictable people can be. The mouse in the box 'trick' he did was very similar to a principle in the PS books. As for "readable", he did a display of muscle reading once. This was genuine, but most of his reading tricks involve sleight of hand. The book '13 steps to mentalism' will show you the majority of the tricks he does with that bit.
To start thinking fake gun and under-table camera on the Russian Roulette thing is to make things much more complicated than they actually were.

[Gavin Chipper]

Edit: I thought the bonus ball line was funny too - in fact it's probably the most entertained I was all evening.

I'm glad I won't be around when this all kicks off at the Corby household.

[Phil Reynolds]

Well, I enjoyed it. Not one of his best shows, but lots to think about. The knife-under-the-cup stunt was genuinely impressive, assuming that the guy really did have the cheque in his pocket the whole time and that Derren never touched it after the trick began, which certainly seemed to be the case. I'd not come across the Walter Penney coin-tossing effect before either.

The "wisdom of crowds" phenomenon is well supported by experimental evidence, although of course in reality it only works when there is an already existing focus for the participants' estimates; extending it to estimating the value of some quantity that doesn't yet exist (like a number on a yet-to-be-drawn lottery ball) is BS, as Derren well knew. But it was fascinating watching his 24 guinea pigs being gradually taken in. They seemed utterly convinced after the draw that they had genuinely predicted the result. Derren made a passing comment towards the end of the show that the volunteers had been left in no doubt how the "prediction" was achieved, which I'm guessing meant that they were let in on the truth after the reactions we saw were filmed. Both this sequence and the Penney-ante game seemed designed to show us how people can be fooled into thinking that group positivity and mutual support can somehow affect random outcomes; I suspect Derren was taking a sly potshot at the likes of DOND.

I did expect him to reveal the split-screen trick and experienced a mounting sense of impending disappointment as the minutes ticked away to the end of the show and it became clear that he wasn't going to. However, he redeemed himself right at the end (bless him) with his last four words: "IT WAS A TRICK". In other words, all the stuff about numerical analysis, wisdom of the crowd, ideomotor writing etc (while interesting topics in their own right, and which viewers can research for themselves away from the context of a Friday night entertainment show if they want) led up to the claim that he had somehow begun Wednesday's show with a genuine prediction of the Lotto draw result - but he hadn't. IT WAS A TRICK. The details of the trick, in the final analysis, were unimportant. Anyone who wants to know how it was done can find all the theories floating round the internet and choose the one they find most plausible.

I wasn't offended by the "women and gays" comment either. If a straight man had said it, and it was a statement reinforcing some genuine prejudice, it might have been slightly offensive; but when a gay man makes a clearly insupportable statement like that as a joke, I just find it funny.

Oh, and in case anyone is still unconvinced by the split-screen theory, here's the killer piece of evidence:

No matter how steady on his feet, a cameraman shouldering a handheld TV camera will be unable to stand perfectly still. He will sway slightly, or shift his weight from time to time; and even the slightest movement will introduce a parallax shift. (For the uninitiated: look at a nearby object that's between you and another object further away. Now shift your position slightly. The object nearer to you appears to move relative to the object further away. That's parallax.)

Now look again at Wednesday night's broadcast. From the moment the live portion of the programme starts, after Derren has waved at the camera further away so we see him in shot with a guy holding a handheld camera, we assume that all the subsequent footage is coming from that handheld camera - and indeed, the picture is wobbling about all over the place which seems to confirm this. But, for a split screen to be undetectable, the camera recording the image has to be completely immobile (unless you're using a motion control rig, which would have been a lot more expensive to set up and difficult to pull off live). That means it can't change its position and it can't change where it's pointing. You can make it look like the camera is waving about and pointing in slightly different directions by digitally manipulating the image to make it wobble; but what you can't do is make it look like the camera is adjusting its position - because that would require a parallax shift. And if you look closely at the next few minutes of footage, until after the draw is complete, the rack of balls and the TV on its stand never appear to move in relation to the wall in the background. Not even fractionally. That's how you know that the camera shooting them is on a mount. Once the blank balls have been replaced with the correctly numbered ones and the split screen removed, the camera is able to pan across and zoom in as Derren walks over to the rack, and only then do you see a parallax shift.

[Jon Corby]

To John, people may not be as readable as he claims, but they are as suggestible. Have a read of 'psychological subtleties' by Steve Shaw and you will get a feel for just how predictable people can be. The mouse in the box 'trick' he did was very similar to a principle in the PS books. As for "readable", he did a display of muscle reading once. This was genuine, but most of his reading tricks involve sleight of hand. The book '13 steps to mentalism' will show you the majority of the tricks he does with that bit.
To start thinking fake gun and under-table camera on the Russian Roulette thing is to make things much more complicated than they actually were.

Kieran. If the mouse thing was as you suggest, HE COULD (AND THEREFORE SURELY WOULD) SHOW US AT HOME THE FUCKING ANSWER FIRST. Not half-heartedly wave a card with a picture of a mouse on it after she's picked it. As usual, we only see his prediction - his 100% accurate guess - AFTER the fucking event. Why do you suppose this might be? And seriously, you think fake gun "is complicating it" compared to shooting a fucking blank in your head?

[Gavin Chipper]

I'd not come across the Walter Penney coin-tossing effect before either.

I seem to remember it coming up on here - I might be wrong though. But I don't know how someone with HHH as their choice competing against THH cannot notice that it's rigged against them after a few goes of this. Surely in his own mind he'd be thinking "Come on, a heads!" for each toss, but then every time the second heads comes out he would suddenly notice that he's lost. Then he'd start thinking "Hang on - how do I win this?" Surely the penny would drop!

[Phil Reynolds]

I don't know how someone with HHH as their choice competing against THH cannot notice that it's rigged against them after a few goes of this. Surely in his own mind he'd be thinking "Come on, a heads!" for each toss, but then every time the second heads comes out he would suddenly notice that he's lost. Then he'd start thinking "Hang on - how do I win this?" Surely the penny would drop!

Put like that -

In the more general case, where the victim chooses a less uniform distribution (say HTH) he's perhaps less likely to cotton on that the sequence HHT is going to appear first two times out of three. In the set-up we saw last night, it may be that all the "crowd willing Derren to succeed" malarkey that was going on helped to distract the poor guy from the fact that statistically he couldn't win.

[Jon Corby]

I don't know how someone with HHH as their choice competing against THH cannot notice that it's rigged against them after a few goes of this. Surely in his own mind he'd be thinking "Come on, a heads!" for each toss, but then every time the second heads comes out he would suddenly notice that he's lost. Then he'd start thinking "Hang on - how do I win this?" Surely the penny would drop!

Put like that -

In the more general case, where the victim chooses a less uniform distribution (say HTH) he's perhaps less likely to cotton on that the sequence HHT is going to appear first two times out of three. In the set-up we saw last night, it may be that all the "crowd willing Derren to succeed" malarkey that was going on helped to distract the poor guy from the fact that statistically he couldn't win.

You'd go for THT (not HHT) when faced with HHT, if I recall correctly.

[Phil Reynolds]

In the more general case, where the victim chooses a less uniform distribution (say HTH) he's perhaps less likely to cotton on that the sequence HHT is going to appear first two times out of three.

You'd go for THT (not HHT) when faced with HHT, if I recall correctly.

I didn't say the victim chose HHT, I said HTH. And even if it was HHT, you still wouldn't pick THT - you'd pick THH. The rule is: copy the middle symbol to the beginning of the sequence, flip it, and drop the last symbol.

[Jon Corby]

In the more general case, where the victim chooses a less uniform distribution (say HTH) he's perhaps less likely to cotton on that the sequence HHT is going to appear first two times out of three.

You'd go for THT (not HHT) when faced with HHT, if I recall correctly.

I didn't say the victim chose HHT, I said HTH. And even if it was HHT, you still wouldn't pick THT - you'd pick THH. The rule is: copy the middle symbol to the beginning of the sequence, flip it, and drop the last symbol.

Oops, yeah I typoed with the second HHT (I meant your HTH) - but I did meant to say you'd go for THT, I thought the rule was you took your oppo's first 2 as your last 2, and flipped their third for your first. I'm positive that's not how I read it years ago. I've just seen that Derren's site shows your method. Off to scribble some numbers...

Edit - right the way I was shown was to make your first 2 my last two, then make my first the opposite of my last. So for HTH this gives THH. Which is what you said. Apologies for the confusion.

[Kai Laddiman]

I'd do HTH. HTH.

[Gavin Chipper]

I love the fact that the adverts for tonight's show include a snowflake symbolising that the left hand side of the screen was frozen. (OK I know I got this from a link posted on here - I just find it genius).

Maybe, but then if he'd held up a goose, people probably would have read something into it.

[Phil Reynolds]

the way I was shown was to make your first 2 my last two, then make my first the opposite of my last. So for HTH this gives THH. Which is what you said.

Indeed. The idea is that, by making your last two the same as your opponent's first two, you block half the cases where your opponent could win on the next toss (by winning first). Conversely, by making your first two different to your opponent's last two, you deny him the similar advantage. (I pinched this neat encapsulation of the method from this rather good page.)

[Michael Wallace]

Just watched it on 4oD. That's got to be one of the most retarded hours of TV I've seen in a very long time.

[Ben Hunter]

Surely Derren Brown knows that some of his fans are actually intelligent and are the kind of people who would consider watching 30 minutes of shit maths an insulting waste of time?

[Michael Wallace]

Surely Derren Brown knows that some of his fans are actually intelligent and are the kind of people who would consider watching 30 minutes of shit maths an insulting waste of time?

Not shit maths, deep maths. DEEP MATHS.

[Charlie Reams]

Brown Lotto trick 'confuses' fans. Refreshingly, equal weight is given to the opinion of an Oxford mathematics professor and some guy from Twitter. Fair and balanced indeed.

PS I must try Brown Lotto with my girlfriend.

[Michael Wallace]

Brown Lotto trick 'confuses' fans. Refreshingly, equal weight is given to the opinion of an Oxford mathematics professor and some guy from Twitter. Fair and balanced indeed.

Sounds like somebody is annoyed that they couldn't understand the deep maths.

Oh, oh - that maths was so deep you need water wings!

[Kieran Child]

To John, people may not be as readable as he claims, but they are as suggestible. Have a read of 'psychological subtleties' by Steve Shaw and you will get a feel for just how predictable people can be. The mouse in the box 'trick' he did was very similar to a principle in the PS books. As for "readable", he did a display of muscle reading once. This was genuine, but most of his reading tricks involve sleight of hand. The book '13 steps to mentalism' will show you the majority of the tricks he does with that bit.
To start thinking fake gun and under-table camera on the Russian Roulette thing is to make things much more complicated than they actually were.

Kieran. If the mouse thing was as you suggest, HE COULD (AND THEREFORE SURELY WOULD) SHOW US AT HOME THE FUCKING ANSWER FIRST. Not half-heartedly wave a card with a picture of a mouse on it after she's picked it. As usual, we only see his prediction - his 100% accurate guess - AFTER the fucking event. Why do you suppose this might be? And seriously, you think fake gun "is complicating it" compared to shooting a fucking blank in your head?

A couple of reasons. Firstly, it's not as impressive. As soon as I could see where the trick was headed, I said to my father "Either 3,1,4 and the mouse is in 2 or 3,1,2 and the mouse is in 4." and afterwards wished I hadn't. The idea of predicting something and then it happening is a single-layered trick. People know that, either, that is what always happens, or that you have made it happen somehow. If you make the reveal afterwards then you have a climax, and it adds the second layer with questions about whether or not the prediction could have been tampered with.
In one of his lectures, he spoke of a trick he used to do with coins during table-to-table magic (this works less and less these days but still try it.) It involved choosing a coin and getting the date on that coin. The culmination was the reveal of the prediction "you will pick the 10p coin and it will be dated 1992". The reveal is always done after, because if you demonstrate that beforehand, it rings alarm bells in people's heads that all 10p coins are dated 1992.
Secondly, it allows for a cop-out. This would be a dodgy thing to do, and it's the sort of thing that you don't want to have to do, but you need to allow for it. In Banachek's second book, he talks of an effect called TERASABOS. Try this for yourself. I won't go into finer details, but even without them, you will still get this to work - take five cups, line them out. Name them 1 to 5 in front of someone. Touch the 5th cup when you say five. Turn away and tell the person to put something useful they have on them under any of the cups. It will be keys and they will put it under number 4. BUT NOT ALWAYS. If you get someone easily suggestible and do it correctly, they will definitely go for 4. If something goes slightly wrong, they might go for 2 instead. So leave the prediction down and knock over cups 1,3 and 5. Then push slightly on cups 2 and 4. The one with more resistance has the keys under. At this point you could do a billet switch with the prediction if it was wrong, but billet switching is NASTY, and no magician would want to do it, so know that most of the time you'll be right.
Thirdly, on very few occasions, a nail writer might be used to create a prediction secretly after an event. The problem with this is that the writing will look crap.
I don't understand your follow up question. He didn't shoot a blank into his head. Before claiming that humans are completely unpredictable, I urge you to try the effect I've stated above on someone. You will succeed. I've done it over 10 times and never failed, and I'm absolute complete ameteur. Also torrent 'the devils picturebook' if you have the time. It's an instructional video Derren made which includes teaching mentalists how to make someone think of 3 hearts or 4 clubs.

[Alice Moore]

assuming that the guy really did have the cheque in his pocket the whole time and that Derren never touched it after the trick began, which certainly seemed to be the case

I'm surprised by this comment when elsewhere you've been so clear that he is a magician and uses selight of hand very effectively all the time, then sells it as mind reading.

Read 13 Steps to Mentalism and also a book by HJ Burlingame called How to Read People's Minds. There are some other good texts out there too which explain the kind of thing DB does - watch out for the author Kenton Knepper - but anyway the basic principle behind any prediction trick is that you don't reveal your prediction until after the result is known. The most common method for writing down results is to use a clever little gismo called a nail writer, which fits almost invisibly under a fingernail and allows you to write results as things are happening. All that's needed then is simple sleight of hand, and DB has admitted to being an accomplished pickpocket. He had tons of opportunity to switch the old cheque for one written out with a nailwriter.

I loved the way he gave two possible explanations on Friday, one for the benefit of people who don't believe he can read minds, and one for those who want to think he can. Of course both of them were bollocks, but I loved the way he said "This is NOT what I did", which will then make people think he did.

The reason magicians don't normally reveal how they do their tricks (and DB revealed nothing at all on Friday) is because if they do, it's a disappointment. DB cloaks everything he does in fancy explanations, and that's part of the trick - in fact, in a way I'd say that's all of it. His job is to make us believe he has incredible psychological skills, and that's how most mentalists work. In fact most of what they do is sleight of hand, misdirection etc, and that's why if they revealed their techniques we'd feel let down. But it's missing the point to say that therefore they are disappointing as magicians. The skill lies in convincing us that simple trickery is something magical and/or incredibly complex. DB says himself in Tricks of the Mind that magicians shouldn't tell the truth because it would just make people go "Oh, is that all?" and lose all the mystique. And the fact that his hand was hidden for so long in the live(?) prediction has got to be relevant. If a magician ever hides their hand from view, there's going to be a reason. That piece of card was completely unnecessary, and certainly didn't have to be held at that angle for so long.

Remember, the way magicians work is to do something simple and then present it as complex. The most convincing explanation for me is that he had the balls up his sleeve, wrote on them himself then did a switch. He's a very accomplished sleight-of-hand magician. But that's the beauty: I haven't a clue if I'm right or not, and neither has anyone else. He's very good at what he does. I'm a big fan.

[Alice Moore]

a nail writer might be used to create a prediction secretly after an event. The problem with this is that the writing will look crap.

Not if you're accomplished. It's just a question of practice.

[Charlie Reams]

The most convincing explanation for me is that he had the balls up his sleeve, wrote on them himself then did a switch. He's a very accomplished sleight-of-hand magician. But that's the beauty: I haven't a clue if I'm right or not, and neither has anyone else.

I have a pretty good clue that you're not right.

[Sue Sanders]

The most convincing explanation for me is that he had the balls up his sleeve, wrote on them himself then did a switch. He's a very accomplished sleight-of-hand magician. But that's the beauty: I haven't a clue if I'm right or not, and neither has anyone else.

I have a pretty good clue that you're not right.

Yeah, when Charlie taught Derren Brown everything he knows, he specifically taught him not to do that.

[Phil Reynolds]

assuming that the guy really did have the cheque in his pocket the whole time and that Derren never touched it after the trick began, which certainly seemed to be the case

I'm surprised by this comment when elsewhere you've been so clear that he is a magician and uses selight of hand very effectively all the time [...] DB has admitted to being an accomplished pickpocket.

You missed my point. To pick Matt's pocket he would have needed to be standing closer to him than two or three feet away. He briefly shook his hand at arm's length which would have been close enough maybe to remove his wristwatch but not to switch envelopes with the one in Matt's jacket pocket, certainly not under the scrutiny of the camera. Successful pickpocketing works by misdirecting the victim for a split second while the lift is performed. To do it on camera you also need to mask what you're doing somehow. Neither of these took place in the footage we saw. I'm still inclined to believe that a switch took place, just that we weren't shown the moment when it occurred - hence my comment above about "seemed to be the case".

The most convincing explanation for me is that he had the balls up his sleeve, wrote on them himself then did a switch.

Wrote on them in perfectly formed Helvetica Black? You built up a convincing argument to that point that you knew something about the subject, then blew it all in that sentence.

[Kieran Child]

Gah. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned the nail writer. People have a tendency to believe that it's some miracle tool.
The balls in the lottery trick DEFINITELY couldn't have been nail-written. That's an absolute definite. You could practice nail writing on ping pong balls your whole life and you would never get the same degree of perfectly done writing (that looks printed) that was on the lottery balls.
As for nail writing the back of the cheque, that's also rather unlikely. Doable, but would require masses of practice. There are professional mentalists who still make up crap about having to save time with the thought process so scribble down a prediction hurriedly, explains the crap writing.
Another draw back with nail writing is that the whole hand is lost. What you're writing on has to have a backing, and basically the whole of your hand has to be touching it to else your orientation is completely gone.
Nail writing can help in many effects, and can sometimes be the only option to produce an effect, but at the end of the day, it's not something any mentalist would want to have to do.

[Charlie Reams]

The most convincing explanation for me is that he had the balls up his sleeve, wrote on them himself then did a switch. He's a very accomplished sleight-of-hand magician. But that's the beauty: I haven't a clue if I'm right or not, and neither has anyone else.

I have a pretty good clue that you're not right.

Yeah, when Charlie taught Derren Brown everything he knows, he specifically taught him not to do that.

Oh, you missed the point for a change.

[Sue Sanders]

I have a pretty good clue that you're not right.

Yeah, when Charlie taught Derren Brown everything he knows, he specifically taught him not to do that.

Oh, you missed the point for a change.

I think you missed the point. It was a joke, Charlie - the 'I taught him everything he knows' one.

[Charlie Reams]

I think you missed the point. It was a joke, Charlie - the 'I taught him everything he knows' one.

Good one.

[Alice Moore]

The balls in the lottery trick DEFINITELY couldn't have been nail-written. That's an absolute definite. You could practice nail writing on ping pong balls your whole life and you would never get the same degree of perfectly done writing (that looks printed) that was on the lottery balls.

I'm prepared to believe this is the case, but your certainty is a bit bewildering. Until you have spent your whole life practising nailwriting (and happen to be a person who has an associated fine-motor aptitude), you really don't know what could be achieved. For instance, it wouldn't surprise me at all if DB had perfected a nailwriter which could produce thick black strokes, and any graphic artist worth their salt can produce a perfect Helvetica reproduction, by hand, with very little difficulty (signwriting was once a lucrative sideline for impoverished artists). And DB is also a profficient artist. So maybe, with practice, this could be achieved. But he could also have transfers for the numbers 0 to 9 up his sleeve, or all sorts of other mechanisms. For what it's worth I never actually specified a nailwriter for the lottery balls, only for the back-of-a-cheque thing. But it's all too easy to convince yourself that you know things which actually, you don't know at all.

I saw this written somewhere recently: We easily believe what we ardently desire to be true.

Of course the fact that his hand was hidden for so long could in itself be a piece of misdirection... for the benefit of all the people who he knows will be watching his hands most intently.

It's great fun speculating on how his stunts are achieved, but the beauty is that none of us will ever really know.

[Sue Sanders]

It's great fun speculating on how his stunts are achieved, but the beauty is that none of us will ever really know.

Well, until he dies and they cut him open and find all the answers spelled out in alphabetti spaghetti in his veins.

[Kevin Thurlow]

I'm surprised at the absence of one line of thought about Friday's show. The real beauty of Friday's show is that he will get loads of people up and down the country trying to get x people to select numbers, trying to add them up, and then trying to divide by x. This must do something for numeracy in the country, and is also quite funny. And as you get a random result, somebody doing it that way might just win, and then DB looks like a genius!

You also need to write your six guesses in numerical order before doing the arithmetic, otherwise when you average the totals they will all be round about 24 - 25 (ish).

[Jon Corby]

As soon as I could see where the trick was headed, I said to my father "Either 3,1,4 and the mouse is in 2 or 3,1,2 and the mouse is in 4."

Kieran, what can I say, you are amazing. I'm staggered that you share this exceptional gift with Derren. Can you help those less fortunate by pointing out what exactly it was about this lady that told you she was a "3,1,2" lady? Or does everybody always do that when they're told there's a mouse in one of four boxes? Is it because she was scared of mice? (Actually she didn't seem so scared of putting her hand into a box which may contain a mouse. And what if she just wanted to be on TV?) If I had been summoned up to do it, would I have also picked 3,1,2?

In Banachek's second book, he talks of an effect called TERASABOS. Try this for yourself. I won't go into finer details, but even without them, you will still get this to work - take five cups, line them out. Name them 1 to 5 in front of someone. Touch the 5th cup when you say five. Turn away and tell the person to put something useful they have on them under any of the cups. It will be keys and they will put it under number 4.

Again this sounds incredible. The keys bit perhaps not so, but the number four yes. And everyone always does exactly this?

BUT NOT ALWAYS.

Oh.

If you get someone easily suggestible and do it correctly, they will definitely go for 4. If something goes slightly wrong, they might go for 2 instead.

So no-one EVER picks 1,3 or 5? EVER? Or do you mean if they do, it means "they're not suggestible"? What percentage of the population is this? How would you ascertain this in the moments before you've called them up on stage? Is it possible to extend this to showing someone 20 cups and saying there's a knife under one of them, and knowing they'll avoid cups 1,12,13,18 blah blah? (That guy didn't particularly look like he thought he was about to stamp on a knife either ftr)

[Rosemary Roberts]

This must do something for numeracy in the country.

I wish. Crap maths in = Crap maths out. It won't teach anybody anything.

[Jon Corby]

You also need to write your six guesses in numerical order before doing the arithmetic, otherwise when you average the totals they will all be round about 24 - 25 (ish).

It's interesting that when they got the 3 correct, we were shown how 6 of the 24 came to the front, and people were calling out numbers for them to add up. This'd rule out paper switching like I'd previously suggested, but I'd like to know exactly what their system was for this. When the six read out their 'averaged' numbers at the end to mark off against the lottery draw (which, of course, had already taken place before they started) they weren't in ascending numerical order. So people hadn't been giving their lowest to person 1 and highest to person 6... so... what were they doing? How did they ensure they wouldn't get a duplicated number for example?

Of course, they changed to that other matey doing the totalling for when they got four, where I suggested papers were switched, but it's also a lot easier (and probably therefore more likely) that he was just a plant.

[Kieran Child]

I wasn't aware that she was a '3,1,2' lady. I actually thought that 3,1,4 would be more likely, because that's the pattern that people sitting on chairs fall into. You are correct when you say that everyone would have done it (approximately). I don't know whether or not the fear of mice was necessary. Maybe there's something in the statement that fear increases predictability, but I've never heard it before. What would have increased predictability was when Derren said "or have you got full on musophobia?" She wouldn't have known what musophobia meant, and would have had to work it out from the context. But firstly, she would just nod and say yes, and thus the guard is down and she's running on auto.
On TERASABOS, 'but nobody picks 1,3 or 5 ever?'
No. So few people that it becomes negligible. I used to knock over 3 first, so if there was something there, it can be called the reveal, and while the trick is now kinda rubbish, at least it hasn't failed. If there isn't something, I'd say quickly "I'm also going to eliminate..." and you're also fine. Nobody ever picks 1 or 5. Try it for yourself, as I said before.
Do I think it could be extended to 20 cups? Nope.

[Jon Corby]

Nobody ever picks 1 or 5. Try it for yourself, as I said before.

Okay. You'll understand me being skeptical I hope? I mean, if anyone asks me to pick a cup now, I'll pick 1 or 5 just to be contrary. As might anyone reading this. Or anyone who has seen the trick performed before. You said you'd performed it more than 10 times. So is this 100% fours? And always to someone who had never ever seen it before? Can you explain those contexts if so? Do you do children's parties or something? Actually, does it work on children? What if they're not great with numbers? Etc etc.

Edit, also:

I wasn't aware that she was a '3,1,2' lady. I actually thought that 3,1,4 would be more likely, because that's the pattern that people sitting on chairs fall into.

I'm more prepared to believe the latter. I can see why people doing something like that might be more inclined to fall into a pattern, particularly the second and third people, as they may choose not to sit immediately next to someone (as that might seem weird when there are other chairs available) or between two people (as it's a bit more claustrophobic). I don't accept that has relevance to different situations with four items, as the same logic doesn't apply.

[Kieran Child]

^ I don't do anything like that. I just do tricks for fun with people every now and again, and TERASABOS is a good one when there aren't any props around (most people have cups). Yeah, people reading this would then be more likely to pick 1 or 5 to be contrary, but if someone is trying to be contrary for the first time, they still won't pick 1 or 5. I recall getting one 2, but when it gets to the 2/4 stage, I've never bothered noting down the final result. There has never been a 1,3 or 5 though.

[Kieran Child]

I've found a video of someone performing it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHqmg1OO0x0
In my set up, the performer was standing by 5 and the victim was standing by 1. In this instance, they're the other way around, so she ends up picking a 2, but what I was labelling a 4.

[Jon Corby]

I've found a video of someone performing it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHqmg1OO0x0
In my set up, the performer was standing by 5 and the victim was standing by 1. In this instance, they're the other way around, so she ends up picking a 2, but what I was labelling a 4.

Discworld Jamboree

That was appalling

"I'm going to try and zone in on your watch......." *picks up the first cup* "........so that's the first of the empty cups eliminated" FFS

He numbered them 1-5, but now you're saying number 4 has nothing to do with it, they actually pick the furthest-but-one cup from where they're standing?

[Kieran Child]

I never said 4 had anything to do with it. I just numbered them to make the follow up easier to understand.

[Jon Corby]

I never said 4 had anything to do with it. I just numbered them to make the follow up easier to understand.

Name them 1 to 5 in front of someone. Touch the 5th cup when you say five. Turn away and tell the person to put something useful they have on them under any of the cups. It will be keys and they will put it under number 4.

You can hopefully see how I thought emphasising the 5 meant that the cup next to it was 4.

Edit: He was going for the reveal with his first pick, wasn't he? You can hear people saying "he got it wrong" when he lifts it

[Kieran Child]

The bit where you touch 5 isn't a way of 'forcing' number 4, but a way of 'eliminating' number 5. That guy's method seems to be a tad muddled up, but the key components are there.
I'm not sure what he was doing with the first cup. Given that it was the one cup she might have put her watch under other than the one she did, I don't know why he would want to reveal that so early. Maybe the aim was to say the elimination line, and keep the wow line as a backup, but you're right. It did look like it had gone wrong. But ah well, the thing to learn from that is that even the less skilled magicians can be completely sure there is nothing in 1 or 5.