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Pathfinder by The Daily Magician
Recently, we got a new release by the team that brought us iRis.
Similar to iRis, this is another trick with your iPhone that allows you to read minds, but the difference here is that in this version, the spectator just thinks of a word. They never write it down, highlight it, zoom in on it, click it, or anything like that.
Here’s what the effect looks like: The spectator takes the magician’s phone and goes to any website. You want them to use a site that will have a lot of words on it, such as Wikipedia, NY Times, or some other news article or blog. They then scroll to anywhere they want on the page and just think of any word they see. They scroll back to the top, close the tab, exit Safari, and leave no trace of the word they are just thinking of. The performer takes the phone back, opens the notes app, and begins to make “guesses” at the word they are thinking of.
As he formulates ideas, he asks if their word contains certain letters. By the end, the performer has a list of 7 or 8 guesses, but when he shows the list to the spectator, none of those words are theirs. It seems he has failed. But incredibly, when they look at the first letter of each word the magician guessed, they see their thought-of-word spelled right in front of them.
Right out of the gate, I want to make it clear that this is a shortcut. This means it only works on iPhones, and you have to use your own phone for the effect, but this is a really great shortcut. It’s very easy to use, and once downloaded, it takes no work. The shortcut instantly grabs the words they could be thinking of, creates a progressive anagram of those words, and then creates an acrostic that reveals that word. It’s pretty magical on its own. It does all of the hard work for you, making you look like a pro with quite literally no work. You also have the option to just reveal the word written normally, but I think the original way of performing it is best since it ends up making sense why you have asked about the letters in their word. They teach multiple presentation ideas, such as word association and handwriting analysis, that both do a great job of hiding the anagram in a process that makes sense.
They also teach you how to reveal a word that the spectator merely thinks of without looking anything up on your phone first. This means you can have them think of something before your phone is ever in play, then have the idea that you should write something down, grab your phone, open your notes, and you’re off to the races. If you’re concerned that the word selection process is too tech-heavy, this is a great option for you. It does have a drawback because it makes use of traditional anagram categories, but the benefit here is that you could have them think of something from multiple categories or even a category that would normally be too large for a progressive anagram. They also briefly discuss an idea of using a menu from your local restaurant to do the effect, so that when you’re out with friends, you can have them think of anything on the menu and you can reveal it.
These last two ideas of using thought-of-words makes my imagination begin to soar with possibilities. It lets you basically turn any list into an incredible mind reading piece with no memorization. And the shortcut makes it very easy to add this list in at any point on the fly. This is going to be a very handy tool that I will use.
If you’re not sure if this is for you, they show you the full workings of the shortcut on their website so that you’ll know exactly what you’re getting. No surprises here.
Pathfinder is currently available for £59 at the link below but you can get 10% off if you use the code: MAGICREVIEW at checkout.
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