Numberitus

It’s an old effect. It’s an old trick. It’s still fundamentally sound, however, and all that it has needed was a little “detail” which would throw off the scent those who had learned the principle from cheap books and throwaways.

How many times have you, you and you performed a card trick only to have someone grab the deck and feel for “strippers” ? Even though the trick performed couldn’t possibly have been done by using that principle. This new (to print) angle is a perfect disguise for the effect wherein a column of five figure numbers is added and results in a total predestined by the performer.

It used to be done by 9’s. It still is done by 9’s but in such a subtle manner that mathematicians will worry and ordinary magicians will not be close to the answer when they try to check on the 9 principle. The magician shows a slate or pad and asks for a row of five figures. A 2nd line is asked for and written underneath. A third person gives another line and this, too, is written down. Quickly the performer writes two lines underneath, making five lines of figures in all. He draws a line beneath all — ready for adding.

BUT – before, or after, the writing of these lines, the performer scribbles down the answer to the problem. It’s evidently a stupendous feat of mental calculation. And the “wiseacres” cannot find “by rote” any 99999 or 9 angle to it all.

The secret ? Let’s make up a sample problem. In the old days, the performer would have the spectators write three rows like this :

84219
67310
40019

Then he would add two rows like this :

15780
32689

Look at the fourth row and the first row. Each figure underneath totals 9. Now look at the fifth row and the second row. Each pair of figures vertically total 9.

To prognosticate, or foretell the total, one needs only to look at the third from the top, or middle, row. Subtract 2 from the last figure and place it in front. The line, as given here, 40019, would give a result of 240017.

That was the old way — a method which has become known and which has resulted in the throwing into the discard of a standard and always effective principle. Here is the new and subtle way of combating the exposes.

Let the three rows be written exactly as called by the audience. Take, for example, the problem already given. From the third row the performer can jot down the subsequent answer. For that matter, once that one is acquainted with the problem, he might make his prophecy from any one of the three rows written and use the remaining two as key lines.

In this case, however, he uses the third line and writes for a foretelling – 240017. NOW – in writing the last two lines – he knows that “vertically speaking”, each line’s figures must total 9 with the 1st or 2nd lines above. That makes 18 — so — The first and second lines added together and subtracted from 18 tell what the lower figures should total.

That means, in any magician’s language, that these two figures can be anything what pops up so long as one under the other complements to make a figure, which, when added to the figures of the 1st and 2nd rows, totals 18.

Here are the examples of which we have been talking. On the left is the original problem done by 9’s. On the right is the same first three lines but, by using our new angle, the last two lines are revamped to an extent that the wisest magus won’t find a 9 angle and call you on it. And if you can fool a brother magician, you generally can fool the spectator.

84219 84219
67310 67310
40019 40019
15780 23598
32689 24871

Our prophecy at the end of 3 lines is 240017.

Although the total of each problem is the same, the last two rows of the right hand example do not allow of the 9 principle being used as example, whereas, to your left, the fourth and fifth rows complement the first and second – totaling 9.