There are more book tests in magic than magicians are willing to buy. The number of different systems and editions is staggering. I have had my fair share: M.O.A.B., Flashback, Codex‑X, you name it.
All of them are good, but some of them depend on prepared books. I know a lot of book tests that can be done anytime, anywhere and with borrowed books. But I wanted a book test that was different in terms of the effect it had on the audience.
The following idea is not new, but I don’t care about that. It is a good idea that works well in front of an audience, and that is all that matters to me.
The key is the theme of the presentation. I talk about a „book that has not yet been written“. I use a similar presentation with my version of the Sven Pad, which I sell to the audience as „Hemingway’s Last Notebook“.
I once bought some beautiful notebooks that I intended to use as my regular master notebook, but they turned out to be too bulky for that purpose. Rather than send them back, I kept them and came up with the idea of doing a book test with them. The books look interesting; they have blank pages with gold edges and look like a bible. The paper is of very good, heavy quality so that writing with a light pencil doesn’t cause any bleeding, which is a necessity for this method.
The basic idea is to show the audience the contents of the book by turning the pages. They can see that all the pages are blank. While turning the pages, a spectator is asked to say „stop“ and the book is opened at that page. They are asked to think and remember one of the many imaginary words. Then you tell them the word they thought of!
I began to think of ways to solve this challenge. I found quite a few and will publish them some time. But for now, here is some food for thought.
The most direct approach would be to construct a sort of Magic Colouring Book by cutting off every other page, similar to a Svengali deck. On the trimmed pages, write a few words in large letters, using a light pencil – it is best to write them in capital letters so that the spectator has no difficulty reading them. Better still, write these words with a light grey, thick felt-tip marker (one that doesn’t bleed through).
These words are your power words and you need a system to fish for the one the spectator is thinking of. There are many systems for doing this. One of the simplest would be a branching anagram. In this case, you would ‚pick‘ the letters out of the spectator’s head and arrive at their chosen word. Atlas Brookings had a nice piece of software called „Progressive Anagram Generator“ and it is very helpful in constructing a nice word list.
I never liked the anagram method too much in this context. The problem is that no matter how ingenious these anagrams are constructed, the method could be seen through. Revealing individual letters is not such an impressive feat; it smacks of looking for letters in a crossword puzzle. This is how the method works.
A more subtle way to fish for information is to use words that describe objects or abstract concepts. There is a very natural division between something you can touch (a physical object) and something you cannot touch (non-physical things like emotions).
In my current list of words, I use the words derived from Heike Schenkendorf’s book test, but any list is good as long as you can fish for the words easily and in a convincing, direct way.
The presentation
Get an audience member to help you on stage. Turn the pages in one direction to show that they are blank, but don’t let the audience see the book. Then have them stop and open the book, making sure that only they can see the double page. Using the Svengali principle, she will stop at a page where the written words are visible. Ask her to think of one of the many words on this page (double reality). Go through the anagram sequence as usual, picking the letters out of her head, and divine the ‚thought‘ word. Replace the book with an unprepared one and leave it on the floor of the stage for someone to pick it up and examine it if she wishes.
