Transcript

Ben Nemzer: My name is Ben Nemzer and I’m a magician. One of my specialties is close up magic, which is magic with ordinary objects, decks of cards, ropes, rubber bands, and I do that all over New York City. I’m going to teach you some of the basics of magic, that you guys can start performing right away.

This is the number prediction trick, and you’ll see here that I have numbers one through 16 and my prediction. And I need the help of an audience volunteer. Can you do me a favor? Pick any number that you like. I’m going to circle it and after we pick it, I’m going to eliminate any numbers that are either vertical or directly horizontal of it. You’ll see what I mean in a moment. Go ahead, pick which ever number you like.

Speaker 2: I pick number eight.

Ben: Number eight. So we circle the number eight and we eliminate these. Alright, go ahead, pick another number that’s not crossed off.

Speaker 2: Eleven.

Ben: We’ll circle eleven and eliminate those. We have a few numbers left, anyone you like that’s not crossed off.

Speaker 2: Two.

Ben: There we are, vertical and horizontal, and it looks like the only number left is 13. So we have 13 plus 11 is 24, plus eight plus two, is 34. Was my math good?

Speaker 2: Yes, good, that’s what I get.

Ben: Let’s see what my prediction was. There it is 34.

Speaker 2: Wow!

Ben: And this is the secret to the number prediction. First of all, the prediction number is always going to be 34, but don’t tell your audience that. That is why you can only do the trick once for anyone. Then you have the numbers one through 16, now it’s very important that you write them nice and neat in rows and columns, because if they’re out of whack, it’s not going to work.

All you have to do is follow the procedures and mathematically it’s guaranteed to work. So you pick any random number that you like. We’ll do six, cross of everything to the left and right of the number that you selected. We’ll pick another one, there’s 12, and you keep on doing this until there’s no numbers left.
We’ll do 13, and this always ends up that there’s only left, so this time we’ll use the three. And 13 plus 12, plus 6, plus 3, equals 34. All you do is follow those instructions and don’t let anyone see your prediction until it’s time. And that’s how you do the number of prediction.

Transcript

Ben: My name is Ben Nemser and I’m a magician. One of my specialties is
close-up magic which is magic with ordinary objects: decks of cards, ropes, rubber bands. And, I do that all over New York City. I’m going to teach you some of the basics of magic that you guys can start performing right away. I’m going to show you how to do the broken and restored tooth pick trick. Would you mind if we used your napkin?

Audience: Sure.

Ben: Alright. Excellent. We’re just going to unfold it just like this. Then, I’m going to place the tooth pick right on the napkin and just wrap it up. Can you do me a favor? Can you feel the tooth pick, right here?

Audience: Yeah.

Ben: Break that in half for me. It’s broken?

Audience: Definitely.

Ben: You’re sure? You felt it?

Audience: Yes. Can I break it again?

Ben: Yeah, go for it. Alright, really broken this time. Watch this.

Audience: Wow!

Ben: It’s back together. Now for the explanation. This is something really cool you can do with any tooth pick and almost any cloth napkin. So before you got here, I took your napkin and I took a tooth pick and I hid it inside the hem. You’ll see, most napkins, most cloth napkins, have a little hem that’s sewn over. And, if you squeeze it just a little bit, there’s an opening. So you take any tooth pick and you slide it all the way into the hole and nobody knows it’s there. Now if you get to dinner before your friends, you can set it up. You fold the napkin up and nobody will have any idea it’s in there from the very beginning. Now here’s
what you do. You open the napkin and you can feel where it is, because it’s the only part that’s stiff. But, nobody will be able to see that there’s a tooth pick in there. You take an ordinary tooth pick, place it slightly off center, not in the very center, but slightly off center and you wrap it up. I always take the first part and I go a little bit over, over the center. That way, when you turn it over the tooth pick won’t fall out. You fold this end, this end, now right here, this is the corner that has the tooth pick. So, I place this smack in the center, and I keep my finger on it, so I know which tooth pick is which.

Audience: Okay.

Ben: And, I turn it over and I hand that to you. You want to make sure not to hand them the other tooth pick because then, they’ll actually break it and the one in the hem will stay in tact. So, you hand them the tooth pick that’s inside the hem. Go ahead, break it. And they think they’re breaking the tooth pick that we just placed inside. Now, it’s very important to do a little magic move, here. That way, they think you’re doing the magic. But, it’s already done because when you open up, the broken tooth pick is cleverly hidden in the hem and this one is untouched. And, that’s how you break a tooth pick and put it back together.

Transcript

My name is Ben Nimser [SP], and I’m a magician. One of my specialties is close up magic, which is magic with ordinary objects. Decks of cards, ropes, rubber bands. And I do that all over New York City. I’m going to teach you some of the basics of magic that you guys can start performing right away.

… There’s a lot of things to remember and keep in mind when you’re doing magic for children. I’ve been doing magic for kids since I was a kid. I’ve been doing less and less children’s magic now, but that’s really how I got started in magic. And one very important thing to remember is that kids are smart. A lot of people think that you can do stupid magic for children. But keep it good. Especially if you’re aspiring to do something beyond children’s magic. It’s a great way to practice technique and other things that you really want to incorporate to do for adults.

But children are just a different type of people, but they’re smart people. So you want to appeal to their sense of humor. One of the greatest children’s magicians, named Silly Billy, or David Kay, has a book out there called Seriously Silly. And he talks about how it’s about the ride. It’s not necessarily the destination, but it’s the ride. It’s how you, the fun you’re having on the way to your magic trick. Whereas with adults, it’s really more important the actual trick and effect and that magical moment.

So, kids you can be sillier. You can be fun. You can be interactive. But it doesn’t have to be dumb magic either. It can be good magic. And I think you’ll be a better performer in general, whether you’re focusing on children’s magic or adult magic, if you realize that.

Transcript

My name is Ben Nemzer and I’m a magician. One of my specialties is Close-Up magic which is magic with ordinary objects. Decks of card, ropes, rubber bands. And, I do that all over New York City.

I’m going to teach you some of the basics of magic that you guys can start performing right away.

All right. I’m going to teach you how to cut the cards using only one hand. Also known as the Charlie Cut. That looks like that.

Let me walk you through it. First of all, you want to hold your hand like this. So, you can hold the deck about an inch and a half above your palm.

And, you’re holding four fingers along one side. And your thumb along the other. Now, you apply a little bit of pressure here and let the bottom half drop. Just using gravity.

Then, you take your pointer finger here. And you begin to lift up. Now, as soon as there’s enough pressure on the bottom of the deck, you can release the grip here and just push up with your pointer finger.

And let this packet fall into your hands. And then you close it shut with your thumb.

I’m going to walk you through it one more time so you can see it from a different angle.

Once again, you hold it with four fingers here and the thumb right over there. You let the bottom half drop. Then, you push it up with your pointer and let that packet fall. And you close it there.

Now, it’s going to take a lot of practice. You’ll probably end up dropping the cards several times, but it’s worth it.

Practice it, practice it and practice it. And, pretty soon you’ll be able to do it easily.

And that’s the One Handed Cut.

Transcript

My name is Ben Nemzer, and I’m a magician. One of my specialties is close-up magic, which is magic with ordinary objects, decks of cards, ropes, rubber bands, and I do that all over New York City. I’m going to teach you some of the basics of magic that you guys can start performing right away.

I’m going to show you how to do something really cool with these two pieces of string, but first I need my lovely assistant. Will you please set your hand like this, palm up please? And all I do is I place the ends in your hand. Close nice and tight. Perfect. And on the count of three. One, two, three. We have one piece of string.

So let me show you how that works. First of all, you need a special type of string. It’s called twine, and you can get it at almost any drugstore or hardware store. Now the interesting thing about twine is it’s not just one piece of string. It’s actually several different pieces of strings, all twisted together. So here is how the secret works. Before you start, you do the secret setup. That’s the part that nobody’s allowed to see. And you find the center of the string.

Now you’ll notice if you twist one way, the strings become tighter. If you twist the opposite way, they become a little bit looser. What you want to do is untwist the strings until they’re almost all in a straight line together. Then you find that center, and you use your fingernails, and you just separate them. Now there’s different types of twine. Some will be four strands. Some will be five, six, so you want to do about half and half. This one is four strands, so I’m using two on each side.

Then what you do is you twist each end back the other way so they’re tight. You’ll notice this way is the wrong way, because they become looser. This way, they become tighter. So here’s where the magic part happens. If you pinch where they intersect, it looks like an x, you cover that with your fingers. You want to create the illusion that there’s two continuous pieces of string. So you straighten this here and there. Then you ask for your spectator’s hand, and you place it inside the hand, and you have them close. That way you can’t see what’s actually happening inside the hand.

Now what you do is you pull the two pieces of string in the opposite direction, and the string restores itself. And if you open your hand, now we can get the inside look of what’s actually happening when her hand is closed. And they go right back together, and there’s no evidence left. And that’s how you turn two pieces of string into one.

Transcript

My name is Ben Nemzer and I’m a magician. One of my specialties is close up magic which is magic with ordinary object decks of card, ropes, rubberbands and I do that all over New York City. I’m going to teach you some of the basics of magic that you guys can start performing right away.

This is how you make a coin disappear. Now, there’s a lot of different ways to make a coin disappear and I’m going to show you one of the easiest. That’s something that we magicians call a false transfer. It’s when you pretend to put a coin from one hand to the other. Here is the easiest way to do that.

All you do is you hold the coin in your hand and as you turn your hand over to place into your other hand you let your thumb catch it and you pinch it tight. Like that and you close your hand pretending that you’re holding the coin but the entire time the coin stays in the other hand.

Now, there’s a few things to remember when you do this. First of all, when you move your hand like this, don’t grab your fingers. You want it to look as natural as possible. Remember it’s not natural to go like this. So practice gently touching your hand and slowly closing your fingers. Even if there is a moment where the audience can actually see your hand empty their mind will fill in the blank and they probably won’t see the secret move. You just tap your hand and close it.

Another important key thing to remember is that you want to follow the coin with your eye. And when the coin is supposedly going to other hand you want to follow where the coin should be. Because if you do the move perfectly and look at the wrong place, it doesn’t look so good. For example, if I go like this, everybody is going to be looking at this hand instead of this hand. So you want your eyes to follow the coin.

Another great way to practice is to actually take the coin and put it into your other hand. Take the coin and place it into the other hand. And you shouldn’t be able to tell the difference between pretending to take the coin and actually taking the coin and that’s how you know you have done it right.

And that’s how you make a coin disappear.

Transcript

My name is Ben Nemzer and I’m a magician. One of my specialties is close up magic which is magic with ordinary objects. Decks of cards, ropes, rubber bands, and I do that all over New York City. I’m going to teach you some of the basics of magic that you guys can start performing right away.

This is how you predict a card before somebody even picks it. Let me show you. Would you help me out? We have a pack of cards here. I’d like you to cut them anywhere you like. Perfect. And I’ll just mark the spot where you cut.

Now, before you even came here I made a prediction on this piece of paper knowing that you were going to cut the cards anywhere that you liked. Let’s have a look at the card she cut to. Would you show the camera. And I’ll show you my prediction. How’d I do? There it is.

Very accurate.

This is what you do. Before the trick even starts you place the card that you’re going to force. Force means you’re going to make somebody pick a specific card, and in this case I used the three of clubs. And I put it on top of the deck. Then I write out my prediction which is the three of clubs – the same card that’s going to start on the top of the deck. And I leave it right there.

Now I’m going to teach you something called the criss-cross force, and this is how it works. I have them cut the cards. Usually they cut about half. Then I take the other half and put it on top perpendicular or sideways and I say I’m going to mark the spot where you cut.

Then you need to draw your focus away from the deck, because what you’re doing is getting them to forget which is the card that started on top and which is the card they cut to. In reality this is the card they cut to. And this is the three of clubs which was on top.

So, I talk about the prediction. And I say before this trick even started I made a prediction, let’s have a look at the card that you cut to. I lift this up. I remove the card that started on top, and I have them look at it.

By this point they don’t realize that it’s not actually the card that they cut to.

Transcript

My name is Ben Nemzer and I’m a magician. One of my specialties is close-up magic which is magic with ordinary objects, decks of cards, ropes, rubber bands and I do that all over New York City. I’m going to teach you some of the basics of magic that you guys can start performing right away.

I’m going to show you how to eat a knife. [Swallowing sound] Delicious. Here’s the secret. Let me show you. This is really cool because what you’re actually doing is dropping the knife in your lap. Now it’s a really simple concept but it’s actually very difficult to do well so I’m going to give you some pointers.

For starters it’s nice to have the knife slightly away from you. That way you have a reason to reach forward for it. And when you reach forward you want to use two hands and completely cover the knife. That way, when you’re not holding the knife, you hands should look exactly the same.

Now what you do is you reach for it and you bring the knife in a gesture moving it towards you and then up. But what happens is as soon as you reach the edge of the table, you drop the knife in your lap. Now there’s two things that sell this effect. Number one is you don’t ever actually bring your hands below the table. A very common mistake when learning this trick is people will take their hands and go like this. That immediately telegraphs that you’re doing something fishy. So you want to keep one fluid smooth movement, almost in a crescent shape.

The other great thing is because your hands are only near the edge of the table for a moment and you make it disappear or you swallow it over the table, it almost looks like the knife has been above the table the entire time. So in motion you go to reach for it and it drops at the moment when it’s over here. Now you can eat it or you can just make it disappear, and the movement of bringing it over here you can, it’s already gone, [swallowing sound] pretend to eat a knife. So that’s how you make a knife or a piece of silverware disappear in your lap.

Transcript

My name is Ben Nemzer, and I’m a magician. One of my specialties is close-up magic, which is magic with ordinary objects. Decks of cards, ropes, rubber bands, and I do that all over New York City. I’m going to teach you some of the basics of magic that you guys can start performing right away.

This is the upside down card trick, but first I need some help. Would you mind helping me? And go ahead and pick out any card that you like. And you can show it to the audience, I won’t look. And I’ll take that back, and I’ll place it right in the middle, and I’m going to find your card behind my back. Got it. And now I just put it right back in the deck. I know that’s not very impressive but to prove that I found the card, I actually had one card put back the wrong way. Do you remember what your card was?

Jack of Diamonds.

Sure was. Now here’s the secret to the upside-down card trick. Once again, there’s some secret set-up, that means it’s something you do before the trick even starts, when nobody’s looking. And all you do is, you take one card from the deck and you turn it the wrong way. Then you have somebody pick any card that you like and as you spread the cards out you want to make sure you don’t spread the cards so far that they see the one upside-down card. So they pick out a card, and this time we’ll use the Jack of Diamonds once again. Now, as they show the card to the audience or the camera, this is where you do the secret move. And it’s something that’s very simple. All you do is you turn the entire deck over. Now obviously you don’t do it like this. You do it nonchalantly when no one’s looking. You take it from one hand and put it into the other. What I did is, I think I literally just turned it over. And nobody’s looking there because everybody’s looking at the card. If you think that people are paying too much attention to you, you can say, “You know what? Show the card to everybody one more time.” Or, “Really get a good look at it.” You can even drop the cards down to your side and when you pick them back up have them face the other way and nobody will notice that you turned them over. Now if you look at the deck after you do the secret move, all the cards are face up except for the top card. Then I take the card and I place it right in the center of the deck. The reason that I don’t ask the audience member to put the card back is because they might accidentally shove some cards out, which will destroy the illusion, or they might have trouble getting it in because you’re squeezing the deck too tight because you don’t want them to see how it works. So take the cards, hold them not too tight but not too loosely either, and you slip it right into the center.Now when the cards go behind your back, all you need to do is take the card which is on top and turn it back over, and the evidence is gone and all you have is an entirely face-up deck, and one face-down card, which has to be theirs. And that’s how you do the upside-down card trick.

Transcript

My name is Ben Nemzer and I’m a magician. One of my specialties is close up magic, which is magic with ordinary objects, decks of cards, ropes, rubber bands, and I do that all over New York City. I’m going to teach you some of the basics of magic that you guys can start performing right away. This is the talking queen trick, and of course I need a volunteer. Will you help me out?

Sure

Go ahead and pull out any card that you like, it doesn’t matter. Alright, go ahead and show the camera and will you place your card right there? Excellent, then you can cut the cards if you’d like. That’s fine. Would you like to cut them again? It’s up to you.

Yes, I would.

Alright, Ms. Skeptic. Now, I don’t know if you know this, but the cards in the deck that are the most gossipy are the queens. In fact they talk to each other all the time.

I’m not surprised.

They know everything that’s happening in the house of cards. In fact, all we have to do to find out which card you picked it ask any one of them. Let’s see, which one would you like to use?

I’d like to ask the queen of hearts.

Let’s see where she is. There she is. Hold on just a sec. Hello? Really? Yeah, no her name is Darlene. Yes, no, no, she picked a card. No, no, no, no. Really? Huh, you wouldn’t believe what the queen of spades said behind the other one’s, sorry. Tell me what the queen said. Do you see the card? Yeah, oh, she said you picked a red card.

That’s right.

Oh, she said that it was a heart.

Yes

Yea, Yea? What? The four, the four of hearts?

Gosh, she’s good.

That’s it, the four of hearts. So here is the secret to this silly trick. First you have somebody pick any card they like and in this case we had Darlene pick the four of hearts. While she’s looking at the four of hearts and while she is showing everybody else, I do something pretty sneaky, and I have a look at the bottom card. So, right now I’m looking very nonchalantly, very subtly at the bottom card. In this case, we have the four of spades on the bottom.

Now it could be any card, you just have to look at which card happens to be on the bottom. Magicians call this the key card principle. Now, I place down the top half of the deck, and she places the selected card on the top. Then, I put the remainder of the deck on top of the selected card. Now you’ll notice, in this pile goes on top of her card, the four of spades, the card that I secretly looked at is now right on top of her card. Now, in this case I can have my spectator cut the cards as many times as he or she wants, as long as they aren’t actually shuffled, and we should be fine.

Then, I say we’re going to find one of the cards, and under the guise of spreading out the deck, and looking for one of the queens I’m actually, secretly looking for the four of spades, and as I scan the deck, I see the four of spades right here. But the four of spades isn’t the card she picked, it’s always the one right next to it, closest to the bottom card, not the one next to it closest to the top card, that would be the wrong card. A great way to remember it, is it’s the one closest to the card that you can see the entirety of. This one is covered by another card, so you know this is the bottom of the deck.

This is the top of the deck. So as I look through, I quickly see the four of spades, and now I know immediately her card is the four of hearts, and then I keep looking and I ask which queen would you like to look for. Then, we find any queen that she says, and you pretend to talk. You have to have fun, because you know what, this part has nothing to do with how the trick actually works, but the presentation of a card trick is what makes it fun and entertaining so really make sure to play with this part. And then you give away the card slowly. You say it was a red card. You say it was a heart. The four of hearts, then you’ve amazed your audience. And that’s how you do the talking queen trick.

Transcript

My name is Ben Nemzer, and I’m a magician. One of my specialties is close-up magic, which is magic with ordinary objects. Decks of cards, ropes, rubber bands, and I do that all over New York City. I’m going to teach you some of the basics of magic, that you guys can start performing right away.

This is the coin-through-the-elbow trick, have a look. If you rub it on your elbow, it should pass, whoops, it should pass right through the elbow, into your arm. It takes one, two, three seconds to travel through your elbow, down the arm, and into your hand.

Now, here’s the secret. You take the coin and you rub it on your elbow, and then you, “accidentally” drop the coin onto the table. When you pick the coin up, you do a move called the false transfer. That’s when you pretend to take the coin from one hand, and put it into the other. It actually stays in the first hand. The best way to learn how to do that move, is to watch the HowCast video on “Making a Coin Disappear.”

After you do the secret move, everybody thinks the coin is in here, but the coin has stayed in the hand, where you were rubbing your elbow. You rub the elbow, you rub the elbow, you rub the elbow. And then you pretend it went right through. It didn’t actually, it’s been in your hand the whole time. You say it’s traveling through, and then you drop it, so it makes a nice little sound on the table.

Remember, the first time when you accidentally drop the coin, make sure you pick it up with the elbow hand, the hand that’s attached to the elbow that you were rubbing. Otherwise, if you pick it up with the wrong hand, it just won’t work.

And that’s how you make a coin go through the elbow.

Transcript

My name is Ben Nemzer and I am a magician. One of my specialties is close-up magic. Which is magic with ordinary objects. Decks of cards, ropes, rubber bands, and I do that all over New York City. I’m going to teach you some of the basics of magic that you guys can start performing right away.

This is the Sugar Packet Prediction Trick. Now Darlene, we have three different sugar packets here; the pink Sweet ‘N Low, the yellow Splenda, and the regular white sugar. Now I made a prediction, before you even got here, and I put one sugar packet under my plate. Let’s see what happens. I want you to hand me whichever one you like. Of the two that are left pick one up. You picked the Splenda packet. That’s interesting, look at my prediction.

Amazing.

So I am going to show you how this works. This is a great way to fool your friends and it works every single time. But it is one of those tricks that you can’t do twice in a row and you are about to see why. So we are going to try a few different possibilities and you’re going to see why it’s always the Splenda packet, or whichever packet that you choose. So I have a prediction underneath my plate about one of these packets. Hand me whichever one you like. The Splenda packet, amazing. Look at my prediction.

Incredible.

See now you are catching on. Let’s do it one more time. Let’s see what happens if you hand me a different one.

Third times a charm.

Alright so I have a prediction. Hand me whichever one you like. Excellent, and of the two that are left pick one up. You picked the Splenda packet. Now had you actually picked this one up. Go ahead. I say, ‘So we are left with the Splenda packet.’ See what it is, is some clever scripting. It’s the way you phrase your sentences to ensure that she thinks she had free choice to pick the Splenda packet. Let me walk you through the script. So, since the prediction is the Splenda I say, ‘Hand me whichever one you want.’ If she hands me the Splenda packet, go ahead. ‘Excellent, you picked the Splenda packet. Look at my prediction.’ They match, the trick is over, and that is the best possible outcome. Now if she hands me something else. I say, ‘Of the two that are left pick one up.’ Notice I don’t say pick one because if I say pick one and she picks this one and she picks this one I can’t say, ‘You picked the Splenda packet.’ Because I told her to pick one, so I only say, ‘Pick one up.’ Which is a very subtle difference from pick one. So after you hand me this I say, ‘Pick one up.’ Now if she picks that one I say, ‘Good we are left with a Splenda packet.’ And that looks fair. Why does it look fair? I took one she took one we are left with a Splenda packet. Now if she does it the other way. Go ahead put that down and you hand me this one and then I say, ‘Pick one up’ and she picks the Splenda packet . Now I rephrase my instructions. Because a moment ago I said, ‘Pick one up.’, but now I say, ‘You picked the Splenda packet.’ Even though I didn’t say pick I said pick one up she thinks that she actually did pick the Splenda packet. That’s how you make it work all three times. So I’m going to go over it once more. If she immediately, first you say, ‘Hand me one.’ If she immediately hands me the correct one the trick is over. If she doesn’t I say, ‘Pick one up.’ If she picks this one up I say, ‘You picked the Splenda packet, look at my prediction.’ If she doesn’t I say, ‘Look we are left with a Splenda packet.’ And another thing to remember is you want to make sure you tell your audience where the prediction is before the trick starts. Otherwise you may think I have one here, and another one under here, and another one under here. So you want to be very clear where the prediction is ahead of time.

Transcript

My name is Ben Nemzer and I’m a magician. One of my specialties is Close-Up magic which is magic with ordinary objects. Decks of card, ropes, rubber bands. And, I do that all over New York City.

I’m going to teach you some of the basics of magic that you guys can start performing right away.

This is the Spelling Card Trick. And, it uses only 13 cards. We’ll give them a little mix up. And all I do is I spell the card and it magically appears on top. Have a look.

Ace. A C E. Two, T W O. Three, T H R E E. Four, F O U R. Five, F I V E. Six, S I X. Seven, S E V E N. Eight, E I G H T. Nine, N I N E. Ten, T E N. Jack, J A C K. Queen, Q U E E N. And my favorite part, King, K I N G.

And, here’s the secret. It’s actually really fun. First of all you have to take out 13 cards. Ace through king. So, that’s ace, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, jack, queen, king.

This trick is another one of those tricks that’s called a Self-Working trick. So, as long as you set it up right, the entire trick will work all by itself.

Now, there’s a very specific setup to make sure you do the trick correctly. And, I’m going to teach you what it is.

It uses an mnemonic device. It’s a little story that you tell yourself. And, that’s how you remember how to set up the cards.

So, I’m going to tell it to you. And, you’re going to want to make sure to either save this video or write it down. That way you can be sure to set it up right, every time.

So, in the year 387 there was a Queen who was 64 years old. She had two sons named Jack and Kevin in the year 1095. Now, let’s dissect that story and we’ll see what it means.

All I do is I place a card down for each thing that I say. So in the year three, 80, seven. And you’ll notice, as I say the card, I place it down on the table face up. That gets me ready to go.

In the year 387 there was a Queen who was 64 years old. She had two sons. Jack and Kevin in the year ten, 90, five. Now you’re good to go.

However, if you want to add the extra bonus of pretending to mix the cards, there’s a very cool way you can do that. You hold the cards in your hand and peel off one card at a time. And, if you do this, now the cards are exactly backwards of the way they need to be.

And you can start the trick like this and you say you’re going to mix up the cards and put them right back the way they need to be. And, it looks like you’re shuffling them but you’re really very carefully taking one card at a time and placing it on the other.

Now, you’ll see from the top. Three, 80, seven. There was a Queen who was 64 years old. She had two sons named Jack and Kevin in the year ten, 90, five.

And all you do is you take one card from the top and move it to the bottom for each card that we spell. Now, the first one is ace. A lot of people will say one but you really spell ace. A C E. One also works, but it’s not the card you’re about to show them.

Then you continue to spell. You just take one off the top, put on the bottom. T W O. And you lift the top card.

So, each time the process is exactly the same. Every letter you say, you take one card from the top. Put it to the bottom and turnover the card that is then on the top.

For three. T H R E E. And you continue to do it until it will work.

And that’s how you do the Spelling Card Trick. And, the mystery question is, “How old was the Queen when she had her two sons?” If you know the answer, leave it in the comments.

Transcript

My name is Ben Nemzer and I’m a magician. One of my specialties is close-up magic, which is magic with ordinary objects, decks of cards, ropes, rubber bands and I do that all over New York City. I’m gonna teach you some of the basics of magic, that you guys can start performing right away.

This is the rubber pencil illusion. The secret to the rubber pencil illusion, is that it’s actually just an illusion. It’s all the way you move the pencil, which tricks your eye into thinking that it’s rubber.

Now, there’s two movements. One is an up and down movement. One is a side to side movement. Now, if you do just side to side or just up and down, it’s not very convincing. But if you hold it very loosely in your fingers, almost like it’s going to fall out, and you try to combine the two movements, it tricks your eye into thinking that it’s rubber.

And that’s how you do the rubber pencil illusion.

Transcript

A1:My name is Ben Nemzer and I am a magician. One of my specialties is close up magic which is magic with ordinary object this is card, ropes, rubber bands and I do that all over New York city. I am going to teach you some of the basics of magic so you guys can start performing right away.

This is the famous rising card trick and I need an audience helper. Would you help me out? You are going to pick whichever card that you like and you can show everybody. Excellent and I will take that back and we are going to put all the cards inside the box. And would you do me a favor, take out your hand and just go like that a little bit.

A2: Wow. Oh I am doing magic.

A1: You see one card comes right out of the middle. How did we do? Is that your card?

A2: Yes. It is.

A1: There it is. Thank you very much. Now here is the secret to the rising card trick. There is a secret setup before the trick starts, you take a pair of scissors, you poke a hole and you cut a chunk out of the back of the card box. Now when you do this trick don’t let anybody see the back of the box. You have somebody pick whichever card they like and it doesn’t matter and when you take it back you just place it on top, don’t draw too much intention to it, doesn’t really matter that you know where it is. Now just, I am going to put the cards back in the box. Now nobody knows there is a hole which is why when they go like this your thumb gently pushes the card up. Now if you don’t use the full deck the trick won’t work because if there is only a few cards in the box, you will push it up and it will fall right back down. So you want to make sure its a full deck in there and you want to push it nice and gently because if you use too much force you might get several cards like that. So it is just a slight touch with the thumb and you gently push the card up. And if you do it at the same time as your member’s hand gesture, it can look like magic and that’s how you make a card rise out of the deck.

Transcript

A1: My name is Ben Nemzer and I am a magician. One of my specialties is close up magic which is magic with ordinary objects that is cards, ropes, rubber band and I do that all over New York city. I am going to teach you some of the basic of magic that you guys can start performing right away.

This is the mind reading crayon trick. We have 16 different crayons and I need the help of an audience volunteer and here is what I like you do. I am going to turn my back, when I do take any crayon you like and put it inside my hand and don’t let me see it. Make sure you close the box as well. Go ahead.

All right. Now I am going to read your mind and figure out what color you are thinking of from your head to my head. You must be thinking of pink.

A2: Amazing.

A1: And there it is pink. Now here is the secret to the mind reading crayon trick. First you have to have some crayons. Then you have somebody hand you whichever crayon they like.

A2: Same color?

A1: It doesn’t matter. This time we will use.

A2: Go red.

A1: Red. Now when nobody is looking and while you are speaking so there is no dead time, you scrap the crayon with your thumbnail and you can see just like that you get just a little bit of crayon under the nail. Now when I go like this and I say, I am going to read your mind, your thoughts to my thoughts. When I say my thoughts I go like this and I put my thumb directly in front of my eyes and now I can see exactly which color is underneath my thumbnail and that’s how I know. Now there is a couple of things to remember. For starters make sure that you turn all the way around before you start scrapping the nail or that may give away the secret. Secondly, you don’t want to be too obvious that you are looking at your thumb. So you don’t want to bring your thumb in front of your face and look at it like this. It sounds silly but it is a common mistake. And remember nobody thinks that is under your thumbnail. So you can wave it as much as you want and nobody is going to see it. And that way whenever you like then you can casually look underneath your thumbnail and tell them the color you are thinking of. And that’s how you do the mind reading crayon trick.

Transcript

My name is Ben Nemzer and I’m a magician. One of my specialties is close-up magic which is magic with ordinary objects. Decks of cards, ropes, rubber bands and I do that all over the New York City. I’m going to teach you some of the basics of magic that you guys can start performing right away.

This the Linking Paper Clips trick which was published in the Dai Vernon book of magic which is now out of print. But you start with two paper clips which aren’t touching each other and a rubber band in the center of a dollar bill and all you do is pull and all three are linked together.

Now for the explanation. You need to have a paper clip, a rubber band, another paper clip and a dollar bill. You start off by folding the dollar bill in half and then placing the rubber band around the dollar bill right in the center. Then you fold it like the letter Z which means that one-third goes in, one-third stays the same and the other third goes this way.

Now, there’s a very special way to put the paper clips on and here’s how you remember it. If you look at the paper clip you’ll see that there’s an open part on the bottom. If you are looking at the inside and then the loop. The loop is going to go inside the bill attaching the loose part of the bill to the inside center where the angle is and that goes right here. So you can see that it connects those two pieces. Now, we still have this loose piece here and another loop centered right here which also need to be connected.

So you turn the bill over and once again, with the same thing you did last time, you look for the loop of the inside of the paper clip. And the inside loop of paper clip goes to the inside loop of the dollar attaching the loose piece. So you can see, you can even bend it just a tad if it’s difficult to get it in and that loop goes right in there.

And you’ll notice that the rubber band which we put on earlier is in the center between the two paper clips and you point out that none of them are touching each other. That this paper clip isn’t touching the rubber band which isn’t touching the other paper clip. And all you have to do is find each end of the dollar bill where they used to be loose flaps and now they’re attached and you pull slowly. And all three will link together.

And that’s the Linking Paper Clip trick.

Transcript

My name is Ben Nemzer and I’m a magician. One of my specialties is Close-Up magic which is magic with ordinary objects. Decks of cards, ropes, rubber bands. And I do that all over New York City.

I’m going to teach you some of the basics of magic that you guys can start performing right away.

This is the King, Queen, Jacks and Aces trick. Let me show you how it goes. It comes with a neat little story. Once upon a time there were four Kings. They were traveling around and it started to rain. Thunder and lightning.

So, they all checked in to the nearest hotel. Now, of course, their wives were out shopping. Wanted to come join. They were getting all wet. So they came and they joined the Kings in the hotel.

Now, these Queens, while they were out, they met four men. And, without asking their husbands they invited them to come into the dry hotel. All of them happened to be named Jack, as well.

Now, these Jacks, without asking the Queens, who didn’t even bother asking the Kings, invited in four Aces.

Now, because there was thunder and lightning, in the hotel room all the lights went out. Because there was a blackout. And nobody could see anything.

Would you help me out and cut the cards anywhere you like? Perfect. And do that again for me? And, one last time, anywhere you like. Perfect. Thank you very much.

Then, when the lights went back on, when everybody was scrambling around, it just so happened that Queens ended up with the Queens. The Jacks ended up with the Jacks. The Aces ended up with the Aces. And the Kings ended up with the Kings.

Now, let me show you how this trick works. This is actually a lot of fun because it’s what we call a self-working card trick. You heard me right. The trick works all by itself. And, I’ll show you how it works.

You start off by making four piles. The Kings. The Queens. The Jacks and the Aces. And you pull that out of any ordinary deck of 52 playing cards. And you arrange them, so you put down all the Kings. The Queens go on top. The Jacks go on top of that and the Aces go on top of that.

All the cards face up. And then, you turn them over. So, now we have Kings, Queens, Jacks and Aces.

Now, the cool thing is, because the trick works all by itself, all you have to do is deal them out rows. And, you can make up any story. This is the story I originally heard it with.

But, it’s great. If you’re doing this trick at a school they can come into four classrooms. If you’re doing it for a company or corporation, you can do it, you can do it for your friends. You can tailor the story to anything that you’d like.

So here’s what you do. You deal out the four Kings in a row. When you take out the Queens for the next part of the story, you want to put them on top of the Kings, about half way down. This is going to make it easier to pick up the cards later on, so that they don’t get mixed up.

Then the Jacks go a little further down. And the Aces also half way on top of the Jacks.

So, remember, you’re dealing the cards in a row. Not down in columns but straight in rows. Then you take this entire pile and put it on top of this Ace, which is actually keeping all the cards in order.

And if you do this kind of haphazardly, it almost looks like you’re not paying attention and they’re being mixed up. You don’t really need to convince people but you also don’t want to make it look too meticulous.

Then, the cards can be cut as many times as you like. If the cards are shuffled, it ruins the entire trick. But, as long as the cards are cut, that means you take some from the top and move them to the bottom. Maybe it’s one card. Maybe it’s all but a couple cards.

But, they can be cut as many times as you like. If I have three people watching, I’ll let each person take a turn. If I have four people watching, I’ll let all four take a turn. Once there’s too many people, maybe only let the cards get cut three times.

Then, you deal out the cards in a row again. Not straight down in columns, but in rows. And you never know what the first card is going to be. But you do know, if you deal them out in rows they’ll all line up.

And I always say, “The Jacks ended up with the Jacks. The Aces ended up with the Aces. The Kings with the Kings.” And you say it almost like it’s the same every time.

And, that’s the secret to the Kings, Queens, Jacks, Aces trick. It just works all by itself.

Transcript

My name is Ben Nemzer and I’m a magician. One of my specialties is Close-Up magic, which is magic with ordinary objects. Decks of cards, ropes, rubber bands. And, I do that all over New York City.

I’m going to teach you some of the basics of magic that you guys can start performing right away.

I’m going to show you how to make a rubber band jump from these two fingers over to these two fingers. One, two, three. Just like that.

Now, here’s the secret. For starters, most rubber bands are a little too large, so you need to wrap them around your fingers just once. Almost like a pony tail.

Now, when you say you’re going to make the rubber band jump from one side to the other, what you actually do is you pull this down and put all your fingers inside this loop. Except for the thumb.

And the rubber band goes across the fingers. Make sure all of them are in and they’re in enough. Because, if any of them are slipping out the trick won’t work.

And, what you want to do is open all of your fingers at the same time. And, what that does is it makes it jump from one side to the other.

Now, there’s a few things to remember. For starters, you want to make sure that people aren’t looking at the back. Because that will ruin it.

Secondly, if any of the fingers slip out when you open your fingers, you’ll just get tangled up.

And thirdly, you want to make sure that you open all of your fingers at the same time. Just like this.

In fact you might even want to practice that once or twice before you start the trick.

So remember. You wrap it around once. Pull it down. Get all the fingers inside the loop. And then you open all your fingers at time.

And, that’s how you make a rubber band just from these two fingers to those two.

Transcript

My name is Ben Nemzer and I’m a magician. One of my specialties is Close-Up magic which is magic with ordinary objects. Decks of card, ropes, rubber bands. And, I do that all over New York City.

I’m going to teach you some of the basics of magic that you guys can start performing right away.

This is the Four Ace Card Trick. You start off with four aces and you place them in four different spots. Then you take three cards and you place them on top of each ace.

Then this entire pile goes onto this pile, which goes onto this pile, which goes onto this pile.

Now, if we examine the order of the cards you’ll see that it’s one, two, three random cards. And, then an ace. One, two, three, ace. Once, two, three, ace. One, two, three and an ace.

So, have a look. One, two, three, ace. Which card is that? Now, I haven’t done anything yet. It’s an ace. One, two, three, ace. One, two, three, ace. One, two, three and ace.

We’ll get rid of these piles because we don’t need them. And, we’re just going to focus on the ace pile and this pile of random cards. Have a look. Now, these cards, rather random cards. And those are the aces.

Now for the explanation. Here’s how it works. This trick is great because there’s no setup you need to do before the trick starts. You can literally take out the four aces and begin.

So, you take out the four aces and then, you put three cards on top of each pile. You can even have your assistant or your spectator place three cards on top of each pile.

Then, just like you see, you take this entire pile. Goes on top of that entire pile. Which goes on top of this entire pile. Which goes on top of this entire pile.

Now, I haven’t done anything yet. But, this part is very important. You show the order of the cards. Which should be one, two, three random cards and then an ace. Then you get into this rhythm and people are going to remember it.

One, two, three, ace. One, two, three, ace. One, two, three, ace. Then you place the cards on the table in the same way you just counted them. One, two, three, ace.

Now, here’s the secret move. Watch carefully. You take the top card and you use it almost as a pointer. And you say, “Which card is this?” And when you bring this card back to the deck, instead of placing it on top where you took it from, you bring it back onto the bottom.

And, it’s not a tricky move. It’s not a move that you need to worry about people seeing. It’s all about your attitude. And, as long as you’re casual, nobody’s going to be noticing that you’re saying, “Which card is this?” And putting the card back on the bottom.

Because all the attention is then drawn to that card. Which is, actually in fact, an ace. Now, because you put this random card onto the bottom, it displaces all the cards just by one.

So, right now, we still have the ace here and three random cards. Then you continue the pattern. One, two, three.

Now, because of the move we did earlier, this is actually an ace. But they don’t know it. Ace. Which is not actually an ace, but they think it is.

One, two, three, ace. One, two, three, ace. And then, you say you’re going to get rid of these two piles because you don’t need them. Which is also the truth.

So now, we’re left with these two piles. Now, the audience thinks that we have an entire pile of aces here. An entire pile of random cards. But, because what we did earlier, these are actually three random cards and this ones the ace.

And, over here, we have one random card and the three aces. You take a card from the ace pile and a card from the random card pile, and you switch them.

And, this is where the magic moment happens. All the dirty work is done. So, you get to have some fun. You pretend like you’re moving the cards. You do something magical, which actually does nothing.

And, then you show that these have turned into three random cards. And these have turned into four aces.

And that’s how you do the Four Ace Trick.

Transcript

My name is Ben Nemzer and I’m a magician. One of my specialties is close up magic, which is magic with ordinary objects, decks of cards, ropes, rubber bands and I do that all over New York City. I’m going to teach you some of the basics of magic that you guys can start performing right away.

This is how you make a pencil float. You just squeeze your wrist, and if you squeeze it tight enough, you should be able to open your hand and it’ll float. Now here’s the secret, you’re using your pointer finger when nobody’s looking. Here’s the backstage view, you say you’re going to hold the pencil here and if you squeeze your wrist tightly enough it should float, but what you actually do is, when you grab your wrist, you put your pointer finger out and that way when you open your hand it looks like it’s just floating, but only from this side.

For an extra bonus illusion you can move your finger back and forth just a little bit, that way when it’s here you see it floating and then you let go and catch it. And that’s how you make a pencil float.

Transcript

My name is Ben Nemzer and I’m a magician. One of my specialties is close-up magic, which is magic with ordinary objects, decks of cards, ropes, rubber bands. And I do that all over New York City.

I’m going to teach you some of the basics of magic that you guys can start performing right away. This is how you make a cup float. And this is the secret. Before this trick starts, you need to have a Styrofoam cup.

And what you do is you poke a little hole in the back with your finger. Then you hold it with two hands, and when nobody’s looking, you sneak your thumb into that little hole. That way if you were to let go of all your hands and fingers, it should stay right on your thumb. But that’s not the whole illusion.

You have to hold it with both hands and slowly remove your fingers. Then you can push your thumb forward just for a moment and it will create the illusion that the cup is floating. Remember this trick won’t look good from the side or the back, only straight on. And that’s how you make a cup float.

Transcript

My name is Ben Nemzer and I’m a magician. One of my specialties is close-up magic, which is magic with ordinary objects, decks of cards, ropes, rubber bands. And I do that all over New York City. I’m going to teach you some of the basics of magic that you guys can start performing right away.

Watch this. This is the floating bread roll trick. And now for the explanation. This is a great way to make something float right at the dinner table and it’s unlike any other way to make anything float. And I think you’ll find it really cool. You take a bread roll and you stick it to a fork. And you hold the fork right here and nobody can see that you’re holding a fork because it’s hidden behind the handkerchief. Now all you do is you move the fork forward and backwards. And you can even move it just a little bit up but make sure not to expose the fork from the front view. And it really looks like the bread roll is floating.

Transcript

My name is Ben Nemzer and I’m a magician. One of my specialties is close up magic which is magic with ordinary objects, decks of cards, ropes, rubber bands and I do that all over New York City. I’m going to teach you some of the basics of magic that you guys can start performing right away. How to do the color changing sugar packet trick: I’m going to show you how to take a sugar packet and change the color. So we’ll use one of these yellow ones and put it one hand and (puffs into closed hand) and now its pink (removes pink packet from hand). Here’s the secret. You use two different sugar packets. Now this trick was recently published in Magic for Dummies, which is a great book, and it teaches you how to do it there but I’m going to show you right now. What you do is you crumple up a sugar packet and you hold it in your fist or in your fingers right here or in the palm of your hand, whichever is easier. And then you take another sugar packet and if you’re holding like this nobody should be able to tell you’re also hiding something else in there. You crumple it up nice and tight and you drop it on the table. Now when you go to pick it up, you push it into your lap and switch it for the other one. Now you’re actually starting with two but you can’t see one of them. Then you drop the other one off the table and they don’t realize that this is the different one. You place it in the other hand, do a magic move, and now it’s a different color. And that’s how you change a sugar packet into a different color.