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.
