Effect: David Blaine did this watch trick on his second national TV special. A watch is borrowed, the magician does not carry anything! After showing the wrist watch to some spectators nearby who note the current time, you place the wrist watch face down in the spectator’s hand. The spectator then makes a fist with the hand holding the watch, hiding it from view.. The magician does not touch the watch again. The magician then asks the spectator to think of and call out a number and then to concentrate on that number and the watch. He opens his hand, turns over the watch and sees that the hands of the watch have moved that many minutes ! This watch trick does not require any gimmicks.

Props: Someone wearing an analogue watch ( a watch with an long stem that’s easy to manipulate quickly. i.e.: SEIKO watches )

Preparation: You need to wear a watch of your own, set at the wrong time.

Method: Ask your victim for his watch with an excuse like, “I think my time is wrong, may I see yours for a second?”

Borrow the watch for a minute and examine it, look at it, state what time it has, and say, “Is this the right time, I need to know.”

Now glance at the time on YOUR watch, and draw attention to it by setting its time. While they are looking at you setting the time on your watch, your other hand is moving the stem on their watch so that the time on THEIR watch is moved forward 25 minutes. Now have them sandwich their watch between their hands and ask them to pick a number from 10 through to 30. Most people will pick 25. If they pick 20,  they won’t notice it’s off by five minutes when you reveal that the hands of their watch have moved forward in time…. If they pick something below that number, tell them to make it harder for you, and pick a higher number. It gets them everytime… just remember to come up with some great patter when doing this trick.

I recommend trying to do this on nervous or shy people as they tend to be more easy to distract and are less suspicious. The key to this watch trick is misdirection, but it’s very easy to get caught.

Now certainly there are some card tricks and small scale magic tricks that are fun to pull out at the boring party. These by all means deserve to be shared. Teaching or learning a card trick can be equally enjoyable as being awed by one or awing your audience.

Bur to tell all your magic secrets…it takes the fascination out of the show. Suddenly it’s no longer magic, it is simply a game.

Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, the first modern magician.

The word Magic is derived from the Magi of ancient Iran. Performances we would recognize as conjuring have probably been practiced throughout history. The same ingenuity behind ancient deceptions such as the Trojan horse would have been used for entertainment, or at least for cheating in gambling games, since time immemorial. However, the respectable profession of the illusionist gained strength during the eighteenth century, and has enjoyed several popular vogues. Successful magicians have become some of the most famous celebrities in popular entertainment.

From 1756 to 1781, Jacob Philadelphia performed feats of magic, sometimes under the guise of scientific exhibitions, throughout Europe and in Russia. Modern entertainment magic owes much of its origins to Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin (1805-1871), originally a clockmaker, who opened a magic theatre in Paris in the 1840s. His speciality was the construction of mechanical automata which appeared to move and act as if they were alive. The British performer J N Maskelyne and his partner Cooke established their own theatre, the Egyptian Hall in London’s Piccadilly, in 1873. They presented stage magic, exploiting the potential of the stage for hidden mechanisms and assistants, and the control it offers over the audience’s point of view. The greatest celebrity magician of the nineteenth century (or possibly of all time), Harry Houdini (real name Ehrich Weiss, 1874 - 1926), took his stage name from Robert-Houdin and developed a range of stage magic tricks, many of them based on escapology (though that word was not used until after Houdini’s death). The son of a Hungarian rabbi, Houdini was genuinely highly skilled in techniques such as lockpicking and escaping straitjackets, but also made full use of the whole range of conjuring techniques, including fake equipment and collusion with individuals in the audience. Houdini’s showbusiness savvy was as great as his performing skill. There is a Houdini Museum dedicated to him in Scranton, PA. In addition to expanding the range of magic hardware, showmanship and deceptive technique, these performers established the modern relationship between the performer and the audience.

In this relationship, there is an unspoken agreement between the performer and the audience about what is going on. Unlike in the past, almost no performers today actually claim to possess supernatural powers (although there are exceptions to this, they are regarded as charlatans). It is understood by everyone that the effects in the performance are accomplished through sleight of hand (also called legerdemain), misdirection, deception, collusion with a member of the audience, apparatus with secret mechanisms, mirrors, and other trickery (hence the illusions are commonly referred to as “tricks”). The performer seeks to present an effect so clever and skilful that the audience cannot believe their eyes, and cannot think of the explanation. The sense of bafflement is part of the entertainment. In turn, the audience play a role in which they agree to be entertained by something they know to be a deception. Houdini also gained the trust of his audiences by using his knowledge of illusions to debunk charlatans, a tradition continued by magicians such as James Randi, P. C. Sorcar, and Penn and Teller.

Magic has come and gone in fashion. For instance, the magic show for much of the 20th Century was marginalized in North America as largely children’s entertainment. A revival started with Doug Henning, who reestablished the magic show as a form of mass entertainment with his distinctive look that rejected the old stereotypes and his sense of showmanship that became popular on both stage and numerous television specials.

Today, the art is enjoying a vogue, driven by a number of highly successful performers such as David Copperfield, Lance Burton, Penn and Teller, Derren Brown, Criss Angel, Dorothy Dietrich and many other stage and TV performers. David Blaine is sometimes included in this category, though his major performances have been more a combination of Houdini-style escape tricks and physical endurance displays than the illusion magic performed by others. The mid-twentieth century saw magic transform in many different aspects: some performers preferred to renovate the craft on stage — such as The Mentalizer Show in Times Square which dared to mix themes of spirituality and kabbalah with the art of magic — others successfully made the transition to TV, which opens up new opportunities for deceptions, and brings the peformer to huge audiences. A widely accepted code has developed, in which TV magicians can use all the traditional forms of deception, but should not resort to camera tricks, editing the videotape, or other TV special effects — this makes deception too “easy”, in the popular mind. Most TV magicians are shown performing before a live audience, who provide the remote viewer with a (sometimes misleading) reassurance that the effects are not obtained with the help of camera tricks.

Many of the basic principles of magic are comparatively old. There is an expression, “it’s all done with smoke and mirrors”, used to explain something baffling, but contrary to popular belief, effects are seldom achieved using mirrors today, due to the amount of work needed to install it and difficulties in transport. For example, the famous Pepper’s Ghost, a stage illusion first used in 19th century London, required a specially built theatre. Harry Houdini led the field of vanishing large objects, by making an elephant disappear on stage, although not using mirrors, and modern performers have vanished objects as big as the Taj Mahal, Statue of Liberty, and the Space Shuttle, using other kinds of optical deceptions.

When the spectator returns the card put it on the top of the deck. and hold the deck in your left hand with the mechanics grip. One of the main advantages of this grip is that with it, you can control the top card. Anyway, move your right hand over the deck as if you were about to cut it. Then when your hand is completely over the deck (make sure that it is covering the front of the deck as well), pull the top card over the side of the deck (this can only be done if you are still using the mechanics grip) and palm the top card. After, just proceed to cut the deck but keep on palming the top card (this might take a lot of practice). Hand the deck back to the spectator for examination. You can do anything you want with the card but I think it looks best if you put your hands behind your back and back away a little.

As the magician, the trick is quite easy to carry out. All that is required is a little bit of acting ability. Though you know where the card is in the deck from the beginning because of your magic unicorn powers, you must pretend that you do not so as to seem a real and genuine magician. Let the audience member have full control of the deck. Simply go through the deck of cards one by one till you find the card and then do not act surprised (because you are not, you knew all alonag where the card was).

This magic trick is sure to liven up the most boring of parties.

The concept is that you stand with your side to the spectator, and you slip the foor farthest from the viewer. Angle the ‘lifting foot’ and a 90 degree angle to the body and simply stand up on the tip of your toe. I know it will sound like this doesn’t work, but that is what I thought too when i found out how to do it.

The misdirection is at the beginning and end of the trick. At the beginning you have a jacket on and you take it off and lower it to your feet. While it is hanging in your hands, it will cover your feet so you can slip your right foot out of the shoe and get it into position.

Next have the audience all close their eyes. Make sure that they are all deep in the recesses of their own minds, with their eyes tightly closed. Say some made up magic incantation while giving your sidekick a wave of the hand to signal their exit.

Once the sidekick has departed, bring the audience out of thier hypnotized trace and they will be amazed.

Now it may not be the most glamorous trick, but it’s definitely good for a few laughs.