How The Best Magicians Use Large-Scale Indexes

When most magicians think of indexes, they likely think of small pocket-sized indexes of playing cards. They tend to be devices magicians can secretly reach for to retrieve any desired playing card.

However, for more than a decade, I’ve been experimenting with much larger indexes — some so large they must be kept backstage.

For me, it started as a technical solution.

I hate live printing during a performance.

I’ll always advise against it.

I’ve been there and seen it fail, and those moments are etched into my brain forever.

Why print something when there is an alternative?

Still, it wasn’t until a client I was consulting for was told they couldn't get a printer close enough to a performance area because of its size and power needs that I had the idea to use an index instead.

This was for a televised effect in which a number of spectators made a number of predicted choices.

When we did the math, we realised there were not an extraordinary number of possible outcomes.

Were there enough to be impressive? Yes.

But was it too many outcomes to rule out using an index? No.

So the performer prepared a prediction for every possible outcome ahead of time and placed them all in a large folder, ordered so an assistant could retrieve each one quickly during the performance.

The end result was much faster than live printing could ever be, and the assistant could be much closer to the performer throughout the effect.

Something then clicked for me.

Could indexes be another example of a method that’s been underexplored because they lack commercial viability? I sensed the opportunity for arbitrage.

We talk a lot in One Ahead about how ridiculous it is when a creator tells you in a magic trailer how “commercial” a magic trick is.

At One Ahead, we hunt out the non-commercial — the kinds of effects that cannot be packaged up and easily sold to the masses. That’s where the opportunity for arbitrage lives.

It’s the types of methods our readers care the most about.

As they should.

For the past few years, I’ve worked with many clients on ways to use these much larger indexes to streamline magic effects, minimise risk and perform new effects that otherwise wouldn't be possible.

I’ll include everything I know about indexes here.

But first, note that this doesn't need to involve an assistant.

You can use indexes in extraordinary ways in solo performances.

Here’s just one wild idea for a routine making use of a large index.

It’s time to play a game, and it only costs one dollar to play. A spectator joins the performer on stage and throws a dart at a map of the world. On close inspection, the dart landed closest to Japan. And so, the magician takes the dollar the spectator had handed over in order to play — then, impossibly, the magician turns the borrowed dollar bill into Japanese Yen.