Debating the Mishear Convincer

I've become a tiny bit obsessed with the mishear convincer. It's probably because I mostly get hired to write for magicians, and a mishear convincer is one of the few magic principles that is strictly a writing technique.

I was also at a comedy show last week, and the comedian misheard one celebrity name that was yelled by the audience for another, and it proved that, not only does this genuinely happen, but it can be pretty funny and memorable.

The issue I often find with the mishear convincer is that I'm not entirely sure it does anything. And, perhaps worse, if it does do something, which many famous magicians seem to believe it does, then what does it say about the performer in the minds of the audience – either they're hard of hearing, or they don't really care.

The famous magician who seems to use the mishear convincer more than any other is David Blaine. He's been doing it for decades. One of my favourite tricks Blaine has ever performed involved him mistaking someone saying 'Eight of Hearts' for 'Ace of Hearts'. To resolve the issue, the spectator squeezed the card, and their thumbprint left on the heart pip included a distinct eight shape.

I recalled this trick to Daniel Garcia when we worked together on a TV project not long ago, and, of course, I was delighted to hear he had something to do with it. It might be one of my favourite cards tricks, and you best believe Penguin Magic would have sold tens of thousands of them if they could.

What was it about that presentation that justified the use of a mishear convincer to me? It's hard to say – it may have just been the joy of the resolution. He wasn't just resolving a mistake, he was levelling it up. If, say, the playing card simply changed from the Ace of Hearts to the Eight of Hearts, it probably would have felt flat.

That's likely what it comes down to, actually – what is motivating the magician to make use of a mishear convincer. You might think of it as a canceling tool, but really, mishear convincers are timestamping tools, too. I’ll explain why soon.

Magicians don’t seem to ever opt to pretend to mishear things without a magical payoff, so perhaps that says a lot about why we should consider ditching them altogether.

Most who use mishear convincers believe they encourage the spectator to lie to themselves about the magician not knowing their selection until after they corrected them. Allowing the performing plenty of time for any secret moves.

This places a lot of faith in the spectator's willingness to backtrack your routine and look for holes in it – as well as their attention to detail when doing so.

Will some spectators be left thinking your act was a little chaotic and perhaps even careless? Perhaps that’s what you want. We've seen a big boom in this type of magic – a type which is almost entirely built around one convincer: the magician can't be doing any secret moves because even the magician has no idea what is going on.

It's worth unpacking everything there is to know about mishear convincers. Why we use them, their best examples, and similar tools. Then, it's up to you to decide whether it’s a tool worthy of using – my prediction: most of you will use these, because there's something about a mishear convincer that always seems to delight magicians, even when its impact on audiences might be slim.