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- Most Magicians Don't Know What a Narrowing Force is
Most Magicians Don't Know What a Narrowing Force is
Sometimes you just want the best of both worlds. Yes, I want lemonade. Sure, I’d love an iced tea. Sometimes it’s hard to choose between the two. That is unless you’re in America—where a man presumably called Arnold Palmer invented the drink with his name that’s a mix of lemonade and iced tea.
In my list of the best things about America, the Arnold Palmers are surprisingly high on the list. They’re somewhere near ‘free refills.’ I will never get over my shock when I finish a drink in America and someone just refills the drink… for free?! Sure, America’s got guns and is lacking in national healthcare, but they sure know how to soda.
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Let’s say you’re doing a prediction.
You can force the selection.
Ensure the free choice is not so free at all.
You can use multiple-outs.
Limit the choices and swap the prediction accordingly.
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Forces and multiple-outs both have their benefits. Forces allow for a more impossible-feeling outcome but can feel restricting in their processes. Multiple-outs allow for a more free-feeling selection but with quite limiting guardrails.
A force might sound like:
“Reach into this bag and pull out any random number between 1 and 100.”
Multiple-outs might sound like:
“Name any number between 1 and 10.”
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A narrowing force (sometimes referred to as a funnel force) is a type of force in which the spectator does not get forced a specific outcome but instead toward a much smaller range of choices. It’s a way of guiding a spectator toward your intended goal.
By using a narrowing force, you are able to blend your methods.
Here are three basic examples of narrowing forces.
On every page of this color palette book, there are five different colors. Please open the book to any random page and choose any of the colors at random.
In the above example, you are forcing the page and using multiple-outs to predict one of the five colors selected.
I have a list of conversation starters in my notes app. They select the question “who is your favourite Spice Girl?” at random and answer the question.
In the above example, you are forcing the question and using multiple-outs to predict the Spice Girl selected.
They name black, and so we imagine throwing the black cards away. We’re left with the red cards to choose from. They then choose any red card at random.
In the above example, you use equivoque to force the color and then use multiple-outs for the final selection.
These are not the best examples, but they demonstrate the principle well.
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