On Doing Hoy Right

Nathan Wilson teaches an organic mentalism trick with a selection of books. Learn from the principles he shares.

As I’ve started traveling again and meeting new people — most of whom have nothing to do with magic or even realize it’s still a thing adults do — I’ve noticed a small but persistent problem.

We — meaning those of us still doing card tricks or coin tricks or whatever niche corner of mystery we’re clinging to — not only need material that doesn’t require a backpack full of props, but we also need to make the magic feel a little less explainable. If you’re going to interrupt someone’s Aperol Spritz, it should at least touch the edge of the impossible.

That’s the theme: I’ll walk you through a trick you probably know (and if you don’t, you will), and show you how to nudge it closer to miracle status.

But first — a story: 

I was going on a second date with a girl I’d met in Canada.

On the first date, I hadn’t exactly been upfront about what I do. I mean, how do you casually tell someone your job is consulting for magicians and mind readers? It sounds interesting — and it sometimes is — but on a date, it can easily sound like you’re either lying or trying too hard. So I made a decision: if it came up, I’d be ready. Two days before the date, I went to the tea shop, partly to scout the place, partly to look for anything I could turn into a trick.

At first, I saw a stack of Uno cards, and for a second, I considered stealing a few and hiding them for later use. But that felt like too much. 

Then I noticed the bookshelf; it held 15 books in total.

An idea was born.

On the date, we sat a few tables away from the bookshelf — close enough for me to see it, but not so close that it looked like I was planning something, which, of course, I was.

She told me about her workweek, the new book she’d picked up from the bookstore, how much she was enjoying it — all the usual polite second-date small talk that secretly serves as a kind of mutual vetting process, where both people are trying to decide if they actually like each other or if they’re just being nice because the drinks are good.

Then she asked what I did for work.

I told her the truth: I’m a writer and consultant, mainly for mind readers and hypnotists.

Naturally, she did what any reasonable person would do after hearing that, which was to ask for a demonstration. Or rather, she issued a polite but stern demand that one be provided.

I told her to walk over to the bookshelf and bring back any two books — the only rule being that they had to have page numbers. I’d explain the rest when she returned.

When she came back, I explained that I’m not a mind reader — I just work for them. Which, if you say it out loud in public, sounds exactly like something a mind reader would say to avoid responsibility if they fail. But I continued. The truth, I said, is that when a thought is random, something with no emotional weight, no personal significance, no reason to exist, it becomes a little easier to work with. The brain starts trying to make sense of it. So what we needed was something random to latch onto.

I laid out the structure: one book would give us a page number. Then she’d turn to that page in the second book, and whatever was there — a word, a sentence, an image—she’d focus on it. Not speak it. Not give any indication. Just hold it in her mind. She nodded, still polite, still mostly amused, but now slightly invested.

I handed her both books, one in each hand, and told her to pass me either one. Whichever she handed over would serve only to generate the page number. She handed me a biography of Andy Warhol, which, frankly, felt on-brand for the randomness we were aiming for.

I ran my finger down the side of the pages, slowly riffling through them while she watched. I told her to say “stop” whenever she felt like it, and we landed on page 78.

I turned my back as she opened the other book. I explained the following steps: if the page was blank and I added, yes, some books are weirdly fond of blank pages, she’d move to the next one. If there were an image, she should hold the image in her mind. If there were words, she should focus on the longest word in the first paragraph. Simple. She nodded again.

Then I asked her to place her hand lightly on my shoulder and to stare at the back of my head — as if, by some deeply unscientific means, she could somehow see through my skull and out the other side.

I took a deep breath. First, I got the suggestion of a smell — something light, floral, maybe — then a color started to form: pale, delicate, and finally, a word. The word she was thinking of was a flower, a carnation to be precise.

She was amazed.

We did not go on a third date.

Overview

First off, yes, this is a true story.

While I don’t generally recommend doing magic tricks on dates — and I’ll double down on that advice if you’re even slightly unsure about your social calibration — this one happened to work out exceptionally well. And for the record, the lack of a third date had nothing to do with the trick itself. She was rude to the waitress. That is a real deal-breaker.

What made this particular trick so effective was the amount of freedom and cleanness built into the method and the presentation. It’s rare to find a book test that doesn’t require a gimmicked book or the magician handling the books in some suspicious way. It’s even rarer for a book test to happen with (apparently) zero preparation.

However, and this is where the first deception begins, there was preparation.

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