A Clever Use Of A Path Peek

To be totally honest, it’s not entirely clear whether this method counts as a path peek. I say this because it doesn’t involve any kind of peeking — you never see or glimpse what the spectator has drawn.

It is, however, a method that is routed in the concept of a path peek. If anything, you might call it a “reverse” path peek.

A few months back, I went with a magician friend to his gig in a nearby city in Canada while I was visiting. It was an opportunity for us to spend time together and for me to see more of the country.

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing him prepare all of his magic, props, and gadgets in the hotel before he set out to his close-up corporate gig. He had some brilliant work that involved spectators writing on business cards.

I’ve always been quite envious of people who can effectively perform methods like centre-tears to achieve fooling mentalism effects.

I’m not a performer, and those sorts of methods are incredibly tricky to get good at without putting in the time to perform them again and again with real people. They’re not so easy to practice alone.

So I sat there in the hotel as he set up the rest of his props, and I stared at one of the blank-backed business cards and wondered if I could come up with something hands-off that would appear to achieve the same effect as a centre-tear.

I ended up rather delighted with the solution I came up with and every magician I have shared it with instantly breaks into a smile and says something like, “That’s very clever.”

The spectator decides what to draw — you do not tell they what to draw or create options for them — and yet, you will know what they draw.

Every time the drawing is different, and it can genuinely be something the spectator comes up with themselves.

There’s no sleight-of-hand and absolutely no peeking.

There is, however, a method (there always is), which relies on the spectator coming up with three options for what they could draw. When they freely choose which of their ideas to draw, you know which one they’ve selected (no force).