If you watch mentalism performances, live or on the internet, you have probably seen a mentalist able to guess a certain number.
Now, one of the most popular effects used in mentalism is mind-reading. An excellent mentalist goes through performances so flawlessly that he gives the illusion of having supernatural powers.
As everyone knows, though, what lies beneath the amazing shows are not secret psychic abilities but hours and hours of practice and hard work.
And to guess the right number, they combine techniques such as misdirection and the power of suggestion, along with skills in reading body language and decoding microexpressions. All this allows mentalists to complete a performance guaranteed to amaze audiences.
Today, we’re going to talk about mentalism guessing numbers – how you can do it. We’re going to explain 2 tricks that allow you to guess numbers.
So let’s begin!
Trick #1: The Swami Gimmick
Here’s one trick that’s often part of mentalism performances. The Swami Gimmick is also something that works well if you’re doing street mentalism.
The Act: What You See
Imagine this. The act begins with the mentalist bringing a woman up on stage. Right off the bat, he tells the woman he’ll know her phone number by the end of the performance.
He begins by telling the woman to think of her phone number. He says he needs her to have a clear image of the numbers in her mind, then playfully reminds her she doesn’t need to include the zip code.
When he asks whether she can see the number in her head, she says yes. The mentalist then says he needs her to send the numbers his way.
“Mentally project it,” he says. “I’ll get it from there.”
After several seconds, he suddenly holds his hands up. “I’m getting something,” he announces.
The mentalist grabs a piece of paper and, with a pencil, quickly scribbles something in it.
He hands the woman another piece of paper and has her write down the number on it.
He then asks her to hold it up, so everyone can see what’s written on it: 8692091.
A small smile appears on his lips. He turns his attention back to the woman. “This is the number you were thinking of all the time. Yes?” he asks. She confirms.
He now addresses the entire room. He reminds the audience of the paper on which he had written earlier. “You all saw me write something before she showed the number, correct?”
“And you haven’t seen me write down anything else since then, right?”
With a flourish, he holds it up and gives them time to read what he wrote. 8692091.
Behind the Curtain: What He Did
Amazing, right? He wrote down her number before she showed everyone what it was.
Or did he?
As impressive as this performance is, it still isn’t because the mentalist had mind-reading abilities. It did, however, involve a lot of misdirection, theatrics, and a little device called a swami pencil.
Let’s start with the device.
A swami pencil is also known as a thumb writer. It allows you to write with — you guessed it — your thumb.
It often looks like a small skin-toned piece of elastic that you can wrap around your thumb. It has a section where you can fit a bit of led. Because it’s so small, nobody will be able to see it.
(You can buy the swami pencil from any magic store — you can even order one online.)
Now we know the mentalist used a device, let’s break down the rest of the trick.
This trick begins with an elaborate setup — it runs from when the mentalist tells the subject to think of a number to when he tells her to send it his way by mentally projecting it.
It’s theatrics that’ll help you at this point. Set the context for maximum effect when you do the reveal.
You then use misdirection in the performance. When the mentalist writes down a number on a piece of paper, he’s just pretending. This part allows the prediction to happen.
Pro Tip: When you’re pretending to write the numbers down, angle yourself in a way that the audience (and the subject) gets the impression you are jotting something down. Be careful that they can’t see the paper — they may notice that it remained empty despite your “scribbling”.
Once you’ve asked her to write down her number and show it to the audience, it’s time for a bit more misdirection. Your entire patter about how you had written something earlier and you hadn’t touched a pencil since then is done to buy you time.
You need to have time between when the subject shows her paper with the number and when you show yours. In between those times, that’s when you use your swami pencil to write down the correct number. You can do this with your hand on your side or behind your back.
Pro Tip: It may sound easy but writing with a swami pencil takes practice. Considering you’re going to have to do it without looking and under time pressure, it’s easy to slip up. You don’t want to end up scribbling something unreadable so make sure to practice! If you pull it off— voila! You have a perfectly predicted number.
Trick #2: The Envelope Trick
This trick is one of the most common number-guessing tricks done. There is a reason why it continues to astound audiences.
There’s nothing like audience participation to give the impression of having many uncontrolled variables in your performance. This way, your reveal becomes even more impressive.
The Act: What You See
A mentalist asks the audience to think of numbers between 1 and 1,000. He then chooses three or four people to join him onstage. He hands them a writing pad and asks them to write down the numbers in their head.
He thanks them, letting them return to their seats. He then asks for another audience to come up on stage. This audience member gets the writing pad and is asked to add the numbers the previous participants wrote.
While he’s doing that, the mentalist asks for another volunteer. Everyone’s attention is now on a table off to the side. On it lies a single envelope that no one has touched — or given much attention to — until now.
The Mentalist tells the last volunteer to open the envelope and check what’s inside.
The last volunteer finds a piece of paper with the number 492 written on it.
The mentalist now turns back to the other audience member onstage who has finished adding the numbers. When asked what number he got, he called out 492.
Everyone in the audience comes to the same conclusion — the mentalist must have known what numbers the participants would choose. That’s how he knew what number to put inside the envelope.
Behind the Curtain: What He Did
This trick works on so many levels because there are many people from the audience involved. How could so many random pieces of a puzzle fall so perfectly into place?
It’s simple: it wasn’t random.
Or rather, it wasn’t all random. The participants asked to write down their numbers were selected randomly. Even the numbers that they chose were out of your control.
But, in truth, regardless of what numbers they wrote down, it didn’t matter. The crux of this trick is in the writing pad.
When you give the notepad to the audience members, it’s natural that they’ll write on the side that’s facing up. What no one knows is there’s another set of numbers on the other side of the pad.
Pro Tip: When you ask the selected audience members to write down their numbers, don’t give them so much time. The last thing you’d want to happen is for them to start playing around with the pad and accidentally turn it over.
At this point, a little sleight of hand and misdirection comes into play.
When you hand the writing pad to the audience member who’ll add it together, have the other side facing up. What she sees are the numbers that you wrote down — which sums up perfectly to the figure inside the envelope.
Pro Tip: Make sure the numbers look like they were written by different individuals when you’re setting up this trick. If your list is too clean, it may raise suspicion.
The Wrap Up
There are more tricks you can learn if your end goal is to guess numbers.
Mental math tricks work great for this as well! The only concern with those is you can’t use them repeatedly. Someone will eventually figure out the calculations that lead to one numerical outcome.
The swami gimmick and envelope trick require more effort, but both acts allow your subjects to have more engagement in your performance. It results in a fully invested audience — and this does wonders for your credibility.
Invest time and effort in developing these guessing number tricks. As you can see, misdirection, theatrics, and sleight of hand all come in handy in performance. Put in the work, and you’re sure to reap the rewards!