The debate to use sleight of hand or gimmicks has been alive and well before any of us were born, and will likely continue after we die.

But…

If there’s tricks you can do with both sleight of hand and gimmicks and you can’t decide which to use, this is a great way to test that out.

I used to like to ask participants if they “saw the move” when I was doing flashy visual magic with a gimmick, like a coin vanish. There weren’t any moves, so of course they didn’t. If they claimed to have caught a move, I wouldn’t dismiss it, I’d encourage them.

Unfortunately, I realized eventually that I was also encouraging them to view my magic tricks as a puzzle. It may have worked for Slydini, but I’m not Slydini. So I don’t do this anymore. But there is an approach I still do, that was borne of that misguided habit.

Ask them for some help with something. Say you’re testing out a trick, and you have two versions, but you’re not sure which is better.

Essentially, you just show it to them with sleight of hand first, and then swap in the gimmicks and show it again with the gimmicks. You want to do it with sleight of hand first, so that there aren’t many moves to catch the second time around.

Presumably, they’ll prefer the second one, but maybe you’re just that good at the moves, which would also be good to know.

You can also do this while having them video record the performances on their phone. You can have a control alongside your two versions this time. Have them record yourself legitimately placing a coin in a hand with one other coin in it, then they record as you do it with a false transfer, and finally they record you doing it with a shell, moveless.

Perhaps you could not let them see where the coin is at the end of each of these, and then they can watch the videos over and try to figure out which is which.

Now it’s not about a puzzle, but rather about comparison. The “did you see it” hook I went with originally is kind of implicitly embedded, but without the puzzle aspect. This way they feel like they’re giving legitimate input. Plus, a lot of people probably felt like I was fucking with them. Did they see it? No, of course they didn’t fucking see it.

One of the most harmful aspects of the challenge approach is that it undermines the illusion of magic. Every time Slydini chided a spectator for not catching him, he reminded the audience that there was something to catch — that it wasn’t really magic.

Darwin Ortiz, Strong Magic

Happy magicking to you.