essay
-
The “Creativity” Discourse
Category: essayRead more: The “Creativity” DiscourseEditor’s note: This isn’t about saying “fuck beginners”; rather it’s about saying “stop pretending intermediate and advanced magicians can only handle beginner talk.” So if you’re on page one of your magic journey, relax: this is about how bad we are at page ten and onward. I’m the kind of magician that most would call…
-
Read more: Clockwork Apple
Happy New Year guys! It’s your boy, Drew. My first post of 2026! I know, there’s been other posts by me that have come out this year. I wrote those 2-3 years ago, it’s the punk-ass bitch Editor who is only getting them out now. I’m trying out a new writer’s voice. How do you…
-
Read more: Let’s Move False Shuffles Out of the Grey
Let’s be real for a second here. False shuffles don’t really work. I’ve always loved false shuffles ever since my first foray into the magical arts. There are two specific shuffles I’ve always loved, the Truffle shuffle and the Zarrow shuffle. I’ve practiced both continuously for over a decade. Over time though, I realized something…
-
Read more: How We Generate The Best Anagrams Around
You may have noticed a bit of a gap in “Anagram Month”…to the extent that it no longer fits in a month. We have been waiting on Jerry to post an intro to our new anagram generator. Nothing much, just a few lines. The Editor should have known better than to trust Jerry with even…
-
Read more: Making Your Anagrams Commute
Editor’s note: After introducing frontloaded progressive anagrams, which give your typical progressive anagram a couple of the perks of a perfect progressive anagram, Franklin announces the definition of a new category of branching anagram based off of perfect transgressive anagrams. This post assumes you are familiar with the concept of transgressive anagrams (TAs), perfect TAs,…
-
Read more: Toward Better Progressive Anagrams
Editor’s note: This commences Anagram August with a superior type of progressive anagram. For an introduction and anagram trainer tool, see the previous post. For some reason, at some point, someone looked at the idea of fishing for a mentally selected word by asking whether it contained certain letters and said, “that’s an anagram!” despite…
-
Read more: In Defense of Lecture Patter
Hello from the land of surf and Spam musubi, where you tip the beach boys by day and Shoot Ogawa by night. That’s right, as I write this I’m absorbing the mana of Hawai’i. I’m not sipping a Mai Tai on the beach, unfortunately. I’m in an airport lounge punching keys on my laptop and…
-
Read more: Phantom at the Magic Festival
The blog was in full force at Mystify Magic Festival. If we did our job right, nobody realized we were super cool magic bloggers, but we were taking notes. We are immensely thankful to all involved for putting on the event. There were a lot of really important discussions going on, and seeing the turnout…
-
Halal Magic
Category: essayRead more: Halal MagicTell all the truth but tell it slant —Success in Circuit lies Emily Dickinson This post is inspired by a Muslim magician I once met, who taught me a valuable lesson about halal magic. If you’re not familiar with Islam, just pretend I met George Washington instead. The point is what kind of magic someone…
-
Read more: Notes on the Number Forcing Stack
Editor’s note: Now that we don’t have a schedule, I can do important things like schedule posts for the 7th day of the month. There’s a long history in magic of using a deck of cards to force a number by adding up the values of cards. A significant portion of this history is devoted…
Search
Categories
- commentary (16)
- essay (30)
- fluff (21)
- mail (6)
- oval news (32)
- presentation (14)
- recommendation (4)
- review (8)
- story (9)
- tips (38)
- trick (25)
Recent Posts
- An Actual Hello From the New Girl
- The “Creativity” Discourse
- Commenting Works Again!
- The Glossary, or ‘We cannot eliminate the root causes of codes by magicians, but Oval can.’
- Support the Heck Out of Craig Petty
- Tips for a Bigger Clock
- Clockwork Apple
- Odds and Ends #10: The Perfect 10/10 Trick
- Air Remixed
- Odds and Ends #9… …#9… …#9…
- A Magifest 2026 Retrospective
- The Day The Pedophile (Un)subscribed
- The Transport Peek
- Reader Mail Number Four: Can You Believe There’s Even More?
- I Spent 25 Dollars, and All We Got Was This Lousy Comment
- The Extreme Workout Universal Presentation
- New Year’s Comments and 2026 Plans
- Franklin Assumes Dominion Over All (Things Oval) In 2026
- A Color Coded, Tailor Fitted Effect
- Let’s Move False Shuffles Out of the Grey
- The Berglas Effect That Got Away
- The Loaded Lightning Principle
- How We Generate The Best Anagrams Around
- Making Your Anagrams Commute
- Toward Better Progressive Anagrams
- Announcing Anagram August (And Presenting A Trainer)
- 21 Savant (Degaffing Petty and Barnes)
- Bits and Bobs #2: The SUMS Out
- Let’s Talk to Invisible People
- In Defense of Lecture Patter
- My Cheap Uncle: A Bank Night Presentation
- Further Notes on Halal Magic
- Phantom at the Magic Festival
- Halal Magic
- Bits and Bobs #1: On Realism and Reality
- Spaced Out Tarot
- Reassembling the Woman Sawed in Half
- Last Minute Thoughts on Blackpool
- How To Spend Your Time At A Magic Convention
- Odds and Ends #8: The Burgle Ass Effect
- Notes on the Number Forcing Stack
- New Year, New E-Mail
- The James Hydrick Presentation, or Amateur Telekinesis
- Bricking Around with Drew Perry’s “Bricked”
- Holiday Hiatus and Schedule Scuttling
- Conducting Trains and Bones
- Excessive Errata, Non-Jerry Edition
- Zen and the Art of EmotiPsychic Maintenance
- Constructing Your Own Matrix Force
- Cut Your Nails
- Decoding the Matrix Multi-Force
- The Magic Oval 101
- The Annual Company Picnic (In Lieu of Bonuses) Part 1
- Odds and Ends #7: The One About Asian Competitions
- The Poor Man’s WikiTest Approach
- A Review of Michael Kras’s Synthesis & Secrets
- Meeting of the Masterminds
- To Put Too Fine a Point on It
- The Zen of Magic: Avoiding Method Overloading
- Double Blind Control, or Move Them With Your Mouth
- Memorability: A Misguided Proxy Metric
- I Was Wrong About Memorability in Card Magic
- Mnemonic Possession: The Arc of History Bends Towards Oblivion
- Spectators as Mirrors
- No One Is Keeping Your Souvenirs
- Odds and Ends #6: Electric Boogie Licks
- History in Flames: Why Magic Needs Public Museums Now
- Reader Mail #4: The Benefits of Not Using the Same Decks
- The Stripper Fakes A Breather
- Prisoners Passing the Pat Downs
- Banachek’s Salad: Eggplant Is the New Broccoli
- Taking a Peek to the Cinemas
- In Memoriam of Katakura Yuichi, a Japanese Underground Legend
- Thinking Through Methods, Pt. 2
- Thinking Through Methods, Pt. 1
- Oops, Private Post Fixed, and An Unscheduled Update
- “Sorry, I Have To Ditch This”
- Why Do People Hate Crazy Sam’s Mind?
- Magic Mirror on the Wall, Who Has the Fairest Dribble of All?
- Curse You, Andy
- Easter Errata, and a Schedule Shift
- The Forbidden Library: A Prelude
- The Chinese Knockoff: A Presentation For Obvious Gimmicks and Other Things
- Sharing A Thank You
- Monkey Business
- Odds and Ends #5: Hate Mail
- Stop Using the Same Damn Decks
- Dr. Strangelike or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Like Dariel Fitzkee
- Challenge Mentalism: A Follow-up to How To Be Suave
- How To Be Suave: Jason Ladanye vs Brian Tudor
- What’s All The Flap About Prop Quality?
- Chinese Black Magic (The Last Method You’d Think Of)
- Reader Mail #3: Calm Goat Hive
- An Ultra-Mental Memory
- Happy Valentine’s Day, Ya Filthy Animals
- Odds and Ends #4: The Fig One
- Shit, I Forgot About Craig Petty’s Evoke: A Follow-Up
- Like Cards In Rain: Why Card Tricks Are Forgettable
- Jazz in Social Magic #7: Tripling Down
- Jazz in Social Magic #6: Doubling Down