3. ANOTHER BLACKBOARD TEST
This trick makes a most effective finish to any mind reading act. A blackboard, a very large slate, or a large sheet of white paper (set as for the second trick above) will be required. The test is worked in dead silence on the part of the operator and the audience. The medium is genuinely blindfolded and—is seated toward the back in the middle of the stage or platform. The performer invites the spectators to indicate the figures they wish to be used by raising their hands, with the fingers extended or closed as may be necessary. These digits are written on the blackboard, forming, we will suppose, a sum of three rows of five figures. When completed, the performer draws a line under the sum and the medium instantly calls the total; for example, “Eighty-six thousand, two hundred and thirty-nine.”
The effect is quite startling, but it is obtained by the simplest possible means. When the operator calls for figures, he writes them in columns (and not in lines) across the board, beginning with the last figure in each line. The first two figures, which he writes one under the other, are those really indicated by the spectators; but the third is whatever figure may be necessary to make the addition tally with the last figure of the total which has been memorized by the performer and the medium—86,239, as suggested above. Suppose the first two figures indicated are a 7 and a 4. The performer then pretends to see someone indicating an 8; he nods to the imaginary spectator and writes in the 8 below the 7 and the 4. He proceeds in precisely the same way until the sum is completed, always writing two figures genuinely indicated and the third an imaginary figure to make the total right. The signal to the medium to call the total is the drawing of a line under the sum by the performer. For effect she should call this as rapidly as it is possible for the performer to write the figures—thus, “Eighty-six thousand, two hundred and thirty-nine.” Finally the operator checks the addition aloud, proving it to be correct.
The trick can be performed safely only before a fairly large audience, so that it is impossible for anyone to check up on every figure the operator writes on the board. To enable him to work without any hesitation, the performer can have the required total written in pencil in tiny figures on the frame of the slate or at the top of the blackboard; but the medium must have the figures of the total memorized perfectly.
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