I went to see Derren Brown on Saturday night. In fact, I was very nearly part of the show as one of the people I was with was chosen to do one of the tricks. She was given a locked briefcase which sat next to us the entire night.
The end of the show involved choosing a random word from any of ten newspapers and then revealing the very same word in the briefcase which had been beside us evening. Even though he explained how he did it, i’m really not happy about someone screwing with my head quite as much as he did !
So, how did he do it?
At the end, he showed a video of parts of the show which showed him slipping certain words into what he was saying. So he was repeating “mail” (for daily mail), “thirteen” (for page 13)and “chemical” (for the word itself.
I’m not entirely convinced that was all there was to it but it was damn clever anyway. In particular, I don’t know how managed to make sure that word was on the correct ripped up bit of paper !!