This story is in three parts: the dream sequence, the semi-conscious analysis, and the fully alert follow-up.<\/p>\n
“I will read your mind!” boasted the mentalist. “You can pick a colour, or a flower, or an element of the periodic table, write it down, show it to the audience and seal it in an envelope. Then I will read your mind and predict what it says! In fact, you could write any English word, and I will predict it.”<\/p>\n
So, how does this guy’s trick work? How could you ensure that he couldn’t bluff you?<\/p>\n
It could be one of those tricks where people choose apparently random things in non-random ways. You know, like the “elephant in Denmark” trick. <\/p>\n
I bet most people looking at a periodic table would choose one of the Actinides. Or Hydrogen. I would choose Lithium; that should be hard to predict.<\/p>\n
Hmmm… but he would accept any English word. So he might have a trick slate, pen or envelope that allows him to see what you wrote – I would take my own pen and paper on stage if he selected me as a volunteer.<\/p>\n
No, the most likely way this trick would work would be to have an accomplice in the audience secretly signalling what the word was.<\/p>\n
I know how to test this hypothesis. I would write down one word and show it to the audience, and then surreptitiously modify the word before I put it in the envelope. If he predicted the word I showed to the audience, I would suspect a stooge.<\/p>\n
I would need to make the change easy to make – like a single stroke of the pen. For example, you could change an “o” to an “a” with a single stroke so if I wrote “fool” and showed it to the audience, I could quickly change it to “foal” before I stashed it in the envelope.<\/p>\n
I need to come up with a list of simple modifications to letters.<\/p>\n
I am sure it would be possible possible to think up with twice as many mappings, especially with ingenuity with the hand-writing.\n<\/p><\/div>\n
But what if the stooge saw me do it? He or she might figure out that I changed it to “foal” and signal that in the message.<\/p>\n
So, I would need to come up with a list of words that could be changed to multiple other words through a choice of single letter modifications.<\/p>\n
Then the stooge couldn’t tell, all the way from the audience, which possible word I had changed it to.<\/p>\n
Here’s the puzzle: which English base word could generate the most variants?<\/p>\n