Trust me

.

 

Mentalists who perform the wikipedia magic trick devote hours to demographic studies (with frequently changing interests and attitudes), sometimes for years on end. Not to mention the study of language words and letters, mastery of timing, and pacing required to pull it off.

 

Sounds easy enough.

 

But the real secret to the wikipedia magic trick is, the mentalist isn’ta student of body language and demographics. A master mentalist, guessing a word on wikipedia, is a student of English (or whatever language he performs in). He knows every aspect of words — all the words it rhymes with, each curve and corner of every letter comprising the word. He knows its meanings, how many syllables it has, and how many letters are in it (during performance there’s no time to count, the master mentalist must commit this word info to memory, for more than 10,000 (constantly occurring) English words.

We’re not through.

Magic trick Wikipedia

The phrase is frequently used in more figurative ways to criticize actions or words as deceptive, as in the poetic, “his comment is a clever sleight-of-hand intended to distract us from the real issue.” The phrase can be extended outside of the magic genre. It can be used to compare something to a