as well). That’s why most professional, working mentalists choose more practical, “paint by numbers” mentalism material. It’s a mind trick easy to do poorly. Guessing a word in wikipedia is hard to do masterfully. The challenge is formidable, impossible.

Great mentalists tend their minds like gardeners — a statue in the center, concentric hedges with ornaments and orchids enveloping the whole tidy arrangement. Mentalists sit back and marvel at their own sorted brain. They eat, sleep, and breathe their own thoughts and the uninvited thoughts of others (yes, Includes your thoughts). But don’t be offended. A mentalist has every right to your thought as you do, when you think about it.  

Exceptional mentalists do the same with their participants’ minds (usually with a courteous detachment). Stay with me, this isgetting good. With that “thought” in mind, the first concept to understand the stage magic methodology behind every wikipedia magic trick is brain mapping illusion —a fancy term for thought tracking (more on that below).

Fact: Brain mapping, popularized in the 19th century, is an abstract parlor magic method of predicting and receiving thoughts using a (2nd) wave form of time deduction and induction based on language patterns (and frequently occurring letter combinations).   It sounds simple. But it isn’t.

  Combine brain mapping or thought tracking with exhaustive demographic research accumulated over decades. Fortunately, most of the research is done not by mentalists but by linguists. Opportunistic mentalists have been quick to pounce on the linguistics data. You begin to see now down the rabbit hole Is the wikipedia magic trick. But there’s even more to it. Look closely at the chart below.

wikipedia magic trick article guessing pie chart

seemingly by mind reading, tells you the word you merely thought of from the wikipedia article. Sound familiar? He must be using some mentalism magic app or mind reading! Astonishing, isn’t it? Wrong! It hit me like a ton of bricks. One, it wasn’t some app because I used my own phone — and besides my aunt was talking with us on her phone but she used a paperback book! Okay, he has real mind reading ability. Could this be true?

But hang on a minute.   Imagine for a moment you could read minds — I mean for real, read people’s minds. What would you do with your life? That’s a legit superpower. First thing that comes to mind? You’re not gonna try to create an entertaining act, rehearse it, add comedy, learn the ins and outs of the entertainment business and try to sell shows. There are easier ways to make a living and impress your friends, if you can know people’s thoughts.

But it’s simple.
How many pages on Wikipedia magic trick?

With enough experience, a good mentalist can guess the number of syllables and the page number of your book (if using a book). Thanks to the linguistic sieve, he’s already managed to drain the pool of words by 78% (three-syllable words make up only 22% of all words). Just like that! Now most of the work is done. If you’re like most spectators, it probably feels like not much happened. But the mindreader is one step closer to guessing your word. All that remains is taking one more step.  

It’s obvious once you think about it.   The average word length on English Wikipedia is 5 letters. But now the pool has three syllables (he made you count the syllables, even silently, he knows for certain). With a few exceptions like “idea” and “area,” three-syllable words average to 7 letters. There are 23 three-syllable words with only four letters total, but only a handful in common parlance. The performer now knows your word must have at least three vowels as well. You probably feel foolish now, wondering how you didn’t work this out yourself. Don’t feel foolish. Mentalists and magicians spend years on making 5 minutes of your life perplexing. You are no match for a mentalist in those 5 minutes.

It all boils down to this.  

The mentalist knows the word you’re thinking of has 3 syllables, and has 7 letters. At this point, an exceptional mentalist knows even more after sizing you up.
 

Here’s the scary part.   The mentalist hasn’t broken a sweat. From the perspective of the audience, the performer hasn’t even lit any candles. But from the view of a psychically virile mentalist like Jon Finch, he’s already got his trousers off. Having seen the “Syllables Ploy” fly by you breezily, with even more confidence the mentalist asks you to count the letters in your word. The “psychic” performer observes your ideomotor response (easier than it sounds with a bit of practice), and now knows your word has 7 letters and ends with a vowel