 Now I This is sort of a challenge. I just don't are there any amateur magicians or professionals as a matter of fact in the audience today Let's see some hands. Oh, we've got a few here. Oh, I'm sorry. You're that close. I got the vibration. I didn't know what they were coming Okay, I'm gonna tell you You ladies and gentlemen of science that I do this next demonstration just to make the magicians nuts Because this is something that they have not solved. It's not on sale It's not in any of the catalogs or nothing like that none of the instruction books and I've never shown anyone how to do it But it's a very simple demonstration and it involves some mathematics. I'm sure you'll forgive me these That I have in my hand here are what they call the ESP cards the circle the plus mark the wavy lines the square and The star these were designed by a man named Zener a psychologist in Switzerland many years ago who made up these cards Usually they're much smaller. These are the display kind so the whole audience can see them clearly He made these up for tests in psychology particularly in parapsychology to test ESP powers of predictive powers and and Of reading powers of telling what people were looking at now. I have also here a Brown Manila envelope with a class one at this time That's good and a piece of black paper of photographic quality Which is quite opaque and I'm going to take this whole works and I'm going to give it to someone here in the audience Where is it? Well, they can give it to this Starling's woman right here. If you don't mind would you okay? I want somebody sufficiently far away from me So I can't peek now. Here's what I'd like you to do sir I'd like you to take the five cards and mix them now. I should say shuffle them But it's very difficult with only five cards, you know So just take them and face down shuffle them up So they're thoroughly mixed in such a way that you and people around you that no one will know which card is which when you've done That let me know Okay, that was quick now. I want you to take any two of them keeping them all face down Take any two of them and put the other three on the floor underneath your chair face down Done that okay now the other two you have in your hand. You must not know what they are I want you to be sure that you don't know what they are But here's the tricky thing look at me for a second You got the two cards look away and turn the two of them quickly face-to-face. I Think I heard that yes, okay take that little package of cards You have that pair of cards put them inside the piece of black paper just unfold it put them inside the piece of black paper Okay, and take that little package and put it inside the envelope and Use if you will both the glue and the and the little see if they glue is really nasty I tried one of those previously, but glue the envelope and use the little Catch on it as well if you would Got it. Okay, so it's all sealed up now now make sure that when I approach your chair I can't see the other cards that are underneath hold your legs in front of them or put something on top of them because if I were able to see what they are then I would know what the two in the envelope were right Okay, now let me have the envelope. I'll keep looking away from you and make sure I don't fall off the stage here There we okay now this will call the front of the envelope. This will call the back This is a technical thing. I want to get clear from the very beginning. All right now What are the odds and this this is the the big question? Where's my pen there? We are the big question right now is what are the odds of me being able to tell what one of the cards inside the envelope is This is the easy part One-fifth 20% one in five. Okay, that's it You suspect me of skulled-uggery you're right No, I don't know this gentleman. I haven't met you before on my corrector. Okay The chances of my finding out what one of the cards are correctly that is is one in five What are the chances of my finding out what two of them are come on? This is just testings. I know you hate it, but you have to do it every now and then What are the chances of my knowing what both cards are inside the envelope? One in 20. Okay, how did you get that one over five times one over four? uh-huh What are the chances of my knowing? What the two cards are without knowing in what position they are though think about this for just a second for years I was going around giving people the wrong figures the chances of my finding out what the two cards are by Some super power or something like that Are not as easy to calculate as you might think you might think it's one over five times one over four But to tell you on which side of the envelope they're located That's a different matter all I used to double. I used to say one and twenty. No, it's one and forty. It's actually What one and twenty if it's on which side of the envelope they are if I just say I've got a and B And I don't say in what order they are. That's a different matter all together Funny, huh Now this is the back of the other because you can see the class right here And this is the front of the envelope very obviously I'm going to tell you right now that I know what cards are in here for example and on the back of the envelope here I have a sneaking suspicion that there we have the plus mark and I think that on the other side Of the envelope we have the circle. That's the easy one and it just to make sure of that I'm going to draw a circle on here and I'm going to draw a plus mark on there. Okay now This is what we call the moment of truth I'm going to open the envelope very carefully and who sticky You really licked that didn't you? Making sure that no time to my fingers leave my hands And remember I said that on this side we had the plus in this side We should have the circle and let's just see how correct we are and indeed when I open up the piece of paper We find that we do have All right, we want to take money on it. Let's put money on it Who's gonna back me come on let's let's get some calculations going here You what you see he was right When I asked what are the chances of my guessing what these cards are he said 100% That was my line that I'm supposed to come up with at the end of it all you see After they had done all the calculations just the chances are 100% because this is a trick now Wait a minute. There's another possible solution here. I took the envelope from the gentleman like this, right? And I walked across here with it. I Might have just very quickly just gone in here and done a switch for an envelope that was already inside my jacket Well, that's not true because you can see How can we prove that that's not true? Look at the other three cards of course Let's see the other three cards if you would please sir and hold them up above your head and show them the Ah, we got the wavy lines. We got the square and we got this circle the star right hey very good Okay, now this is another example of what they call in the trade Mentalism it appears to be done with the mind, but it's done by sheer trickery I have had solutions for this offered me by scientists to say oh, there's a computer chip buried in the envelope And there's a scanner inside there little camera on the end of your finger here And when you know I've had every kind of solution offered me. It's actually very simple. You want to know how I did it? tough For more of James Randy and the educational foundation make sure you visit Randy.org