Your friend builds a tower of three dice while your back is turned. You look at it for about a second. Then you say what all five hidden faces add up to, without touching the tower.
🌟 Level 1: Apprentice
⏱ 3 minutes to learn
🔮 Mind reading
🎒 Ages 5+
Works by itself, or one simple move. It works the first try.
👶 Small parts! Keep them away from little brothers and sisters, and never put one in your mouth.👶 Dice are a choking risk for little ones under 4.
They don't hear your thoughts. Mind-reading tricks use maths that always lands on the same answer, a secret peek, or a code agreed with a partner beforehand. Magicians who do mind tricks are called mentalists.
How many magic tricks are there?
Thousands. But almost every one of them is built from just eight ideas: making something vanish, making something appear, changing it, moving it, floating it, passing it through something solid, mending it, or knowing the answer in advance. Once you can spot the eight, you can see how any trick is put together.
Your friend builds a tower of three dice while your back is turned. You look at it for about a second. Then you say what all five hidden faces add up to, without touching the tower. It's a level 1 apprentice trick for ages 5 to 10 (grades K–4th), takes 3 minutes to learn, and needs one thing you already have. Flick, the shop's rabbit, reads every step aloud with a picture, so a child can follow it alone.
The secret
Opposite faces of a die always add up to 7, so three dice hold 21 between them. The only number you can see is the top one, which means the hidden faces come to 21 take away the top.
What you need
Three dice
How to do it
Turn away and ask your friend to stack three dice into a tower, any way they like.
Turn back and look at the number on the very top. Only that one.
Take it away from 21 in your head. A four on top means seventeen.
Hold your hand over the tower, close your eyes, and say the number.
Let them unstack three dice and add up every face that was hidden.
Magic words to say
“I have X-ray eyes. They don't work on people, or walls, or homework. Only dice. It's a very specific superpower and I'm making the most of it.”
Pro tips
Do it twice with a different tower. Twice is what turns a fluke into a power.
Ask them to add it up out loud. The slow count up to your number is the best part.
Two dice works too, if you only have two: it's 14 take away the top.
If something goes wrong
If the total doesn't match, a die is probably sitting crooked, or somebody has added the top face in by mistake. Count it through together and you'll find it.
Safety notes
Small parts! Keep them away from little brothers and sisters, and never put one in your mouth.
Dice are a choking risk for little ones under 4.
Sit at a table.
No fire, no flames and nothing sharp in a child's hand anywhere in the Magic Shop. Nothing ever goes in a mouth, a nose or an ear.
Why it works
Every die is made so that opposite faces add up to 7: 1 with 6, 2 with 5, 3 with 4. In a tower of three, five faces are hidden and one is on top, which is exactly three opposite pairs (21) minus the face you can see.
What kind of trick is this?
🔮 Prediction. You knew all along, or you read their mind. Almost every trick ever invented is one of eight kinds, and knowing which one you're watching is how magicians work out how a new trick is done.
The skill it teaches:Patter: what you say. A trick is a story, not a thing that happens. Perform it and it counts towards the Mind Reader badge.
Questions about the x-ray dice trick
How do magicians read minds?
They don't hear your thoughts. Mind-reading tricks use maths that always lands on the same answer, a secret peek, or a code agreed with a partner beforehand. Magicians who do mind tricks are called mentalists.
How many magic tricks are there?
Thousands. But almost every one of them is built from just eight ideas: making something vanish, making something appear, changing it, moving it, floating it, passing it through something solid, mending it, or knowing the answer in advance. Once you can spot the eight, you can see how any trick is put together.