🚗 Magic tricks for a car journey
In a car there is no table and anything dropped is gone under a seat. These tricks need nothing at all, or only somebody's thinking. Start with The Answer Is Always 3.
Start here: 3️⃣ The Answer Is Always 3 · Checked
The tricks with nothing at all
8 tricks in the shop need nothing but hands and a voice:
- Thumb Off: Apprentice, 5 minutes to learn, ages 5 to 8.
- The Stretching Finger: Apprentice, 3 minutes to learn, ages 5 to 9.
- Eleven Fingers: Apprentice, 3 minutes to learn, ages 5 to 9.
- The Answer Is Always 3: Apprentice, 2 minutes to learn, ages 6 to 11.
- The Grey Elephant Prediction: Apprentice, 3 minutes to learn, ages 7 to 12.
- The Secret Partner Code: Conjurer, 15 minutes to learn, ages 7 to 12.
- The Nine Times Fingers: Apprentice, 5 minutes to learn, ages 7 to 11.
- The Knuckle Calendar: Apprentice, 5 minutes to learn, ages 6 to 10.
Mind reading from the back seat
Most of the mind-reading tricks are maths that always lands in the same place, so they work without seeing anybody's face. The driver can play too, as long as they only need to think. Say the steps slowly and let everybody work it out in their heads.
Take turns: one person is the magician for ten minutes, then they swap. Teaching the trick to somebody else in the car is part of the fun on a long drive, and keeping the Code can wait until you get there.
Practising for later
A long drive is also a good time to learn the words for a trick to perform when you arrive. Read the patter aloud from the trick page, then say it from memory. By the time you get there, you'll be ready for an audience.
Pick me a trick with "Nothing at all" on the table hands over one of these.
A car-journey show, in order
Open with Eleven Fingers, which is a joke as much as a trick and gets everybody counting. Then the Nine Times Fingers for whoever is learning their tables, the Knuckle Calendar when somebody mentions a birthday, and close with The Answer Is Always 3, which works on the whole car at once.
Keep the volume down for the driver, and keep every trick in your own hands: nothing gets passed between seats, and nothing needs a table. If somebody gets car-sick reading, the tricks with nothing at all are the ones to do, because there is nothing to look down at.
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