Flick's Mind-Reading Machine

Five mind reading tricks to try online

Find your card. Flick deals twenty-one playing cards. You choose one in your head and keep quiet. Then Flick deals them into three columns, three times, and each time you tap the column your card is in. After the third tap Flick turns your card over. It is the classic 21-card trick, and it works every single time.

Find your number. Think of any number from 1 to 60. Flick shows six cards full of numbers, and for each one you tap yes or no: is your number on it? From your six answers Flick says your number. It is the secret number cards trick, and the six cards are on the printables page to cut out and use on somebody at home.

The magic number. Before you start, Flick seals a number in an envelope. You build a three-digit number from three rows of boxes, turn it round, take the smaller from the bigger, turn the answer round and add. You do the sums yourself, three boxes each time. Then the envelope opens: 1089, every single time.

Guess my animal. Choose one of 40 animals in your head, from a lion to a ladybug. Flick asks yes-or-no questions, and you can always say "not sure". Each question is the one that splits the animals left most evenly, the same idea as the number cards, so about six questions find one in 40. Every answer comes from the animal's own page in Peabody's animals, where each size has its source.

Three predictions: a mind reading trick in three questions. Flick folds a prediction slip, then asks you to choose a colour; folds another, and asks for a fruit; folds a third, and you pick a die and add its top and bottom. All three slips open together, and all three match. It is the old one-ahead method, and the die is the X-Ray Dice secret.

A mind reading kit to print

Print the kit and do the tricks on somebody at home: four 1089 prediction cards to fold shut before you start, the three-predictions script with its three slips, and a one-page animal chart with the answer to every question for all 40 animals. The buttons are under the machine.

How the mind reading works

None of the tricks needs luck. They run on arithmetic that always lands in the same place, which is why mind reading is the friendliest kind of magic for a nervous performer: there is no secret move to fumble. After each trick Flick asks if they got it right, and then shows you the secret, in words a child can follow, with a link to the trick's own page where the steps are drawn and read aloud.

Nothing you tap is typed, kept or sent. Your card, your number and your animal stay in your head, which is the whole point. There are more tricks like these in every mind reading trick in the shop and on the Top 10 mind reading tricks, and Pick me a trick will hand you one for tonight.