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Hidden Agenda | Hofzinser's Glove

By Roberto Giobbi - Friday, August 9, 2019

From Hidden Agenda, March 26th

Hofzinser's Glove Mar 26th

Show a glove and explain that it is the glove of the famous Viennese magician Johann Nepomuk Hofzinser. If you have the right type of audience you may want to expand on Hofzinser in one or two sentences, explaining how important and influential he was. You can find basic information on practically any important conjuror on the Internet.

Tell them that whoever wears this glove will be able to do incredible things. An obvious idea for using this would be any Cutting the Aces type of routine: Have the spectator put on the glove, cut the deck into four packets and then show that he has cut to the four Aces, or have him cut five packets and show that he has cut to a Royal Flush, or his phone number, or his birthday.

What more can you come up with?

Obviously it doesn’t have to be a glove, and it needn’t have belonged to Hofzinser.

All entries from this series come from Roberto Giobbi's Hidden Agenda book.

Reader comments:

Pete

Sunday, 11 August 2019 15:44 PM - Reply to this comment

I had a related idea for the Stewart James effect Miraskill.

At the beginning, you show a prediction that says "I will win by two." Each spectator chooses a color, and you give the prediction to spectator A. After the Miraskill process, what do you know, Spectator A's color wins by two.

Now you have A hand the prediction to spectator B, and when you repeat the process, B's color now wins by two. With the cleanliness of the Miraskill procedure, it really seems like the paper has some sort of power.

You could replace the prediction paper with anything, but you wouldn't get the finish: you take back the prediction paper, so neither A nor B has it, and repeat one last time. This one comes out to be a tie, and when they look up, you have folded the prediction into an origami necktie.

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