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Hello Wizards,
There was quite a good turnout for the June meeting at which we welcomed Jim Ward who gave an interesting talk on several aspects of mentalism. Jim lives above Ripon and is a member of Harrogate Society of Magicians to which Henry Norris and I are currently members. Bob Eaton and Alan Oldfield were also members. Incidentally, for those who knew Alan, I recently learned that his widow sadly passed away at the end of May.
As well as being a member of HSM, Jim is also member of the British Ring No. 25 of the IBM and a full member of the IBM. He has had articles published in The Budget (The British Ring magazine) and Abra (The world's only weekly magic magazine) as well as having non-magical material for programmes on Radio 4. As a profession, Jim works free-lance from home for several legal companies producing legal documents etc.
A down side with the talk was that we were trying out the new PA system and Jim failed to take advantage of its being there, due to him not being a performer so much as a creator. While it wasn't everyone's cup of tea, several people leaving during the interval, those who stayed the whole evening seemed to have enjoyed themselves and I would imagine would agree about his creative ideas. But what were his ideas?
Well among Jim's effects was a very strong book test using a couple of standard dictionaries. Jim handed out the books to two people, one to be the subject and the second to confirm the chosen word. To do the effect, Jim explained, you simply need to learn the first defined word of each page and its page number! Did I mention earlier that Jim loves using mnemonics, although often a crib card can be used instead. One example of this was where a member of the audience thought of a word. Jim determined what the word was picking out some of the letters initially and then exploring the meaning of the word. The words though of was one from a considerable sizes list and with the help of a crib sheet, or just memory if you're like Jim. The list is such that the top word of the crib list (a list that matches the words from which one is chosen) omits a letter that appears in the rest, the next word down also omits a letter present in those below as does the third word in relation to those below it and so on.
Unfortunately, this is being written from memory in the main as a reporter hadn't been organised by the Committee but the bits described should give an indication of Jim's creative mind. Another effect was where one line from the residential half of a phone directory was chosen (genuinely at random) and yet scrawled on a piece of paper was similar information about a name and part of an address. Instead of using a Swami Gimmick or Nail Writer (some of which are quite expensive) Jim had used a technique called pocket writing. A very short 4-8cm. long piece of pencil is used and the writing is done in the pocket. Jim suggested using a floppy disk in the pocket as a backboard. The information is recorded as while it is being given to the audience and the piece of paper is scrunched up and switched for another by a favoured method.
The other memorable effect was called the Knight's Tour. Jim began by explaining that of all the chess pieces, the knight is the most peculiar for the way it moves, moving in an L shape of 2 then 1 square or 1 then 2 squares. Grand Masters of chess, he explained, learn to navigate the Knight from one corner of the chess board all round the board and back to the starting place landing on each and every square once and once only. Jim felt it would be interesting to see if he could do the same but without a chess board and pieces and starting from any square called out by the audience! To control the experiment, Ross Risdon held up a 64 square grid marking the starting square and those called out by Jim (whose back was to Ross the whole time) each time confirming the move was legal in the game of Chess. He managed to successfully navigate the entire board with no errors, the audience responded strongly to the incredible effect. Jim explained this was a relatively easy effect to present as you only needed to remember one number, the number was 119 digits long though! That is to say assuming part of the tour was from square 6 on the grid to 21 – 31 – 16 – 22, that part of the 119 digit No. would read as 6-21-31-16-22. The whole number is remembered as a cyclic number i.e. going back to the start and continuing. With a confederate and an earpiece of a well-constructed crib card, this makes a strong but easy to do effect. Jim however relied just upon his memory, which remember was already retaining the words at the top of every page of his dictionary!
What Jim lacks (by his own admission) in his stagecraft and presentation skills, he more than makes up for with his enthusiasm and creative mind, and very extensive memory.
He may return one day. I'd look forward to another visit from Jim Ward.
Thanks for reading.
