For the record, I thought of “spade” and then “orange” (perhaps because of an association of spades with the merchant B&Q, whose logo and branded materials are orange, though of course this is post-hoc rationalization on my part).
The reason why I think concentrating on “suggestion” is often an indication that you’ve missed something, is that suggestion is not reliable enough for magicians to use it as the sole mechanism for an effect, especially in settings like live television where the stakes are high. Magicians prefer to use it in combination with another method. Then, if the suggestion works, the effect is spectacular, but if it fails, the other method comes in and saves the effect. For example, Derren asks David Frost to picture something “in the back of your mind” and emphasizes this by tapping the back of his head. He then guesses that the word will “begin with a guttural sound, like a C or a G”. I wondered if this was an attempt at suggestion (via an association from “back of the mind” to “back of the mouth”) that didn’t quite come off, with some other method then saving the effect. (My own word was “apple”, which does start with a guttural sound—a glottal stop—though this would not have helped Derren, because no-one in the audience would know enough phonology to recognize that this was the case.)
But yes, you’re right, I was a bit too strong in my comment above and suggestion does sometimes deserve consideration. If by good luck it works in a trick, then you might not get a hint from the performance as to what the backup method was going to be.
(If you can point me to televised tricks that you think are pure suggestion, then I’d be interested to see them.)
For the record, I thought of “spade” and then “orange” (perhaps because of an association of spades with the merchant B&Q, whose logo and branded materials are orange, though of course this is post-hoc rationalization on my part).
The reason why I think concentrating on “suggestion” is often an indication that you’ve missed something, is that suggestion is not reliable enough for magicians to use it as the sole mechanism for an effect, especially in settings like live television where the stakes are high. Magicians prefer to use it in combination with another method. Then, if the suggestion works, the effect is spectacular, but if it fails, the other method comes in and saves the effect. For example, Derren asks David Frost to picture something “in the back of your mind” and emphasizes this by tapping the back of his head. He then guesses that the word will “begin with a guttural sound, like a C or a G”. I wondered if this was an attempt at suggestion (via an association from “back of the mind” to “back of the mouth”) that didn’t quite come off, with some other method then saving the effect. (My own word was “apple”, which does start with a guttural sound—a glottal stop—though this would not have helped Derren, because no-one in the audience would know enough phonology to recognize that this was the case.)
But yes, you’re right, I was a bit too strong in my comment above and suggestion does sometimes deserve consideration. If by good luck it works in a trick, then you might not get a hint from the performance as to what the backup method was going to be.
(If you can point me to televised tricks that you think are pure suggestion, then I’d be interested to see them.)