Pick an Animal Trick

Introduce your assistant, the great mind reader.  Send her out of the room.  Show a sheet with pictures of 9 animals, with their names beneath the pictures.  Ask a spectator to select any animal.  Invite the mind reader back in.  She correctly reveals the chosen animal!  Want to learn to do this? 

Pre-arrange a secret code with your assistant.  When she comes back in, you touch each of the 9 animal pictures, asking, “Was it this?  Was it this?”, etc.  You touch all 9 pictures in the 3×3 chart.   Your assistant watches where your finger touches in the middle square, as this square acts as a map of the whole chart.  If you touch the middle square in the upper right corner, your assistant knows the animal in the upper right corner of the chart was chosen!  If you touch the middle square in the lower middle, she knows it was the lower middle animal in the chart.  If you touch the middle square right in the center, it was the center animal in the chart.  To download a chart you can do this with, click here.