Spellbound: The Principles of Illusions

Speaker 1

I have told people this story just a few minutes ago. I used to share an office with a guy, really nice guy named Jim. For five years, I shared an office with Jim.

In the world of magic, he went by the great Bodini.

So, gotta tell you, I'm very used to looking at people who are mentalists and who are illusionists and who are magicians and having to say things like, get the f out of here. What just happened?

So, I am very, very cautiously optimistic about our next guest who is gonna come out here on this stage and probably blow a whole lot of minds, probably gonna make me drop the f bomb over in the corner every once in a while, but I am going to tell you, and I say this with absolute confidence. So David Kwong has a new show on Netflix. So you're all gonna go into your Netflix account, hit the little thumbs up, mark the thing. It's called Wait a minute. Am I totally gonna get it wrong now?

New series called The Puzzle Room. We're all gonna go watch it tonight, right, in the hotel when that all comes up. But he has the coolest title ever.

I had to read it till I didn't make it wrong. New York Times cross crossword constructor.

Guys, the guy builds crossword puzzles. So now my slides are busted. He builds crossword puzzles. I'm leaving. David, come out here.

Speaker 2

Hello. That's probably the best introduction I've ever had. Thank you so much. I I I look forward to the f bombs. Hello, everybody. My name is David Kwong. I am both a magician and a mentalist and a New York Times crossword instructor, which basically means I've taken the world's nerdiest hobbies and combined them into one job.

Exactly the career path my parents envisioned for me, by the way.

Now, here's the thing. Unlike most magicians, I don't pretend to have any superpowers at all. I acknowledge right up front that it is all science. It's the science of fooling your brain. It's misdirection. It's getting steps ahead of your audience, and I'm gonna pull back the curtain a little bit today, and to to sort of exemplify my my approach here, I did wanna point out a few things.

So I did I wrote this book. Let's see if I can get to this next slide. Here we are.

Okay. So this is Spellbound, the seven principles of illusion. I'm gonna tell you about one of the principles today. As another way of illustrating that, I like to pull back the curtain. I designed the magic for the the first, Now You See Me movie, which was, magicians robbing banks.

So, your wallets are safe, but, yes, you can you can use these powers for for evil and not good. But no, that was that was a fun film. But I I really think that people appreciate magic more when they learn how these principles work. K? And then, of course, I'm also trying to inspire the young younger generation, to to pick up magic and learn these principles and think differently, which is why I wrote How to Fool Your Parents.

By the way, I love signing these books to kids. I'm very easy to find. You go to my website, I love sending these books out, so feel free to get in touch. And then I'm so thankful for the plug for the puzzle room. I'm just so happy and excited to share this with all of you. I hope you'll check it But all of this, it has sort of like coalesced in this very strange career that I have in Los Angeles, where people come to me and they ask me to explain and teach and and talk about the way the brain works, how we can get ahead of people, and that is why, I consult on a lot of films, a lot of, film and TV as a consultant in magic and puzzles, and I'm gonna tell you a story that comes out of Hollywood that I think will really nicely exemplify my thought process, and hopefully inspire you to push your craft further in this way. So, this involves a prominent director, a friend of mine named Edgar Wright.

Now, many of you have probably seen this absolute masterpiece from twenty years ago called Shaun of the Dead. Has anyone seen Shaun of the Dead? Yeah. Look at this. Oh, I'm in a room full of nerds. This is amazing.

I don't get a lot of hands that often for Shaun of the Dead. This is gonna be a very fun next little while with all of you. But Baby Driver is incredible. Everything he touches.

Running Man, he just did. So this is a story that involves Edgar, and at the time, he was working on a film involving a con artist. He wanted me and my friend Blake to to teach him and this actor we were working with on how to think ahead and get ahead of people. So he invited me over to his house to give this lesson on how a magician thinks.

Now, the afternoon did not get off to a great start. Blake and I showed up about fifteen minutes late to Edgar's house. We were apologizing profusely at the door that we couldn't find his house, but eventually, everything was working out just fine, because we started doing magic tricks and illusions in his living room. And when I finished, Edgar said to me, he said, I want you to show me your best trick.

So Blake and I kinda turned to each other, and we we were like, well, we just did all of our coolest stuff, but I think we could probably come up with something else. Edgar, do you have a backyard, or rather sorry, I misspoke. Do you have a driveway, I asked. Do you have a driveway that we could go into?

And he said, well I have a lovely backyard. Should we go there instead? And we said, we agreed, and we went to the backyard, and we were standing out on this porch, this beautiful veranda overlooking this backyard in the east part of Hollywood, Los Filos, and I said to Edgar, I want you to name any playing card, and he said the five of hearts. And then I said, I want you to point anywhere you want in your backyard, and he pointed over here, it was about two o'clock from where we were standing, and we went over the bushes, and I said, Edgar, I want you to get down on the dirt, in the dirt, and dig right there, and tell me what you find. And he found a folded up playing card, and he opened it up, and it was the five of hearts.

And Edgar Wright lost his ****.

Sorry to swear, but that's the best way to describe it. His mind was completely blown, and I said to him, look, you asked me to come over here and give you a lesson on how a magician thinks. Now normally, I keep the secrets close to the vest, but because this is a lesson, I'm gonna tell you how this all worked. And I pulled out my iPad, and I played him this video right here.

Let's see if we can queue this video up. So this is me and Blake burying fifty two playing cards in Edgar Wright's backyard hours before the meeting started. And we made a little map, and we, we figured out where every single card was, and you get the idea. And my friends, this is how magic works.

It is not, dancing girls and smoke and mirrors. It's forethought, it's anticipation, and it's planning. And as a magician and a puzzle maker, I work, we'll click on it. You've seen enough of this.

Let's go on to the next slide. Thank you so much. I work in this intersection of misdirection and complicated ruses. I like to plan things out, and I'm gonna teach you here, one of the principles.

I I mentioned my book before, Spellbound, The Seven Principles of Illusion. This is probably the deepest, darkest, media secret of them all that I'm gonna teach you about. Now, don't want any of you to call the magic police on me, because I'm not giving away the technical secrets. These are just the the underpinnings of how these things work.

These are the scientific principles. I hope they inspire you, to push your craft further, and this this principle is called the illusion of free choice. Now, the illusion of free choice states that if you can get your audience believing that they are dictating how the trick goes, they will buy into the illusion more. Now, my friend Blake and I did not make this up.

It's all around us. Think about this. The last time think about the last time that maybe you were at at work, and you had a great idea, and in order to convince your boss to adopt this idea and to go for it, you convince her that it was her idea to begin with. Right?

Or think about when you're at a, in a sales meeting, if you're trying to convince someone on the other side of the table to go for what you're proposing, you're gonna allow them to come to this decision to agree to the thing that you've already sort of outlined for them, and you'll find that when people have ideas themselves, when they themselves make these decisions, they're actually more emotionally invested in the outcome of these decisions. Now, I'll probably say this again and again and again throughout this talk, but magic is, you know, the art form of magic is inherently deceptive, but I am not preaching that right now.

I think that there is a benevolent way that you can use these principles to foster more command and control in your life, and that's why I'm excited to share these with you right now. So this is a way, with the illusion of free choice, that you can harness the power of choice to be more effective. Now, wanna talk a little bit about the social science of this, and there's a really interesting experiment. This was from about twenty years ago.

It was out of France, and these two social scientists, Nicolas Guayga and Alexandre Pasquale, did this landmark experiment where they had a young person go into a shopping mall and say this very simple line, may I please have change for the bus? And that young man received change probably, it was about ten percent of the time. But then, they here's what was the control. They sent that man into the bus again, I'm sorry, into the shopping mall again with the same line, but this time they appended to that, to that request, but you are free to accept or refuse.

So once again, was, may I please have change for the bus, but you are free to accept or refuse, reminding people of their ability to choose things and to decide for themselves, and just by doing that, by appending that little reminder of free choice to the proceedings, his results skyrocketed to forty seven point five percent, so nearly fivefold increase by reminding people that they were able to choose and that they were in control of their own destiny. And this is just like a little interesting thing, but not only did the success rate jump up fivefold, but actually people gave more money.

So apparently, you remind people that they have the ability to choose things, they are not just more, willing, but they're also more generous, apparently. Now, this is the power of choice, and I want to take it a step further.

First, let me say that there is a, there's sort of an addition to all this thing, the choice supportive bias. So basically, when we choose things, when we have autonomy, when we choose things ourselves, we also defend those, the choices that we've made. We defend our discoveries even in the face of data that disproves those things. It's real it's quite interesting. So here's a real life example of all this. I'm gonna take you back to April thirtieth nineteen forty three in World War two, and here's where we are. We are off the coast of Huelva, Spain, and a fisherman finds a body floating face down in the Atlantic, and that body is held afloat by a life preserver, and chained to that man's wrist, that floating cadaver's wrist, is a briefcase.

Now, inside that briefcase is, is disinformation, and this was an elaborate ruse that, that the Allies came up with called Operation Mincemeat. Maybe some of you have heard of it now. I think there's even a Broadway musical now about Operation Mincemeat. This is a great example of the, illusion of free choice and the power of discovery. Here is the, what was found inside the floating dead man's wallet. This his name, was Major William Martin. He was an illusion, created by a hush-hush part of the British Secret Service called seventeen m or seventeen m, and this this he was completely completely conjured up out of nothing.

But they supported all of this illusion with making him seem like he was real. Now once again, was called Operation Mincemeat, and this was an actual picture of the body that was found there, floating there in the Atlantic. You can see the death notice. They took pains to even put a death notice in the evening paper.

You can see in the sort of just above the lower right hand corner, you can see it says W. Martin, just in case the Germans were checking to see if William Martin was in fact a real person who had fallen off a boat and had died. And then in his wallet also was a picture of his girlfriend. This was actually a woman that worked at Bletchley Park.

She was a code breaker. If you saw The Imitation Game and you know about the Enigma code, this was part of her effort. But the idea here was to buttress the idea that this was a real person. And the Allies knew that Spain was a neutral country, but they figured that they would lean slightly toward the Germans, and that the contents of this briefcase would find its way to the German high command in Berlin with this file of disinformation, which basically said what the Allies were going to do across the Mediterranean.

Now, the Allies had been perched in North Africa, but the Germans didn't know whether they were going to go Sicily or the Balkans or Greece and Sardinia, and the contents of the briefcase planted just enough clues that they, would concentrate their defenses on Greece and Sardinia, which left Sicily wide open for the Allies, and it was a very successful operation, on July tenth nineteen forty three. So, this is a real world demonstration of the power of choice, and when you discover things, you believe things that you discover yourself.

Now, the Allies were what, has been termed as a choice architect. I love this idea. Choice architects are people that, are in control of shaping the choice environment in which choices are made.

And, choice architect, this was a phrase coined by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler in their really cool book, really seminal book called Nudge, And the idea of nudging is you have things laid out your as as a leader laid out and planned, but you have your your your employees, your followers, your colleagues, you give them just a little bit of a nudge toward what you've already designed, but you keep their ability to choose intact. So a great way to think about this is if you want your company to eat healthier food rather than force them to eat the salads instead of the pizza. You just put the salads at eye level.

The pizza's still there, but you're just giving them a little bit of a nudge to what you've already intended. So magicians, of course, are experts at nudging people. We've laid everything out ahead of time, but we nudge you just slightly to decide something for yourself. This is a great quote that illustrates this.

The idea of nudging to design ways to help people make choices that they themselves think are better.

As Dwight D. Eisenhower said, leadership is the art of getting people to want what must be done.

Now, here's I'm gonna teach you all a magic trick that you can try at home. Okay?

Now, there's a lot of ways to do pick a card, any card, and I want you to try this when you get home here tonight. So, the best magic tricks are ones that take place in the hands of the audience. That's what we say. They get to sort of do the magic themselves.

Now, let's say they pick a card, and you know that it's the queen of diamonds. Let's say it's the queen of diamonds. There's lot of ways to figure out what card they've chosen, but and we can do a little sidebar about this later. But let's say they choose the queen of diamonds.

Now, you want them to have this discovery of the magic themselves. So then you lay out the cards like this on the table for them to choose the queen of diamonds. Now, the way you lay it out is the first card is a random card, the second card is the queen of diamonds, the intended card, the third card is a random card, and the fourth card is a random card. And you tell them, I want you to touch any card that you like, and I will tell you, I've done this trick, I don't know, thousands of times.

I would say eighty five percent of the time, people will choose that second card, the queen of diamonds, and the reason this works is because they avoid the first card because it's too easy, and you have placed that third card and fourth card just a little bit too far on the table, so they have to uncomfortably stretch to touch those third and fourth cards. So they'll go for the second card, This is putting the choice right in their hands, and it works about eighty five percent of the time. So give that a try when you get home. See if you can be a choice architect, and reorganize the context in which people make decisions.

Now, I want to take you back to the Edgar Wright story, and tell you how Blake and I were choice architects in that moment. So, you might recall that even though we had been there hours before the meeting, right, we had everything set up, we had everything designed, we then wanted Edgar to make all the decisions himself.

So we buttressed this illusion. Even though we had been there three hours beforehand, we actually showed up fifteen minutes late for this very important meeting so that we could say at the door, I'm sorry, we've never been in this house before. We couldn't find it. So we were already we were already up to up to no good right from the beginning.

Then we got into the living room. We started doing tricks. We waited for Edgar to say to us, can you do one final trick? Can you show me your coolest thing?

And Blake and I kinda looked at each other, and we were like, oh, we we just did everything, but we could probably come up with something else. Hold on. Let's we're gonna discuss this. We'll come up with another trick, even though it was already all planned out.

Then, I suggested, could we go to your driveway as the outdoor space?

And I let Edgar upgrade us to the backyard. Now, if he had agreed to the driveway, we would have gotten outside and said, you know what? This isn't really working. Do you have something a little greener?

Do you have another place that we can go to? And that's sort of an important part of of Magic Trick is that we can always pivot our story to get to where we need to go. We never tell you what the end of the story is going to be. We can always get where we need to go.

Then, once we were in the backyard, you might remember that I did say to Edgar, I want you, after I said you can name any playing card, at which point he freely said the five of hearts, you might recall that I then said, I want you to point anywhere in your backyard, and you're probably wondering, how did I get him to point exactly where the five of hearts was buried?

And I'm not gonna tell you that. No, I'll give you a little hint. We were able to manipulate exactly where we needed him to point by using a lot of suggestion and influence to get him to point right where it was buried, but the important takeaway is this, is that even though we were able to direct where we wanted him to point exactly, we then changed the story on him and told him, wow, you could have pointed anywhere. Right?

You really had free choice. So five minutes after the trick, ten minutes after the trick, we kept reminding him, Edgar, you could have pointed anywhere you wanted in your backyard, and we are always magicians are always changing the narrative. So even when I run into him today, I mean, we probably did we did this so many years ago. Even when I run into him today at just like a party in Hollywood, and we and the trick comes up, I change his story, and I said, man, you we we we you could have walked anywhere in your house, and you could have found the the car that you named.

So we're always changing the narrative to buttress the trick.

So I just wanted to end with a quick thing to say here, which is that there's a couple of ways to think about magic tricks.

And my approach is to pull back the curtain.

And this is a, you there are only a few practitioners out there that admit that they don't have superpowers. Right? I don't pretend to have any superpowers at all. I acknowledge that it's all the science of getting ahead of your audience, and I want you to think about that as a possibility in your lives as well.

Because what a magician does is a superhero who accomplishes something impossible, and if you think about, let's say someone asks you to do a task, and you do it quicker than expected. They ask you to make up a deck, a marketing deck or something, and you do it quicker than expected because you already have a template to go. There's a task that someone needs you to do. You've already programmed the framework.

You already have with a push of a button, it's done. You are a superhuman. You've accomplished this quicker than was expected. Now, you have a decision to make at that point.

You can let that superhuman ability just stand right there and be this, how did, you know, how did he pull that off so quickly? How did they get that done so fast? Be the superhuman. Be the magician in that moment.

Or you can choose to disclose that you were prepared, and you had done what I do, which is you get ahead, and you've set up this framework, and you are fifty steps ahead, a hundred steps ahead, you are prepared for each and every outcome, and when you disclose to your audience that you have basically put your arms around the situation, and you can handle every possible thing that could arise, you're prepared for each and every possible outcome, I think this makes you a superhero in a different way, and it fosters more, trust in the entire situation when you can put your arms around the audience.

So, that is my puzzler's approach to magic tricks, and it's perhaps something that that you can take away as well. Now, I thought it would be fun to demonstrate for all of you in real time how I harness all this different juggle juggle all this data in my head, and put things together as quickly as possible. All these different outcomes that I've set up. So what I'm gonna do now is transition into a little bit of sleight of hand.

Because I am a magician, I'm sort of contractually obligated to do pick a card, any card, but I'm gonna do it a little bit differently. I'm going to go for a, what's called a multiple selection trick, which is not just pick a card, any card, but pick many cards, many cards. So I'm gonna come into the and have a number of playing cards selected. We'll see if I'll I'll probably do about eight or ten cards, and generally this is when everyone looks away from me in terror, but I promise you this is gonna be fun and easy.

I notice no one's sitting in the front few seats. When there's a magician in the house, people like to to sit a little further back, but I I promise you it's gonna be painless and easy. I'm gonna come into the audience and have some cards selected. So And then I'll come back up on stage, and I'll show you the the fun will be there in just a moment.

So I'm just gonna ask you, hello. Could you say stop anytime you like?

Stop. Right there. That is a card for you. Can you remember that card? You can just look at it.

Can you remember that card? That's card number one. You want to take a photo so you don't forget? Okay.

Nice. Okay. Great. Awesome. Let's see. Hi. Could you say stop any time you like? Stop.

Okay. That's your card right there. Can you remember that? That's card number two. Great. Great.

Great. Let's come this way. Hello. Hello. Can you say stop any time you like? Stop.

Right there. That's a card for you, Paul. Thank you. I'm not a mind reader. I see your name tag.

Yep. That's number three. We're gonna come this way over here. Hello. Can you say stop anytime you like?

Stop. Okay. That's number four. Can you remember that? Alright. I'm gonna come a little bit further into the house.

You can't escape me back here. Let's see. Hi. Can you say up anytime you like?

Same time.

A little further before we go to the end. Stop. Hold on. Before we get to the end, let's try again.

Yes. That's fine. Here here we go for second. Thank you. That's number five. Good. Good.

Good. I like it. Try to keep me honest. That's great. Hello. Hi. What's your name?

Mike. Mike, say stop anytime you like.

Stop. Okay. That's number six. Can you remember that? Remember that? Not the same one, is it?

Hope not. Okay. Let's let's come this way. Hello. Hello. Hi. Could you say stop anytime you like?

Stop. Okay. That's one for you. Number seven, I think, or on number or so. Hello.

Hi. Would you say stop anytime you like? Stop. Oh, closer to top. Great. That is number eight.

Okay. And we'll come over here. Hi, Caroline. Say stop anytime you like.

Stop. Right there. Okay. That is number nine. Let's do nine cards here today. Let's do nine cards.

Okay. We're coming this way. Actually let's do ten. Hi. Tobin, say stop anytime you like.

Stop. Okay. That's number ten. Okay. You like that card? Oh you do. Good. Alright. Let's come back up to the stage.

I'm gonna see if I can find each and every one of your cards.

I am a an honest magician, wink wink. So I'm gonna do this with a good old fashioned riffle shuffle like this.

Why not? And a few fancy cuts, and we'll see if I can find each and every one of your cards. Now, I'm going try to do this in order if I can. I'm going see if I can cycle back this way.

So, the last person was a Tobin, right? Tobin, what card did you choose? I'll try to find your card here in the deck. The ten of hearts.

Yeah, just tell me. Just yell it out. Ten of hearts. Ten of hearts. Okay. To find the ten of hearts, I'm gonna cut the cards a few times using some fancy cuts like this, and these are, this is a triple swivel cut.

I'm gonna do it one more time. You said ten of hearts should be about the thirty sixth card down. Should be the ten of hearts. That's card number one.

Pretty good, right? Okay, cool. Thank you. Don't worry, it'll get better. Promise. Let's see. Who else did I Who else chose a card?

Let's move that way. Yeah. What did you have back there? Yeah. The six of diamonds.

The six of diamonds. That should be a little easier to find. The six of diamonds should be about seventeen from the top. That's the six of diamonds.

That's card number two. Thank you very much. Okay. Good, good, good. Let's see, and we're keeping keep going this way.

What did you have? Yeah. Nine of diamonds. Nine of diamonds. And who else had one back there?

Did someone else have one? What did you have?

Nine of diamonds, and the ten of clubs. Okay. I'll try to find those cards together. The nine of diamonds, and the ten of clubs.

Two cards at the same time should look a little bit like this. The nine of diamonds and the ten of clubs, here we go. Two cards at once, should be just like that. The nine of diamonds, and the ten of clubs.

How did I do? I think I got them both. I definitely did. Okay, great. Did anyone else, have one back there in the row, or are we coming this way?

What did you have?

Speaker 1

Five of hearts.

Speaker 2

The five of hearts. And what did you have here?

Okay. Five of hearts and queen of hearts. I'm gonna jump around a little bit. Let's do this.

Let's get that queen of heart. Five of hearts, queen of hearts. Let's get that queen of hearts. I'm gonna take the ten.

I'm gonna take the nine. Together, they're gonna go fishing for that card about here. Yes. One card now in between them should be the queen of hearts, and it is the queen of hearts.

Pretty good. Alright. Let's see. Now you had, it was Rebecca, right?

Let's see. You had it was five of hearts? Five of hearts. Yeah. That should be oh, no?

Speaker 1

I feel the f bomb coming.

Speaker 2

Oh, the f bomb is coming. I like it. Okay.

Let's try this. If I take a card like the two of clubs, I'm gonna use my sleeve to find that five of hearts. Now, know magicians use their sleeves, right? But I'm not gonna use the inside of my sleeve.

I'm gonna use the outside of my sleeve to find that five of hearts. Watch this two of clubs. I'm gonna rub it right here on my sleeve. I want you to see as it changes on the fabric, just like this, it becomes the five of hearts.

You're stunned into silence. I understand. It's okay. It's alright. It's fine. It's good. This is going very well.

This is going swimmingly. This is great. Who else had a card here? Did you have a card up here?

What did you have? Ace of Ace. Okay. Let's see if I can get this card.

I feel like if I reach out like this, you know magicians pull cards right out of thin air. Look at this. One card, boom, just like that is the ace of spades. Yes? And no?

I said eight

Speaker 1

of spades.

Speaker 2

Oh, eight of spades. Oh. Hold on. I'll just change it to the eight of spades. Alright. How about that?

F bomb? F bomb? Okay. Cool. Now he's getting good, right? Okay. Let's see. Let's see.

Who else had a What card was there a card here? Yeah. What did you have?

The ace of diamonds. Now, you've heard of palming cards, right? Magician's palm cards. This is called the classic palm, when it's in the front of the hand.

I'm gonna teach you something that is a it's a little bit different. It's called a back palm of a playing card, the back palm of a playing card. This is a sleight of hand move. It's sort of an ancient sleight of hand move from about nineteen hundred, nineteen o one by a great Boston magician named Doctor.

Elliott. He came up with the idea of the back palm of a playing card, and I'm going to show you here what that looks like. So if I were to take a card like the five of spades, if I were to back palm it What was your card again?

Of diamonds. Ace of diamonds. I'm gonna show you a back palm of the five of spades. Watch carefully. If I take that five of spades, and I back palm it, it looks like this.

This is a back palm, and I can make it actually reappear as the ace of diamonds, which was your card right there. Alright. Pretty good. Pretty good. Let's see. What did you have?

The two of diamonds. The two of diamonds. I'm gonna try an ancient sleight of hand move to get the two of diamonds. Now, this dates back to the late nineteen nineties, when I was a teenager and I learned this move.

I practiced this repeatedly to find, one card out of the deck using a one handed rotational pivot cut. So this is a one handed rotational pivot cut. Then what's gonna happen? You said two of diamonds?

One card is gonna fly out of the deck. It's gonna spin through the air about ten and a half times, and I'm gonna catch it here in my right hand. So here we go.

A one handed rotational pivot cut. Here's the top, pivoting to the bottom. That's a one handed cut. That took about two years of my life. Thank you. Yeah.

And and one card emerges from the deck, and just like that, it should be the two of diamonds. Thank you very much. Alright. Okay.

Did I leave? Oh, I left you out. Oh, sorry. Don't tell me what it is. Don't tell me what it is.

Well, that was my my coolest thing. Let's try let's try this. Actually, have an, what is your name? Ashmita.

Ashmita? Ashmita. Ashmita. Nice to meet you. I'm gonna come back to your card. Can you can you hold on to your card?

I'm gonna because I need to I need to try something with the New York Times crossword puzzle. I wanna get to that. We'll come back to that in just a minute. My friends, I am a New York Times crossword instructor.

I wanna share something special with you. Can we bring out the crossword? I know I was talking to Amanda before, so you can bring it out. Thank you so much.

What I'm going try to do here, my friends, is build a New York Times crossword for all of you right here, right now, on the fly, using some words and letters and phrases that you give me, and I'll see if I can put it together as quickly as possible. So question. Do we have any New York Times crossword solvers in the house? Any crossword people?

Alright. I love it. Sitting right up front. We're gonna have a lot of fun together.

This is great. Do we Are we playing Are we doing Wordle every day? Are we doing the connection? Yes.

We're in a golden age of puzzles and games right now. It's very exciting. We'll get this up. Thank you so much.

Excellent. Great. And we have markers. Oh, this is perfect. Thank you so much, friends. Okay.

So let's try this. I'm gonna teach you how a crossword puzzle comes together.

We're gonna participate. I'm gonna give you clues. You're gonna give me answers. We're gonna build this all together.

I think I think it sounds like a lot of fun. Is that cool? I think it seems like a real hoot. Let's get started.

Okay. So for those of you that solve a crossword puzzle, you know that there are always long words and phrases that run across the grid. We call these the theme words, right? Now let's do this.

Let's see. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. This is the middle.

User testing is four and seven. So user testing is a nice eleven letters long. Can we see that okay? User testing is eleven.

Let's have the grid up on screen, if we can.

This sits right in the middle of the grid. It's we love odd lengths. This is perfect, eleven, because it sits in the middle of the fifteen wide. We love right in the middle.

It allows us to put in the black squares on either side. You see that? Now, this is something perhaps you didn't know about the crossword puzzle. The black squares in the crossword puzzle are always rotationally symmetric.

Every single day, you can flip the board a hundred and eighty degrees, and the black squares will be in the same places. We call that rotational symmetry. It's a little easier to see from the corners. Look at this.

One, three, four. If I put, let's do three here, then I have to go one, two, three, four, and do three here. Rotational symmetry, right? Flip it upside down one hundred and eighty degrees.

Here, I'll break up some of the sides, and do three here, and maybe one, two, three, and do three down here. Now, again, I'm gonna give you some clues from the times.

You just yell up your answer to me, and we'll all build this together. Cool? Let's do this. One, two, three, four, five. I'm only gonna put two here.

This is going to create this ten letter answer that I have to contend with down here, and I've to do it up here as well. One, two, four, five. Okay. Here we go. Let's do this, Crafted. I want you please to yell out your answer.

If I were to if I were to give you this t here, coming through the e, here's Let's do this. I'm gonna give you an n as well. Here's your first clue. Just yell out your answer. Gifts, skills.

Talents. Very nice. Talents. Now notice, I said gifts, which is plural, so the answer is plural.

There's always a parallel relationship between the clue and the answer. Right? Let's do this. How about, if I go here, then this can go here, and maybe this ends in an e.

So blank, blank, blank, blank, l e. Okay, here's a Let's try. Let's see if you guys can get this one.

Four blanks l e.

Your clue is a genetic variant.

Allele. Okay, you guys came to play. I love it. Allele, boom. I'll make this an e, so maybe this is like enable, and what I've done here with the e's, I've set up the word tete, which is a French word for head.

You can have foreign languages in crosswords. You can't have them in Scrabble, but you can do them in crosswords here like this. So that's gonna be like that, and maybe I'm gonna keep my symmetry here, and do it here as well. Okay.

That's gonna end in an e, which is nice. This is gonna be like tablespoon, or maybe to be determined, TBD. That's fine.

Let's do to do. Isao is a first name, and that tracks well, so I'm gonna go like this. Now this is I l I don't know what that's gonna be. I lost, I lose, something like that.

That's a partial phrase. That's okay. We don't like too many of those, but that's alright. SLR camera works fine there.

That's in the crossword all the time. And then maybe an inscribed pillar in Buddhism is the steel, s t e l e, right? You know what I'm talking about. Okay.

Let's go here to the upper left hand corner. Three letters. Just yell this out, guys. What is a three letter word for Cleopatra's bane?

An ass killed Cleopatra. Lovely. Okay. So, well, not lovely, but okay, ass coming down. How about this?

How about this? I'm gonna give you a question mark clue. That means there's some word play. There's a pun involved.

Are you ready? Here we go. Blank R I, blank S, blank blank, your clue is some white colored workers, question mark.

Priests. Priests are white colored workers. I like it. Okay.

Priests. Boom. Okay. Let's do this. If I make this, oh god. Okay. So, Rios are Spanish rivers.

So, this is Sierra, which might be clued could be clued as like a range. I have a r blank, p blank blank. Who can tell me what the axilla is? A x I l l a.

Armpit.

Okay, great. This is gonna be I rest my case, and this is gonna be ponied up, or ponies, maybe Taz, or is probably better, but we'll just keep going here. How about this? Okay, I'm going to put one here and break up this little area here. That was a bit of a wide open area, so it's better to have a square there, so maybe this is like a, you know, I don't know yet. Maybe this is gonna be there. Does anyone know ending in N Elvis' middle name?

Erin, I think it's spelled like this, hope. And then maybe this is t o c, table of contents. Right? So let's go here with, notice, and if I make this an n blank, I blank, your clue is young musician question mark.

Young is a young musician, very nice.

How about blank blank blank L, former Dodgers pitcher pitcher Hirschheiser? Oral Hirschheiser. We love Oral Hirschheiser. Always in the crossword for his vowels. We love Yoko Ono. We love Brian Ino and Isai Morales of NYPD Blue.

An old reference. Also, Mission Impossible movies. Okay. Okay. Ready? Are you ready? Crafted, this is gonna be this is a no no.

This is your long one. That's a t. I want make this clear. Tell me if you know the answer to this one.

Blank blank c o.

Blank t e. Blank blank blank. Here is your tough one. Your clue is some gifted storytellers.

Woah. I got three of them. I heard of RockCon Tours is exactly right. RockCon Tours.

I said storytellers, which is plural, so the answer is plural. I'm gonna make this, eras, like the eras tour. Sure, why not? Let's make this pita.

This is gonna be no mas, no more.

Miu Miu is a Prada brand. Clued has one double, the Prada brand. I've seen that. This would be the Oribe, o r I b I, the Oribe, which is everyone's favorite African antelope.

Let's do this. My friends, please yell out for me a f e word or phrase. F e blank blank blank. Let's go.

Feline. I heard that. Feline. Let's make that work. Feline. So now I have l blank n e.

What could this be? Lane. Lane. It could probably actually every vowel could work, to be honest.

Let's try lane. Let's not do line, because we have feline already. I have blank I blank g. What could that be?

Anything. Sing. Sing, zing, I like it. Let's try zing with a z. That could be fun.

I have a n blank blank. What could that be?

Anon. We have crossworders in the house. Okay. Anon. Blank n o. Uno. Uno, a z u is gonna be a real Yoko Uno.

Let's put Uno in there, and then we have z o blank, crosses blank e n. Zoe. Zoe and een, which is in the crossword all the time for poetic evening. It's always it's always clued that way.

Yeah. Okay. Let's see. I gotta keep my symmetry here and make this, maybe I'll make this the city of Dallas.

That's an l there. What is this? Let's make this I lose, in fact. I'll make this Sarah, because if I do Sarah, then I have an s h beginning and a c r beginning.

You see how I combine those consonants to make that work, right? So if this is like a presale presale, then this could be from the cradle to the grave. This would be idle, I d l e. I don't have it in there already.

Right? Okay. Good. This would be as if, and sheets, and the letter s gets us out of that corner.

Now, if I have an r here, and I have the word sheets, then I can combine them with a clue, which would be five hundred sheets, is a ream. Yeah. A ream.

What did I forget? What did I forget? Yeah, Rheem.

Maybe I like ending this in IVE, so these could be like PVC pipes, So this could be let's make this how about no, don't like it. How about, delved. Okay. Delved into something.

Now, I've blank, blank, blank, blank, V, blank, blank, I V E. Here's your clue. Are you ready? Are you ready?

Your clue is calculus calculation. Derivative. So fast, amazing. Derivative. Derivative. Now, ancient South American, blank blank, yeah, Inca.

Let, well, is a real Let's make this Okay, this is a bit of a cheat, but if I make this activism sort of bending it that way, just for fun, right? No.

Wow.

Alright. Alright. Alright. Alright. Alright. Alright. Alright. Fine. Fine. Once. Is once cooler than activism? Okay.

I'll make this PVC actor and RISD, the Rhode Island School of Design. Are you happy? Okay. Alright, how about blank, eye, blank, blank, blank, blank, one in Berlin, question mark?

Ein is one in German. Very good. Okay. Let's make this, I must do something. I have a s blank t. That's actually Oh, yeah. Actually, there's something that can go here.

Anyone have an idea?

S. Yeah. An s, right, for assistant. Very nice. I was thinking it had to be like, don't break up a set, which I've seen, which isn't great, but whatever.

U blank s blank. What could that be? U s r. S s r. Consonant heaven.

Blank blank s s. What do we got here? Blank blank s s. Miss?

Sus.

Well, then we're gonna have this is We are in a pickle here.

Let's make this an

Speaker 1

Less.

Speaker 2

Less. Okay. Less. Now we have EU blank. Maybe Europe? Okay.

Less, and oh boy, l oh boy, let's make this

Speaker 1

Is there an L

Speaker 2

M shift?

A what?

Speaker 1

L M E, like L M U.

Speaker 2

L M U is interesting. I think we wanna make this an O for Bobby Orr, the hockey player who's always in the crossword puzzle, and I'm gonna make this an HMO and hess. Okay? This is a cup of tea.

That's in the crossword often for its vowels also, and I'm gonna finish strong here, crafted. You ready for this? Daylight savings shown Republic of Korea as our hesitations, and tsk tsk tsk, and we've done it. We made a crossword puzzle.

Put your hands together. You guys are amazing. Okay.

But, I do want to point something out before I bid you farewell that this crossword, if we could take a look at the grid again, you can see that nothing is isolated here. When things are isolated, we call that an island. Right? Everything here is interconnected.

The original phrase, user testing, that was a nice way to start this puzzle, that is connected to everything else. If we were to change anything else, it would affect another area. Just a small little demonstration of all the juggling that you have to do when you're putting something like this together. But I was actually secretly juggling one other thing, and I do have to remind you that I forgot to get a playing card before, didn't I?

Yes. Can you tell everybody now for the first time, what card did you choose? Three of clubs. The three of clubs.

Now, Crafted, I did sneak a little abbreviation by you all before. Do you remember when I said table of contents, table of contents? The TOC, TOC, that actually stands for the three of clubs. Your card right there.

Thank You don't seem that impressed by that. Okay. Alright. That's fine.

That's fine. Alright. I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what.

If that's not clear enough for you, I also put the three of clubs on the diagonal. That's t h r e e o f c l u b s, corner to corner. Thank you so much. I'm David Quong. Have a wonderful rest of your evening. Thank you, folks.

I'm out. Thank you.

Did I get the f bomb? Did I get the f bomb?

Speaker 1

Nothing to do with you. You gotta raise your feet. Get a demon. Magician demon. No.

No. Witchcraft. What I say. That was just nothing but witchcraft. Okay. We're gonna do some real witchcraft here and not get near that speaker ever again.