Ripped

THE BLURB:
Imagine the impossible: Your participant indicates which two
pages in a current copy of Better Homes and Gardens magazine
to use, whereupon those pages are ripped from the magazine.
Looking them over, he decides which one most intriguing and
then that page is torn into more than a dozen small scraps.

He freely chooses a piece and, from one side of that small
scrap of paper, he secretly selects a word representing
something which he easily pictures in his mind or perhaps a
segment of an advertisement that serves the same purpose.

He's given a sketch pad to make his best effort to draw that
vision. He takes a bold marker and closes his eyes to
visualize, and...

Before he's made a single stroke on his pad, and never
looking in his direction, you begin making your won sketch
on a second pad, in full view of the audience.

When the two drawings are compared, they will probably
represent different artistic skills, visual perspectives, or
levels of detail but there can be no doubt that the subject
matter of both drawings is identical! This is absolutely
believable mind reading!

If you wish, you can repeat the presentation with another of
the paper scraps and he'll be doubly amazed at your ability
to perceive this different page!

Now, think about this: No peeks, no pencil-reading, no
long/short words, no line counting, no pre-show, no
electronics, no branching anagrams - this method is clean!

At the risk of seeming hyperbolic, Ripped! employs one
entirely new principle that, to my knowledge, has never been
used before - as well as a couple of veteran methods. Rest
assured that you needn't be an accomplished artist (although
your participant might be). Simple, cartoon-like sketching
is all that's required.

For a quick, easy, and delightfully uncluttered
presentation, get Ripped!

MY COMMENTS:
I was wondering when Lee would get around to marketing this,
which is a revised version of an effect that originally
appeared in Lee Earle's Syzygy. In that effect, a page
filled with logos is shown and ripped into pieces. One
piece is freely selected and one logo on the piece is
thought-of. The performer is then able to draw that logo.
Incidentally, the drawings the performer makes consist of
very basic shapes, so no drawing skill is necessary.

With this version, Lee has created a much more justifiable
prop. Instead of being just a page of logos, it is a page
of logos with an article on the back, so that it looks like
it came out of a magazine. In fact, to the audience, that's
where it comes from. The participant can select either an
illustration or text. The principle with the text is
essentially the same as the logos, but it uses text. Lee
claims it's new, but I know of at least one book test that
uses pretty much the same principle. Regardless of whether
it's new or not, it suits this very well. By the way, if
Better Homes and Gardens isn't your choice of magazines,
there are certainly alternatives that you could use.

Let's move onto some other considerations. I have three of
them. First, it is not repeatable. Second, a couple of the
word choices on the article may be unknown to, shall we say,
vocabulary-challenged participants. For instance, I know
that some of my students do not know what "dungarees" are (I
asked). Finally, you must continuously buy copies of this
in order to continue performing this effect. I would have
preferred to have a PDF file so that I can print them as I
need them.

The package comes with about two dozen of the special pages
and one 8.5" x 11" instruction sheet. The instructions are
one side and the ad is on the other.

Note: Ripped! and Page II, though seemingly the same in
plot, employ two entirely different principles. You may
want to compare the two and see which one seems better
suited to your needs. Or get both and experiment.