Irida - Magic Trick (Tricks‪)‬ 4+

Does not work right, DON'T BUY!

Don't buy! And don't believe anyone who blames negative reviews like this one on the user! It shouldn't even be possible for the user to screw it up if this worked right.

But let me begin by saying the concept/secret to the magic trick here is brilliant. I'm still hoping someone buys this, learns the secret, and then applies it in a way that works foolproof every time. Ideas on that shortly...

At present, the trick itself hardly ever works right. And even if it worked 75% of the time (it doesn't), that still wouldn't be enough to be a dependable trick to actually perform for anyone.

I held off for months (possibly years at this point) in submitting this review because I really, really, really wanted this to work. And didn't want to contribute to all the negative feedback and energy on this that might damper the creator's motivation to fix it. But we're now at a new-ish release/improved version, and it's still the same problem as always.

The effect is this: the speck opens a special video on vimeo.com (it can't be YouTube) on their own phone. It's a video where a full deck of cards are flipped through one by one, and the spectator is told to press pause at any time on any card. Within 10 seconds (or less) after they pressed pause, the magician is able to name the chosen card they stopped at on the video being shown on their own phone only. The neat thing about this trick, in theory, is that there's absolutely no physical (or digital) connection of any kind between the spectator's phone/wifi connection and the magician (or the magician's phone/wifi connection, for that matter). You can go up to someone you've never met, tell them the website to go to on their own phone, never ever touch or take out your own phone, and the trick still works, all without a confederate or assistant of any kind. Wow!

The secret is very cool in that it relies on a technological feature that already is built in to all iPhones (and presumably all Androids too) that you neven even knew existed. In fact, it technically relies on TWO very DIFFERENT hidden technological features of all mobile phones. Knowing that concept/secret alone is worth something much more than what this app does with it. And I'm really hoping someone will come up with a way to do something way better with it.

The flaw in this particular trick is that it almost never works right. At present, the magician magically "receives" the wrong card almost every time, and it's usually off by exactly one.

If I recall correctly, a number of users in the past have pointed this out via app store reviews, and the creator would then respond to such reviews by claiming that the user did not stand in exactly the right position with everything facing in the exact correct directions at all times. But come on. If the creator were correct about this, then we'd be left with a trick requiring an insane level of how-to-stand-right precision that, overall, would make this trick too impractical to perform. And, also, I promise you that the creator was not correct about this: I've experimented over and over again with numerous devices and settings, and personally have confirmed that either (a) the app itself is faulty; or (b) that the trick itself is actually faulty, meaning that there's really no way technologically to pull off this particular trick right foolproof 100% of the time in this particular way.

Now, as promised, I wanted to comment on how these problems maybe can be fixed, because – as I've stated from the outset – I really love the idea here and very badly want this trick to work.

First, the Vimeo clip should begin with some sort of music and voiceover narration giving some sort of bogus instructions about clearing your mind etc., perhaps with hypnotic swirling black-and-white circles, the idea being that the spectator is somehow being e-hypnotized by a Vimeo clip into becoming susceptible to having their mind read by the magician. This would create the key cause-and-effect element that this trick currently lacks while also providing exactly the sort of "cover" that presently is needed to get the spectator to decide (all on their own) to adjust one setting on their phone that must be adjusted in order for this trick to work.

Second, instead of flipping through a complete deck of cards within one minute or so, which I think is the main hurdle to getting the technology to work right, I propose having a video that is a full hour in length, but consists consist of no more than a dozen different freeze-frames. For example, the first ten minutes are just a "still image" of a normal triangle, and minutes 10 through 20 are just a still image of a hexagon, and so on. Or, instead of shapes, perhaps there could be several other Vimeo sites entirely, each one with a different "category" of things to choose from (such as different movie posters, or different music album covers). The spectator would be told by the narrator at the beginning of the video to scrub through the video a bit to verify that they have a free selection among all the different choices. (Needless to say, after the hypnotic narration at the beginning, the entire video would be completely silent.) Finally, the spectator would have been told that they should select whichever object/thing they want to select simply by fast forwarding (i.e., scrubbing) to that object and then concentrating on a slightly wobbling red dot near the center of the frame throughout the video (a sort of psychological misdirection type thing). There'd be no need to tell the spectator to "pause" the video because everyone naturally will scrub to a moment in the video that is nowhere near one of any transitions from one object to another, and also keeping it going will be needed for both the red dot to wobble and for the technology to work right every time.

I am confident that this approach/application would make this trick work, and make good use of its amazing secret.