No Peeking by Alexander Marsh

What’s your star sign? Your date of birth? What day of the week is your birthday? Tell a complete stranger all of these things without peeking.

This routine was designed counter intuitively; I wanted to reveal something that the spectator had written but without peeking it. My reasoning was that if I can do that then it doesn’t matter if other people write stuff down that I do peek.

So this routine can be thrown into the mix to put people off the scent, so to speak, as it proves that you don’t need to touch the billet to read someone’s mind, or indeed it can be used as a standalone demonstration of your fantastical abilities. To further add to the deception you also reveal at least two pieces of information that were never written down by them.

Props are minimal; a pencil, at least two index cards, and a swami gimmick is all you need. The rest of the methodology for this routine is held purely in your head as we will be using a branching anagram for star signs, knowing the dates when a star signs fall, and the ability to perform a Day For Any Date calculation – or at least be able to calculate the day this year their birthday will fall.