Paragon by Jon Allen

[erdnasephile]

Has anyone seen Jon Allen's Paragon live? Does it look as convincing as the video on his site?

(It occurs to me that given that he presumably has the spectator actually hold the box with a card in it before the card is selected, the conviction of the method has to be extremely strong to avoid the "Too Perfect" problem.)

[Mark Collier]

It is very clean.

You can probably figure out a way to make it look like you fold up a card and put it in the box but that isn't explained.

Jon suggests just bringing out the box with the card in it already and going into the routine. That works. Treat the box like it is not important yet and go into getting a selection.

At the end, the box is examinable, the unfolding of the card looks very good. The final clean-up is easy enough...pocket the pen or the deck or the box....get something else out of your pocket etc.

I would recommend it.

[Curtis Kam]

Saw him do it live at the Castle, in the closeup room. It looked fine under those conditions, and squeaky clean at the end. I thought it was terrific, the box was a good size (small enough to justify folding the card in the first place, but solid and secure looking, and large enough to be visible) and the audience was completely fooled, from what I could tell.

[erdnasephile]

Thanks, guys--appreciate your perspectives!