Search found 717 matches

by Bob Coyne
February 13th, 2024, 2:49 pm
Forum: General
Topic: ERDNASE
Replies: 8153
Views: 12008854

Re: ERDNASE

I'm in touch with Hugh Johnston's daughter who is very interested in this topic and trying to access her father's scrapbooks to confirm his early appearance in Denver, but to no avail yet. Here's a silent clip of Hugh Johnston doing card manipulations, probably circa 1930, courtesy Gary Plants: htt...
by Bob Coyne
February 13th, 2024, 12:25 am
Forum: General
Topic: ERDNASE
Replies: 8153
Views: 12008854

Re: ERDNASE

Hugh Johnston was 12 years old in 1905. The story as related by Marshall may not be accurate in all respects. Yeah, Mike Caveney mentions that discrepancy regarding the date and Johnston's age. Also that the Empress Theater didn't yet exist (at least with that name) in 1905. But he suggests that it...
by Bob Coyne
February 12th, 2024, 7:50 pm
Forum: General
Topic: ERDNASE
Replies: 8153
Views: 12008854

Re: ERDNASE

I ran across something that needs to be explained. In The Man Who Was Erdnase (p 152) some additional detail is given about what Hugh Johnston told Jay Marshall. "I think it was 1905," he later recalled. "I was working at the Empress Theatre in Denver. It was one of my first jobs and ...
by Bob Coyne
February 11th, 2024, 2:41 pm
Forum: General
Topic: ERDNASE
Replies: 8153
Views: 12008854

Re: ERDNASE

One other thing about the recent Erdnase video... At the end, Mike Caveney talks about the account from Hugh Johnston where the magician Del Adelphia introduced Erdnase as his friend backstage in Denver in the early 1900s. And then we are shown Adelphia's own first edition copy of EATCT. The book, b...
by Bob Coyne
February 6th, 2024, 4:38 pm
Forum: General
Topic: ERDNASE
Replies: 8153
Views: 12008854

Re: ERDNASE

Christopher1979 wrote:Does Marty Demarest and David Alexander actually own Sanders' diaries? It appears that David passed in 2010.

AFAIK, All the Sanders diaries and other personal papers are at the Montana Historical Society.
https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv57460
by Bob Coyne
February 5th, 2024, 11:12 pm
Forum: General
Topic: ERDNASE
Replies: 8153
Views: 12008854

Re: ERDNASE

While I enjoyed the recent Erdnase video and was glad it spent significant time on WE Sanders, the video focused only on the raw hypothesis that the author's name might be an anagram vs a backwards spelling. None of the actual evidence for Sanders was presented, including the crucial fact that he ha...
by Bob Coyne
February 4th, 2024, 9:23 pm
Forum: Buzz
Topic: RIP Christopher Priest
Replies: 4
Views: 941

Re: RIP Christopher Priest

That's sad to hear. I thought the Prestige was a very good book, and I really liked the movie too. I also I read one of his other books Inverted World, which was also good.
by Bob Coyne
January 26th, 2024, 11:55 am
Forum: General
Topic: ERDNASE
Replies: 8153
Views: 12008854

Re: ERDNASE

As David Ben said, it's a matter of expectations. If you're expecting a theatrical release quality film, then it's legitimate to criticize the production values. On the other hand, for a youtube video, it was a worthy effort. I really enjoyed it. In particular it was great hearing Mike Caveney (in a...
by Bob Coyne
December 28th, 2023, 5:08 pm
Forum: Buzz
Topic: Engblom Triumph
Replies: 14
Views: 1451

Re: Engblom Triumph

Great/baffling version of Triumph! Though presumably it relies on adding and ditching some sort of gimmicked cards. I also like his relaxed performance style. And I just discovered that Engblom is the person who came up with the anti-faro too! (Which is not a move I've attempted to master, but would...
by Bob Coyne
December 27th, 2023, 9:10 am
Forum: General
Topic: Mickey MacDougall 1951 News Clip
Replies: 8
Views: 1757

Re: Mickey MacDougall 1951 News Clip

Mark, thanks for posting that clip of S David Walker talking about MacDougall. A very interesting and heartwarming story!
by Bob Coyne
May 13th, 2023, 11:29 pm
Forum: General
Topic: ERDNASE
Replies: 8153
Views: 12008854

Re: ERDNASE

I ran across a bunch more of these that I hadn't seen before (source listed below): ⋅  Alcofribas Nasier (real name Francois Rabelais). In 1532, for Pantagruel King of the Dipsodes, the first of his Gargantua series. ⋅  Grubendol. (real name Henry Oldenburg). A German writer who ...
by Bob Coyne
May 10th, 2023, 12:12 am
Forum: General
Topic: ERDNASE
Replies: 8153
Views: 12008854

Re: ERDNASE

Here's another author who wrote under a (mostly reversed) anagram of his actual name: Salohcin Treboun. Nicholas Breton. Poet. (c. 1545/53 – c. 1625/6) 'Pasquil's Mistresse, or the Worthie and Vnworthie Woman; with his Description and Passion of that Furie, Jealousie,' 1600. The dedicatory epistle i...
by Bob Coyne
January 19th, 2023, 4:51 pm
Forum: Feature Articles
Topic: Please retire the term, "cardman."
Replies: 290
Views: 226854

Re: Please retire the term, "cardman."

Brad Henderson wrote:Wouldn’t the henderson neutral of layman be lay person?

Shouldn't that be henderchild? :-)
by Bob Coyne
January 15th, 2023, 9:02 pm
Forum: General
Topic: ERDNASE
Replies: 8153
Views: 12008854

Re: ERDNASE

It had to be asked... :-) Did Gallaway write Erdnase? chat.openai: It is believed that the person who wrote "The Expert at the Card Table," also known as "Erdnase," under the pseudonym S.W. Erdnase was a man named Wilbur Edgerton Sanders. This theory is based on a combination of ...
by Bob Coyne
November 5th, 2022, 10:41 pm
Forum: Buzz
Topic: RIP Max Maven
Replies: 69
Views: 11149

Re: RIP Max Maven

Such a wonderful and moving interview. Thank you so much for posting it. What a treasure has been lost.
by Bob Coyne
October 25th, 2022, 7:03 pm
Forum: Close-Up Magic
Topic: Faro New Deck Restoration
Replies: 13
Views: 3335

Re: Faro New Deck Restoration

One useful formula is that decks with 2^N cards will recycle to original order in N out shuffles. So, for example, 32 cards (2^5) will recycle in 5 shuffles.
by Bob Coyne
October 18th, 2022, 8:03 am
Forum: General
Topic: ERDNASE
Replies: 8153
Views: 12008854

Re: ERDNASE

Charlier was a fictional character thought up by Prof. Hoffmann. He never lived. His great model was Robert-Houdin, who invented his master Torrini. Great fairy tales. How do you know this? There's quite a bit about him from various sources in Chapter 3 of "Charles Bertram the Court Conjuror&q...
by Bob Coyne
October 18th, 2022, 7:56 am
Forum: General
Topic: ERDNASE
Replies: 8153
Views: 12008854

Re: ERDNASE

I believe in the original and Drake editions, Charlier is misspelled as "Charlies". Possibly an innocent typosetting error, possibly an indication that the author was not that familiar with the proper spelling of the originator (perhaps having learned it from verbal communication, rather ...
by Bob Coyne
September 14th, 2022, 11:10 pm
Forum: General
Topic: ERDNASE
Replies: 8153
Views: 12008854

Re: ERDNASE

Erdnase refers to himself as an "unlicked cub" ... I've noticed that Erdnase uses quite a few terms (often metaphorically or idiomatically) related to outdoors/rural life (animals, hunting/shooting, farming, etc). I don't think you can draw strong conclusions from this alone, but it's int...
by Bob Coyne
September 12th, 2022, 5:03 pm
Forum: Light From the Lamp
Topic: Danny's Panel Board
Replies: 26
Views: 6573

Re: Danny's Panel Board

Thank you kindly. As a retired pitchman naturally I am more interested in the sales side of the product rather than what it actually does. What puzzles me is the profit margin. A pitchman needs to sell things for at least 4 times the wholesale cost to make things worthwhile. With all that wood mate...
by Bob Coyne
September 11th, 2022, 10:55 pm
Forum: Light From the Lamp
Topic: Danny's Panel Board
Replies: 26
Views: 6573

Re: Danny's Panel Board

So who supplied him with the bloody things? Or did he make them himself? In the video, Meir mentions that Danny Tsukulas had them made in Japan by the same company that made the wooden Mount Fuji coin slide box trick. Meir bought 18 cases of the boards that came from Danny's estate. He's selling tw...
by Bob Coyne
September 11th, 2022, 2:25 pm
Forum: Light From the Lamp
Topic: Danny's Panel Board
Replies: 26
Views: 6573

Re: Danny's Panel Board

Not sure your spectators will know what that is or even notice it. It all happens fast so maybe not enough time for that to register. Their focus should be on the effect itself. The demo provides a solution for any unwanted sound so that should do it. It has been said that Danny did a zillion demos...
by Bob Coyne
September 11th, 2022, 1:23 pm
Forum: Light From the Lamp
Topic: Danny's Panel Board
Replies: 26
Views: 6573

Re: Danny's Panel Board

The problem I have with this effect is the sound the coin makes when sliding on the board into the slot. The video shows a method for modifying the board to muffle the sound of the coin once it fully enters the slot itself. But there's still the problem of the initial sliding on the board as it ente...
by Bob Coyne
July 24th, 2022, 7:23 pm
Forum: Magic History and Anecdotes
Topic: Death Camp Magicians
Replies: 8
Views: 6437

Re: Death Camp Magicians

The story of Reich and Nivelli appeared in Reich's NY Times obituary a couple days ago... Werner Reich, Who Learned Magic in Auschwitz, Dies at 94 He was 16 when a fellow inmate, a magician, taught him a card trick in the barracks of the extermination camp. He called it a “miracle.” In the Auschwitz...
by Bob Coyne
May 19th, 2022, 10:13 am
Forum: General
Topic: Introductory book
Replies: 36
Views: 16080

Re: Introductory book

I agree about the Scarne card tricks book. Lots of good easy-to-do tricks suitable for a complete beginner. It was the first book I learned from. And Royal Road was next. I think that's a good sequence.
by Bob Coyne
April 28th, 2022, 11:47 am
Forum: General
Topic: ERDNASE
Replies: 8153
Views: 12008854

Re: ERDNASE

Not to belabor the point, but in one of Persi's math papers it says: Persi Diaconis left High School at an early age to earn a living as a magician and gambler, only later to become interested in mathematics... https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~aldous/Papers/shuffling.pdf Perhaps Erdnase was that kind ...
by Bob Coyne
April 27th, 2022, 10:59 pm
Forum: General
Topic: ERDNASE
Replies: 8153
Views: 12008854

Re: ERDNASE

I have met rather a lot of wicked people in my time including a few crooked gamblers. They are not nice people and have criminal backgrounds. They aren't the brightest sparks in the drawer. I doubt they can even spell let alone write books full of dozens of sleight of hand techniques. They know abo...
by Bob Coyne
March 16th, 2022, 9:42 am
Forum: Platform & Stage Magic
Topic: Wiztax - Sam Berland
Replies: 11
Views: 4947

Re: Wiztax - Sam Berland

It was a sticky wax that didn't leave a residue. We have all sorts of sticky globs to choose from today, given away free by those who use them to stick advertisements closed in the mail. I peel them off and save them under my desk in case I ever need to use one for magic. It was tape, not wax. Thou...
by Bob Coyne
March 15th, 2022, 9:59 pm
Forum: Platform & Stage Magic
Topic: Wiztax - Sam Berland
Replies: 11
Views: 4947

Re: Wiztax - Sam Berland

It was some sort of double-sided tape.
by Bob Coyne
March 14th, 2022, 4:21 pm
Forum: Magic History and Anecdotes
Topic: magician as an actor
Replies: 262
Views: 19923

Re: magician as an actor

When Houdin says "a MAGICIAN is an actor playing the part of a MAGICIAN", he's using two different senses of the word MAGICIAN I assume that he means "a conjuror is an actor playing the part of a magician"? Yes, though "conjuror" can also imply doing real magic. I thin...
by Bob Coyne
March 14th, 2022, 9:52 am
Forum: Magic History and Anecdotes
Topic: magician as an actor
Replies: 262
Views: 19923

Re: magician as an actor

Tom, you're taking words too literally and uni-dimensionally. When Houdin says "a MAGICIAN is an actor playing the part of a MAGICIAN", he's using two different senses of the word MAGICIAN. So it's NOT tautological. In fact that bit of wordplay is a large part of what makes the quote memor...
by Bob Coyne
March 13th, 2022, 11:42 pm
Forum: Magic History and Anecdotes
Topic: magician as an actor
Replies: 262
Views: 19923

Re: magician as an actor

So much of this boils down to what sense of the terms you choose to use and how you apply them. It boils down to whether you want helpful advice that actually can further you along in your evolution and career, or if you want a nice-sounding apothegm that is void of content. Claiming our discipline...
by Bob Coyne
March 13th, 2022, 12:17 pm
Forum: Magic History and Anecdotes
Topic: magician as an actor
Replies: 262
Views: 19923

Re: magician as an actor

So much of this boils down to what sense of the terms you choose to use and how you apply them. Acting can either be the canonical field-of-study or "discipline of acting" that Tom refers to. But at a more fundamental level, it is just the activity of playing a part in a theatrical or othe...
by Bob Coyne
March 8th, 2022, 10:50 am
Forum: Magic History and Anecdotes
Topic: magician as an actor
Replies: 262
Views: 19923

Re: magician as an actor

Terms like "actor" or "teacher" or "athlete" etc generally have two senses. The primary sense is stricter and generally means a person who does that professionally or as their main endeavor. But if you relax these definitions and look at what's essential, then you can e...
by Bob Coyne
March 7th, 2022, 11:32 pm
Forum: Magic History and Anecdotes
Topic: magician as an actor
Replies: 262
Views: 19923

Re: magician as an actor

Since Houdin is trying to re-cast the notion of magician, I think it's a mistake to take "actor" too rigidly either. An actor can be "a person who performs on the stage, on television or in films, especially as a profession ," as we typically think of it. But it can also be "...
by Bob Coyne
January 6th, 2022, 1:01 am
Forum: Buzz
Topic: Disappearing Magic Cafe!
Replies: 21
Views: 3847

Re: Disappearing Magic Cafe!

Seems like it's not totally gone. This top-level page http://www.themagiccafe.com/ still comes up as well as some of the auxilliary pages. But the forum pages http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/index.php get an error.

Maybe it's being worked on...
by Bob Coyne
December 24th, 2021, 4:47 am
Forum: General
Topic: ERDNASE
Replies: 8153
Views: 12008854

Re: ERDNASE

Bosh isn't a common word, so when you put it in a phrase you're making it that much less common. Hence little or no results depending on the corpus (english or american).
by Bob Coyne
December 23rd, 2021, 5:28 pm
Forum: General
Topic: ERDNASE
Replies: 8153
Views: 12008854

Re: ERDNASE

The google ngram viewer uses google's corpus of scanned books and is useful for finding relative frequencies of words/phrases over time. Here's a comparison between bosh, blather, poppycock, hogwash, and bunk from 1800 to the present. Until around 1890, bosh and bunk had by far the most references c...
by Bob Coyne
December 16th, 2021, 5:22 pm
Forum: Link Watch
Topic: Illusions of the year
Replies: 11
Views: 5329

Re: Illusions of the year

That Changing Room Illusion totally got me! I didn't notice a thing, though the change (when shown at the end) was dramatic.
by Bob Coyne
December 3rd, 2021, 4:05 pm
Forum: Buzz
Topic: Palindrome & Ambigram Day
Replies: 13
Views: 2347

Re: Palindrome & Ambigram Day

Bill that Al/Dylan clip was excellent! I've never seen that before :-). All I can say is
WOW

or perhaps WOW MOM (to go the full Scott Kim).

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