ERDNASE

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Curtis Kam
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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Curtis Kam » August 6th, 2021, 1:43 am

Richard Hatch wrote:Tonight's episode of NCIS: Los Angeles featured a character identified as "CIA Officer Steven Erdnase". The episode's writer and director (who also had a guest staring role) is "Frank Military". Anyone know if he's a magic fan?

There’s also a recurring shady character named “Alex Elmsley”.


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Re: ERDNASE

Postby AJM » August 6th, 2021, 8:05 am

If anyone watches Billions, the final episode of Season 3 was entitled Elmsley Count.

There was a line in episode about ‘magicians with their double lifts and Elmsley Counts.’

Written by Brian Koppelman and David Levien.

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Bill Mullins » August 8th, 2021, 1:55 am

Speaking of Elmsley, the manual for the Panasonic DVD Home Theater Sound System
Model No. SC-PTX7 includes a hypothetical playlist of songs that you can store on it:

I can feel love by Don Alan
Christmas by John Carney
True White by Alex Elmsley
Summer vacation by Slydini
Playhouse by Slydini

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Curtis Kam » August 8th, 2021, 6:23 am

Bill Mullins wrote:Speaking of Elmsley, the manual for the Panasonic DVD Home Theater Sound System
Model No. SC-PTX7 includes a hypothetical playlist of songs that you can store on it:

I can feel love by Don Alan
Christmas by John Carney
True White by Alex Elmsley
Summer vacation by Slydini
Playhouse by Slydini

What!??


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Re: ERDNASE

Postby kkelly » August 8th, 2021, 9:05 am

also listed on page 46!

Addiction Dai Vernon
Can You Keep A Secret? Anneman
Cut and paste Ken Krenzel
Cat walk Daley

funny!

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Frank Yuen » August 8th, 2021, 9:30 am

I like how Elmsley occupies the third position.

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Jonathan Townsend » August 8th, 2021, 11:49 am

Anyone found an Ed Marlo reference in the manual?

https://www.manualslib.com/manual/64744 ... =33#manual
Searching by track name
A Song For Us Kenton Knepper
Addiction Dai Vernon
Can You Keep A Secret Annenann
Cut and Paste Ken Krenzel
Cat walk Daley
***
Page 34 recently recorded...
Bleep bleep Daniel Bellman
I can feel love Don Alan
Christmas John Carney
True White Alex Elmsley
Summer Vacation Slydini
Playhouse Slydini
Mundus vult decipi -per Caleb Carr's story Killing Time

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Roger M. » August 11th, 2021, 11:34 am

A couple (or more) of weeks later, Todd Karr's "Miracle Factory" website is still offline.
I wonder if any of the folks who pre-ordered his Erdnase tomes are getting nervous yet?

I guess, if Karr is a one-man operation, he could have shut down the website for a summer vacation, albeit that's a strange way to alter ones website for vacation if it's ones sole source of income.
https://www.miraclefactory.net

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Chris Aguilar » August 11th, 2021, 12:28 pm

Roger M. wrote:A couple (or more) of weeks later, Todd Karr's "Miracle Factory" website is still offline.
I wonder if any of the folks who pre-ordered his Erdnase tomes are getting nervous yet?

I guess, if Karr is a one-man operation, he could have shut down the website for a summer vacation, albeit that's a strange way to alter ones website for vacation if it's ones sole source of income.
https://www.miraclefactory.net

If the changes to the site are large (i.e. a complete change of web back end or a lot of old information needing to be removed) then what Todd has posted seems pretty legit to me. It's possible they're changing their whole web backend. which could also make it awkward to leave the old site up while making the changes.

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Roger M. » August 11th, 2021, 12:51 pm

True Chris, although in my personal experience with large, commercial websites, whomever is developing the "new" website most often has it completely ready to go before the old site is retired.

Thus a break of a day or two might be expected in order to populate the new site onto DNS servers around the world ... but there's no getting around that a 2+ week period of no activity is a bit unusual for a commercial website.

I do hope it's just a vacation, or a slowly inaugurated new website - because I'm prone to get in line for Karr's pending Erdnase publication, especially if it contains something new and/or of value, as has been teased.

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Richard Kaufman » August 11th, 2021, 1:44 pm

No one takes down an existing website before thoroughly building and testing the new website that's going to take its place. We've been working on a new website just for my books for about six months. It won't go live until it's ready, and the existing site won't be taken off line before that happens.
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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Roger M. » August 11th, 2021, 3:26 pm

Some changes are definitely afoot, albeit not directly related to publishing books:
http://magictimes.com/my-magic-acquires ... of-tricks/

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Chris Aguilar » August 11th, 2021, 3:38 pm

Roger M. wrote:True Chris, although in my personal experience with large, commercial websites, whomever is developing the "new" website most often has it completely ready to go before the old site is retired..

And Karr's is not a "large commercial website", so.. your point is what exactly?

The message on the site is clear (new stuff coming!) so not sure why you'd want to go out of your way to shade that in some way. If someone wants to take down their site (with a clearly stated message as to it coming back) until a new one is ready, that's their prerogative, whether we think it's "best practice" or not.

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Brad Jeffers » August 12th, 2021, 12:41 am

Johnson's Prescsion Magic website has been "down for maintenance" for over a year now.

Roger M. wrote: I'm prone to get in line for Karr's pending Erdnase publication

Some people have been standing in that line for almost two years!

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Roger M. » August 12th, 2021, 1:18 am

Chris Aguilar wrote:so.. your point is what exactly?
.....so not sure why you'd want to go out of your way to shade that in some way.


I though my point was pretty clear ... I'm sorry you missed it.
The website has been "down" for more than two weeks, simply stating a fact.

Anyway, back to Erdnase.

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Richard Kaufman » August 12th, 2021, 11:51 am

I am ending this discussion about the Miracle Factory website and do not wish to see it continued in this thread. The sale to Meir Yedid of marketed tricks is not related to the current status of the website, which I've been told is simply being redone. I don't know of anyone else with a business model like that, but hey ... it's not my business.
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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Bill Mullins » September 25th, 2021, 11:13 pm

An association copy of the 1st edition of some significance is currently at auction.

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby daniel1113 » October 23rd, 2021, 12:49 pm

Over the years, I thought I had come across just about every book and pamphlet that has been published about Erdnase. And I own a copy of most of them. But I'm having trouble identifying one that caught my attention while perusing some old auction listings. Do any of you recognize the brown pamphlet in this image that I've marked with the red box? Much appreciated!

Image

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Brad Jeffers » October 23rd, 2021, 1:21 pm

Image

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Richard Hatch » October 23rd, 2021, 2:35 pm

Bill Mullins wrote:An association copy of the 1st edition of some significance is currently at auction.


Kind of surprised that Sotheby's repeated the error of listing the place of publication as London. Elsewhere, they spell Hofzinser correctly six times, and wrong twice ("Hofsinzer")

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Marty Jacobs
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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Marty Jacobs » October 26th, 2021, 10:52 am

I guess that's the only location mentioned in the front matter of the first edition, so they wrongly assumed that London was the place of publication rather than Chicago. I'm not lucky enough to own the first edition, but I suppose it didn't implicitly state the location of the publisher because the facsimiles don't. Maybe it was published in London, then shipped over to Chicago for distribution! ;)

The typos do seem odd given that this is Sotheby's. However, there was a well-publicised coding error in the Tim Berners-Lee NFT that they sold recently for $5.4 million, so perhaps proofreading isn't their strong point!

Marty

P.S. I think I linked to a digital edition of TEATCT that I created to help me learn the material somewhere in this thread. Unfortunately, it is no longer available on my now-defunct blog, but I have recreated it using Google Docs: bit.ly/teatct. Hopefully, this will help magicians who don't have enough money to buy Ricky Jay's copy!

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby katterfelt0 » October 26th, 2021, 11:44 am

Marty Jacobs wrote:P.S. I think I linked to a digital edition of TEATCT that I created to help me learn the material somewhere in this thread. Unfortunately, it is no longer available on my now-defunct blog, but I have recreated it using Google Docs: bit.ly/teatct. Hopefully, this will help magicians who don't have enough money to buy Ricky Jay's copy!


Thank you for that link, Marty. That is very helpful.
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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Marty Jacobs » October 27th, 2021, 11:26 am

Thank you for that link, Marty. That is very helpful.


You're welcome. My "primary motive" was to provide a more pleasant electronic version of Erdnase; those already freely available online tend to suffer from poor formatting and layout. I've tried to optimise this version for reading on a screen and retain the charm of the original text. You can also save a copy of the document as a PDF file by going to File > Download > PDF document (.pdf). There's also an option to save it as a Word document if you prefer that format.

Please let me know if anyone has any recommendations on improving this version of The Expert at the Card Table.

You may have also noticed that I've added a section called "The Importance of Being Erdnase" to the book. This is because I started writing an article about the identity of the mysterious S.W. Erdnase a few years ago but never got around to finishing it. When I do, I intend to add it here.

Read Erdnase

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Bill Mullins » November 3rd, 2021, 2:08 pm

Hurt McDermott's book looked at the Comstock Laws and their possible influence on the circumstances of the publication of EATCT.

There's a new book about Comstock. The author posts about it here.

(And for what it's worth, my own research tells me that Comstock was mostly, almost exclusively, focused on material of a sexual nature; gambling was not something he spent much time on. For that reason, I don't think the Comstock Laws had much to do with the Erdnase mystery.)

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Bill Mullins » November 4th, 2021, 10:05 pm

Another name acronym:

The first vampire story written in America was "The Black Vampyre: A Legend of St. Domingo" published in 1819 in response to John Polidori's The Vampyre: A Tale by Lord Byron. It was written under the name of Uriah Derick D’Arcy. In the 1840s, it was claimed that the author's real name was Robert C. Sands, but scholars today believe it was written by Richard Varick Dey (a near-acronym; the V was changed to a U).

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Bob Coyne » November 4th, 2021, 11:58 pm

Nice one!

I've added it to the list (mostly all found by Bill) in one of the appendices of my erdnase/sanders language document:
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~coyne/erdna ... -pen-names

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Jack Shalom » November 5th, 2021, 6:45 pm

Uriah Derick D’Arcy...Richard Varick Dey (a near-acronym; the V was changed to a U).


More an anagram than an acronym, yes?

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Bill Mullins » November 5th, 2021, 8:39 pm

[best Ed McMahon voice] You are correct sir!

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Jack Shalom » November 6th, 2021, 1:35 pm

Not trying to be picky--pointing it out only because your argument about Erdanse is about the frequent occurence of anagram pseudonyms.

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Bill Mullins » November 6th, 2021, 6:53 pm

I didn't take it as picky. I had a brain-fart, and put it in print.

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Bill Mullins » November 7th, 2021, 10:35 pm

Another anagram. Cinimod had a line of magic effects starting in the mid 1970s. From a Tannen's ad in 1976:
"P. Cinimod spelled backwards is Dominic P. (Paolino). He's a clever magic inventor and innovator who keeps having moments of inspiration and putting them into good use for the benefit of magicians everywhere."

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Roger M. » November 10th, 2021, 9:59 pm

The refreshed Miracle Factory website is back online.

The last line of his new blurb for his pending Erdnase book is interesting, in that Karr states clearly that "all evidence is carefully documented".
If that's true, and there isn't any spin or poetic license taken in using that specific phrase ... this could be a much more solid candidate than some (or all) candidates who have come before.

https://www.miraclefactory.net/product/expert/

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Richard Kaufman » November 10th, 2021, 10:40 pm

Hahahahaha ... he's trying to sell books.
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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Zig Zagger » November 11th, 2021, 6:31 am

In truth, most Erdnase (re)searchers should probably state this:

"All evidence is creatively crafted by applying wishful thinking, retrofitting, "seek and ye shall find" reasoning and Occam's Swiss knife." ;)
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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Joe Lyons » November 11th, 2021, 9:48 am

In any case a "massive new biography" of Hilliard and a comprehensive study of The Expert at the Card Table would be interesting.

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Bill Mullins » November 18th, 2021, 10:08 am

Chris Wasshuber's latest newsletter links to an ebook including correspondence between David Alexander and Richard Kyle, who worked together prior to David's article in Genii introducing W. E. Sanders as a potential candidate for Erdnase.

The cover for the ebook calls it "The Erdnase Report", and it is putatively written by "Elyk D. Rahcir" -- "Richard Kyle" written backwards. Good to see Wasshuber endorsing pseudonyms spelled backwards.

And speaking of such, Alex Schomburg was an illustrator/artist who did the covers for a number of comic books and pulp magazines in the 1940s. For a while, he did them in an airbrush style, and would sign them "Xela" -- "Alex" spelled backwards.

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Bob Coyne » November 24th, 2021, 12:41 am

Just to correct the record and supply some context to one of Chris's claims in his most recent newsletter... Chris says "For me, Sanders can't be Erdnase because he does not write like Erdnase. Even DAVID ALEXANDER and Richard Kyle, who worked with David, admit this."

This is not really true. I don't know exactly what David may have "admitted" earlier on, but he wrote to me (in email in 2009) about Sanders' diary that "It sounded just like Erdnase...the same sardonic voice."

However, Chris is correct that David didn't hear Erdnase's "voice" in Sanders' Mine Timbering. David wrote "I don't read any similarity to Erdnase's style as it is rather dry and straightforward engineering. Nothing 'personal' that I could determine...just straight facts and figures." In this he was just reacting to the technical style, which certainly doesn't reveal the same sardonic personality or "voice" he found in Sanders' diaries and parts of Erdnase. However this is very different than saying that there are no similarities in the writing at a more granular linguistic level. In fact, David expressed interest in investigating and comparing the texts at that level (something I subsequently did and documented). And it turns out that there are many striking similarities between Erdnase's text and even Sanders' drier technical prose.

I also don't think David was fully aware of Sanders' colorful college reunion writings and the historical documents he wrote (all of which have since become available online). In these, Sanders' personality and other stylistic and thematic overlaps with Erdnase really shine through.

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Jack Shalom » December 23rd, 2021, 12:06 pm

Sorry if this has been mentioned before, but:

In the Coterie section I came across the word "bosh." Now that's a common word for an Englishman, but maybe less so for a guy from Chicago. Any stats on the use of "bosh" in US books of the early 20th century?

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Bill Mullins » December 23rd, 2021, 2:48 pm

If you search "more bosh than" in Archive.org, you get hits from both UK and American sources. Likewise Hathitrust. It shows up in a G. K. Chesterton novel, and in an article about typefaces in a printing/bookbinding journal from Chicago (the author was A. Raymond Hopper, who was born in 1888, a little late to have been Erdnase).

It's hard to make a relative comparison, because you need to make sure to take account of how many UK and American documents you are searching from. I searched for "bosh" at newspapers.com, and many of the first results were from Cherokee-language newspapers from Oklahoma. But the phrase as used as a comparison by Erdnase, "more bosh than XXX", is common enough in US newspapers of the era that I don't necessarily think it is a marker of UK dialog.

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Re: ERDNASE

Postby Bob Coyne » December 23rd, 2021, 5:28 pm

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 compared to the other terms. But currently bunk has by far the most, with the others all around the same. So bosh seems to have faded in relative popularity over time. You can switch between American English and British English and Fiction and some other categories to see how the results change (not much). You can also add whatever other terms or phrases you like for comparison.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=bosh%2Cblather%2Cpoppycock%2Chogwash%2Cbunk&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cbosh%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cblather%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cpoppycock%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Chogwash%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cbunk%3B%2Cc0


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