#19 The Rope of Mystery & The Selected Fruit

A volunteer selects a piece of fruit from 3 possible choices. Next, the Rope of Mystery is wrapped around the piece of fruit. Finally, after a magical wave of the hand, the skin of the fruit is peeled back to reveal that the fruit has been cut exactly where the Rope of Mystery had been placed on the outside!!

First, the selected fruit is always going to be the banana and the Rope of Mystery can be anything you choose to position over the banana at the points where it will be revealed that you magically sliced through the banana from inside the peel before the banana is peeled.

“Equivoke” according to Google is an old French word and it is an expression capable of having more than one meaning; a pun. It is the fact of having more than one meaning or possible interpretation; ambiguity. That is how the banana is chosen as an apparently free choice by the volunteer, even though the magician is forcing the volunteer to choose it, also known as the magician’s choice.

The ambiguity is in the wording. First the magician says: “We will eliminate two pieces of fruit to come to one.” Then you ask the volunteer “to point to one”. If the volunteer points to the banana, the other two fruits have been eliminated and the choice is the banana. If the apple or orange are pointed to, that one is eliminated and then (VERY IMPORTANT) the wording now becomes: “Now choose one”. If the banana is chosen, then that is the volunteer’s choice and the other fruit is eliminated. If the other fruit is chosen, it is also eliminated and we have come to the banana, as you first stated (we will eliminate two pieces of fruit to come to one).

I suggest you stick to 3 items to be equivoked. It can be done with more, but then new wordings come into play and much more complex options have to be considered. Maybe we’ll go into that at a later date…maybe trick # 100.

So, the volunteer now has chosen the banana. You have prepared this banana beforehand by inserting a needle (I used a bigger sewing needle-careful you can get picked!) ¼, ½, and ¾ of the way along its length. Be sure to insert the needle in a brown spot on the skin of the banana, so as not to draw attention to 3 round spots on the nice yellow part of the skin. You slowly push the needle through to the other side (if the needle comes out the other side just pull back a bit) and move the needle back and forth inside the peel to slice the banana. Done and placed with the other fruit. Equivoke! Banana chosen. Now…

At this point you can use your imagination! How can you cut a banana when it is still in the peel. I used the Rope of Mystery in the video and wrapped it gently around the outside (so as to not mark the peel – that might make the audience feel I actually squeezed the banana apart) and made a magic move over the banana. I have also seen a magical Martial Art Karate chop over the banana. How will you magically slice a banana? Magic invisible scissors? The slicing of bad breath?! Yuck! It’s up to you.

Oh!! I almost forgot the appearing the rope from your hat! You can use this anytime you do a rope trick. Go back and watch Tricks #3 and #10 and incorporate the magical appearance of the rope with those two tricks. Just roll the rope around your fingers into a small circle and if it is thin enough you can slip it under the band inside the hat. If the rope is too thick, you can still have it in the hat partly wedged under the band or just loose in the hat.(make sure it stays rolled up)

Take off your hat with one hand and then put your other hand over the rope against the side of the inside of the hat. Now, show the audience the empty inside of the hat. Then hold the hat with the opening pointing upwards and show both hands empty one at a time and then reach in and slowly pull the rope out by one of the ends. The longer it takes to come out, the more magical it will look.

So practice Equivoke, the appearing rope and cutting a few bananas (and then opening them to make sure you have sliced right through them) and then you will be ready to create funny magic with Fruit!!

———————————————————————————————————-

Steve Baker is a magician located in the GTA residing North of Orangeville.

Since 1997, Steve has entertained adults and children at private functions and large public venues to amaze them with sleight of hand, strolling magic tricks, mentalism and fun characters from Blind River to Deep River and from Sharbot Lake to Miller Lake and many towns and waterways in between all over this land of lakes and this land of snow in this land we call Ontari-ari-ario, Canada.