Is the trick going over your head?

That’s the punchline I use for a magic trick where the item itself is, literally, going over someone’s head.  Perhaps it’s because I’m a bad liar, but I have a hard time keeping most magic tricks to myself.  I recently did a display where I revealed most of the tricks during the trick itself.  There were some clever twists, so it’s wasn’t a lecture, but the punchline was basically, “Yeah, I know you’re not going to be fooled, so I’m going to ruin it for you anyway.”

There is one constant to magic, though, and it helps to remember it when developing tricks of you own.  Mainly… people tend to overthink how a trick works.  I showed off one and then challenged the audience to figure out how I did it.  “No,” I said, “simpler.  It’s even simpler.”

Which is why something as simple as a trick going over your head totally works.  Because, at the end of the day, it’s such a simple solution that everyone tricks themselves that it’s not the way it’s done.  After all, everyone wants to think they are cleverer than they really are, and surely you can’t be fooled by something quite so simple.