Magicians seemed to love last week's lottery prediction method. It ticked many boxes for me personally, and I was excited by the thoughts a few readers sent my way.
Nathan Wilson had an interesting way of performing the routine in a restaurant setting for a handful of friends – his idea was to ask the wait staff to add up the numbers to keep things fair and then leave the ticket with the wait staff as a gift.
I've spent ten years writing magic tricks for TV magicians, and I often forget that most magicians only perform magic for their friends. The wonderful thing about performing magic for friends is that all the best methods are completely free and hard for magic shops to package and sell you. You open yourself to true miracles once you shake that need to buy the latest magic shop trick.
If I were really trying to blow my friends away at a party with this lottery prediction, I would stooge one group member. This person would be the last to write their number. Secretly, they would use their calculator to divide the prediction number by each number freely named by the group of friends. They will name and write the result glimpsed on their calculator when I eventually choose them. When everyone multiplies the numbers up, it will match the lottery ticket.
The above won't make sense to those who have not read the complete method for last week's lottery trick. I have more notes on the non-stooge method that I could write up into a booklet with pictures in ways that the newsletter format doesn't encourage. Let me know if you'd be interested by simply replying to this email.
