David Kwong: Two nerdy obsessions meet - and it's magic
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- čas přidán 10. 07. 2014
- David Kwong is a magician who makes crossword puzzles - in other words, a pretty nerdy guy. And for his next trick ...
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lol i’m here because of the try guys
Same!
same lol
yes!
Hey, same!
Agreed
The fact that we're all trying to figure out his magic trick just strengthens his point lol
E
I like that. He performed a boring trick, but he put it into context and had this whole story and so on that kept us wondering and made it interesting and he tricked us all into believing it. That's the real magic here. And still we have a puzzle to solve
E
This guy will be like, "And then 30 across, you will see the name of your first born son"
everyone is saying that this is a setup; and it obviously is. But right before he did the trick, he said that he was about to prove to us how much we try to find patterns. Is that not EXACTLY what he did? People discussing in the CZcams comments and in the real audience how he did that is, I think, the exact effect he was wanting.
Nerdiest pick up line: "Your name is worth x points in crossword"
The simple fact that everyone is trying to solve how he did it is awesome."Were all wired to solve."
i respect you. only positive comment. :)
E
@@EEEEEEEE F
To everyone analyzing the trick - this is his point in the first place: we're wired to solve, when we watch magicians, we try to figure out how the trick works behind the flash. It's not about association, it's about decoding the trick, which is deceptively simple. She's either a plant, or he has a plant feeding him the colors through an earpiece.
Exactly. This discussion is evidence of our desire to decode. I, for one, think the earpiece is a hard one because he tells her to fill in the rooster before she picks the color. She could be a plant, I suppose, but the earpiece idea doesn't work because of the rooster.
David Packard That's a good catch.. so, either she is a plant, or there's a video/audio discrepancy in editing, and he actually does tell her to color the rooster after she picks the green marker.
If you'll notice, there are some cuts during that section, and we don't hear him say 'take off the cap' for the green marker, nor is he on screen. My guess is that a little bit was cut out by the editors, which would have hidden that he had time to hear in his earpiece which marker she had picked up.
mindstormmaster Good point. If the audio and video were edited in a way that they were out of sync, then the rooster problem goes away, and a earpiece cue (or other cue) by someone in audience who sees her pick up a marker would explain/decode this entire trick.
David Packard you two are hilarious....
mindstormmaster Hint: She isn't a stooge. The trick could have been done on you. And it's unlikely, but possible, he was using an earpiece. Also, this being a TED talk, I highly doubt it was deceptively edited, seeing as I don't think the talkers get control over the video editing.
Could you imagine being somebody at home that day finding all of those clues on their crossword puzzle all by their own without any context?
Whats fascinating to me is that all the comments from people here trying to explain how the trick was achieved is actually telling me that we are really wired to solve.
I am not sure if the video taught me "WE ARE WIRED TO SOLVE" but the comments surely did.
That's exactly what I was thinking! Maybe the trick is make us here try to solve how he did it. Then his point is correct, we are wired to solve. Sorry for the bad english, still learning! :)
did he subconsciously influenced you to post this comment? surely he did.
It's why people get stuck into the more delusional conspiracy theories, got to find all the pieces to 9/11 or whatever, gotta get em all. If you spend a few months in the bush you'll see the pattern recognition in it's real evolutionary context, tides, weather, animals, food, success.
he deserved a better audience!
It's been a while since I last watched a REALLY WORTHWHILE TED video.
I love this. Haha
I think that "Hey, did you know that prestidigitation is worth 20 points in Scrabble." is an excellent conversation starter.
Yea but he tells her which animal to colour, after telling her to choose another marker, so she doesn't know which animal to associate to which colour!
Precisely. It would be plausible if he mentioned the animal before asking her to choose a color - he does it the other way around, which means it's a setup or she's telepathic. Then again, this could just be a deliberate oversight to further highlight people innately solving problems!
I'm sure the trick would work for real, but for something this big I doubt he actually did it the way he says he did.
Fake NLP haha
She could have just coloured the Ox red.. No one forced her to make the choices she did. Yet, he was obsolutely, 100 % certain that any person in the audience would colour the animals the same way he predicted.
Abdul Kayaaslan
maybe seeing the markers is not key.... maybe each marker made a distinctive sound when the cap was pulled off... what's even possible, is that there was some wireless electronic signaling system between him and the markers... but, as you say, a simple mirror could probably do the trick.
pretty sure that the trick was a rigged setup though, and not what he claimed it to be... which begs the question: are TED talks that spread false information really valuable or in fact harmfull?
Very captivating Ted Talk. I saw Davif perform his famous magic scrabble effect live, and it was brilliant.
The trick is really simple behind all the flashy handwaving, he just needs to know which marker she picks, and tells her the animal to color - beyond that, it's all easily set up beforehand, for a master crucivocabulist that is.
I attended a David Kwong talk in NC at Wake Forest in 2017. Got to meet him personally. Girls loathed over him
The important note is that she didn't pick the color for each animal. She picked a color and he told her which animal to color. I doubt she really made those associations herself subconsciously. For example, she wasn't saying "Oh I will pick cobalt for the horse" she just picked up cobalt and he said "color the horse." There was some way he knew which pen she had, perhaps by the sound of the cap.
Think the first pen is a force. It was always going to be blue. Thus removing both the horse and blue from the equation.
The rooster is also mentioned by him before the cap comes off in addition to the horse. So the sound of the caps can't be it. Good suggestion though.
palui Search "Entropy (information theory)". There is a force and few tweaks, but the actual "trick" is only the middle bit, everything before and after about NLP is pure misdirection. He reduces the possible combinations to 2. Simply by removing the purple pen the possibilities are reduced massively, yet the human brain struggles with exponent function, why can't you stop 2 magnets rushing together even though you know they will? If she chose the wrong combination his excuse is "oh well we're bit-shifted one position because I forgot the purple"
Shouldn't have looked throgh the comments. they are always so negative
Often, when they are all out negative, there happens to be a serious flaw with the talk... Either that, or it's about a topic that many people around the world are still not quite ready for. In this case I would say it's the first of the two.
@@elmo2you No, he actually executed his point quite well. Although the comments are negative, it actually advances and strengthens his point that people are willing to solve and so, no serious flaw. People just didn't get it.
one minute in and I already like him. xD
He gets her to pick the marker color first though and then tells her to color in a specific animal. She doesn't have a choice in picking animal, so how could she be the one associating the colors and animals with the slides?
exactly, he never claims that he programmed her with his presentation, the presentation is just further proof that he was certain which marker she would pick. He proved it with the already colored paper in the envelope, and the NY times. You assumed that the presentation influenced her marker selection.
iplaylax22 so then this is not a psychological thing at all, it's just a simple trick (magic).
Han Zhang Exactly. Purely math. The psychology is the misdirection.
What I learnt today where is the math? Can you explain the math?
insightful and amazing.....
seemingly random could turn out to be following a pattern.........
this is why i love this show :O
Assuming this is not fake, the choices she makes are the colours. He is confident of the order of colours, and gives her the animals. His prediction is in the slides and paper. How he set up the order, I'm not sure. But he made her read "cobalt," the last thing he said to the audience was 'red' Don Quixote, he also gestured the red marker to her (next choice), pulled the silver marker to himself (last choice). The amber and emerald..? Hmm, he said colour like a 5 year old, and blue, red, yellow are primary painting colours. Green is secondary. But he was absolutely confident of the order, so there must be a lot of suggestion in there. He also rushed her to make quick sub-conscious choices. The illusion makes a nice wee puzzle :D
I don[t see what the problem is here. Most commentators have focussed on how good he is as a magician. That isn't his point. His point is that faced with something that makes no sense (chaos), our natural instinct is to simplify, explain, find the patterns that make sense to us (order). All those commentators who are explaining how he did it are exactly proving his point. As a presentation, it is very efficient and effective.
Amazing!
Wow that's awesome !
It's true that human beings are wired to solve, and crossword puzzles and magic are similar. So what if people can figure out his trick- it was still fun to watch.
Everyone calling "fraud" on a magician? REALLY??
My, my, my, how the times do not change...!
How did this happen? He did not provide the clue except state that we are wired to solve? How? Amazing!
THIS.MAN.IS.AWESOME
At the beginning I thought that someone is telling him which marker did she pick (or he can see her in someway), and then he will tell her to color the animal ... because he has the choice to color which animal not her, so we can't say she is affected by the slides he presented through his speech,
but at the sec 6:14 he tells her to color which animal before she picked the GREEN marker!!
and that will lead us to the truth that he is not cheating!!
Well this make no sense!!
Neither she is coloring the animals at her will, so we can say she is affected somehow by the show, nor he is cheating.
the only thing that left is that she is and actor ... because he chooses her!
Question. Has Derren Brown not done this previously? Like 5 years ago...?
Derren wasn't the first and he won't be the last. David had an original presentation. :)
Hasn't Joseph Smith done this like 190 years ago? Well.... pretending to find gold or read tables from god out of a hat ain't far off ;-)
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! EVERYONE in the comments section have all fallen victim to the very thing his talk was all about; human's innate drive to solve! Oh the irony! For this reason it is clear his presentation was a success. Oh this is hilarious... you've all become so obsessed with solving his trick and have not realised this is probably precisely what he wanted to happen. It all just demonstrates his point... and in this twist of irony I too am now victim for having said all of this XD
oh the irony
I love how people are trying to figure out how he did it as his explanation was obviously false. They are trying to solve :D
Order out of chaos...
Reference: 5:40 - 5:45
If you notice carefully, Gwen takes the marker off the sheet and starts recapping it even before David asks her to. And it's just the first object, so she doesn't know the drill...
Or does she?
Remember how the magicians in the movie Now You See Me make their choices from the audience look random, when they're actually rigged? I believe something similar is happening here...
But... but... reading all the comments here... it does prove David's point though... that we are wired to solve... and we are all trying to solve the puzzle that he created in this talk. Isn't it?
maybe someone is in his earpiece.
there seems to be a lot of filler (take off the cap...etc)
to allow him to process the colour and adjust..
I see you commenting on sooo many CZcams videos that I watch... mainly filmmaking type stuff
Antony Alvarez
Are there any good filmmaking video's on CZcams? I only know Every Frame A Painting, which I love. Do you have any recommendations?
J. van der Linden Try Film Riot's videos, which teach how to do video effects. They also create hilarious videos.
Thanks for the tip. I watched about 5 videos, I really liked their content. They do have a *lot* of ads though.
J. van der Linden Watch the right video, and you'll laugh at the ads.
The fact that he is making us solve his trick is what his point is proving.
That was cool.
Power of suggestion is real and very powerful. However this trick was not that, not even close. She picked the color before she did know what animal to combine it with. This to work by suggestion animal in question should have been announced BEFORE picking the color. It did not matter at all what color she did pick. You could repeat this trick with someone who didn't even see the presentation and it would work 100% of time.
Now how was the trick actually made? Most likely someone told him what color she had in hand and then he just called the animal.
I agree that the presentation was nothing more than supporting evidence of his certainty about her marker selection. Just like the NY times and the colored paper in the envelope. As for your conclusion on how he knew which marker she would pick, I'm not so certain.
Everyone saying he is a fraud... It's motherfreaking magic people! You are not supposed to know how it works!!
Maybe there was also "order" in the picture, the way the animals were placed...
And you can clearly see he tells Gwen to color the rooster even before she picks up the marker. So, there was a subconscient choice made by Gwen, that "urge to solve". It could be even trickier than you thought... :D
Do you not know how he did it? Neither do I. Welcome to MAGIC.
My thoughts:
1. He first plants the idea of cobalt in her mind for the horse.
2. The rest of the colours were picked based on wavelengths of each colour, red being first of course.
he is amazing. I think we all know magic is very attracting and amazing. But I mean this guy is really good at giving speech. That's great. But the key of this magic is the reflection to people and the common feeling to color. I guess. This is the reason why people will choose the same color in the picture. do you guys agree with me?
Her choices couldn't be the result of priming, because she was asked to pick a marker before she was told what animal she was going to color. Either she was a confederate or he was being fed information about what color she had chosen. Not sure what he was really trying to demonstrate here, but he didn't make a very good point or put on a very good show.
David Kwong is the head magic/illusion concultant for the movie now you see me
interesting and good job dud
I think the point of this talk is to show how we are "solvers" yes the little magic trick he did there looked amazing, but anyone who was following it would spot that it was setup.
The point of the presentation is written all over the comments right here.... Everyone's trying to work out what he did... Lol
Notice the order of animals when he introduced them to Gwen: owl, horse, donkey, rooster, ox, and sheep. Except the owl, he followed the exact same sequence when he instructed her to fill the color. And such sequence seems to be a natural order for someone standing at Gwen's position. Can it be, that Gwen already planned in her mind what sequence she wanted to follow and selected color accordingly, and he just call out whatever she intended to fill?
I bet the lady was chosen before the show. She did not seem to be surprised or scared what David would do to her.
i love it ! :)
I thought it was the earpiece too but i decided to come up with some random method for the way he accomplished this so here is my idea of how this worked.
Since she was on the right side of the painting the first thing she saw was the horse and immediately associated it with blue making her choose blue since it was first closest to her so the first marker to choose. The donkey was on top and next so she picked its color next. Then proceeded to go down.
That`s what i came up with, maybe its how he managed to accomplish but then again he did have an ear piece so its hard to say.
Clearly his "explanation" is bogus. He told her which animal to colour in AFTER she picked up each colour marker so she couldn't have been subliminally following what she'd seen earlier. Clearly he knows which marker she picks up each time and tells her the appropriate animal to colour in. Most likely he's got an earpiece and a person watching her pick up the pens telling him the colour.
Clearly. And it amazes as well as disheartens me to find so many people being fooled into thinking that people like this really are using psychological influences to cause the outcome - even when such an explanation is utterly impossible rather than just implausible. There are many ways to inform oneself as to what colour pen has been chosen. I doubt the earpiece hypothesis but you could be right - point is it doesn't matter which method was used to ascertain which colour was chosen, only that it was certainly ascertained.
Very close but no ea piece.. It's not a "random" colour she chooses. The markers are very carefully placed in the cup so that she naturally picks up the markers in the order required to make this trick work.
Yeah I considered that, but I don't reckon he'd take that much of a risk. the audience member could be awkward and deliberately pick one from the back. Earpieces can be very small and discrete these days, so I wouldn't rule it out just because you can see it. Or maybe he's got someone standing in the direction he faces when he "covers" his eyes signalling to him.
***** Check my post on the math. No cheap tricks involved. Purely about the math of the cominations available and removing bits to reduce the combinations to only 1 being possible.
I thought that too but it doesn't work. The second last one he told her which animal before she even picked a colour. How could he have known what she would choose. The only explanation is that she was in on the trick
aside from the fact that the order in which the trick was done (picking up the pen *then* asking her to colour in a specific animal) seems quite flawed, which I agree with, he then spent the next 5 minutes saying "but wait wait wait, there's more", each time highlighting that he was confident that she picked the choices she did. He could have stopped at revealing the picture, and frankly, I would have been more impressed if he skipped the picture and the New York Times puzzle and went straight to the ORDERCHAOS thing
How can you know how many points a word is worth in scrabble without knowing where it is placed on the board?
I once managed to full the entire bottom row with the word "stigmatizations" which due to the 3 triple word plots meant that the letter z alone was worth 270 points.
(Since the word has more than 7 letters there were obviously already some letters on the board, but they were 1 point letters not on any special squares. I got all the bonuses myself.)
Perhaps he was talking about the minimum points each word was worth?
ILLUSIONS Michael!
"They're not tricks, Michael, they're illusions; tricks are something whores do for money...or candy"
but it's not an illusion.....
I've seen this trick before. Someone told me that there's a radio signal in marker that tells him what color she picked up. Then he tells her to color accordingly. It's predetermined that the donkey has to be red, ox - silver, owl - amber, etc. because that's what's in the envelope.
While I'll agree the argument sounds valid; That presentation had hoax written all over it, from the moment I saw her grab the cobalt marker for her first choice. Considering the planning he went through to get the puzzle put into the paper as well, there's no way he would risk the whole talk and make himself look a fool. But he said it himself, he's a "magician who makes crossword puzzles".
Oh wow, hahaha. I was thoroughly amused by this.
When she colors the animals he says "yeah, that's good make big strokes." How does he know since his eyes are covered?
I think he's just saying don't worry about it being filled in "it's good" and telling her to just make big strokes.
And maybe he can hear the marker on the page
Good thing I wasn't there (and selected). I would have closed my eyes and picked a marker at random.
awwesssome. We are all wired to solve!
The trick might be that he knows which marker she picked. There must be some way for him to detect which marker she picked and relayed that info. to him.
I think it has to do with the names of the colors that he uses. Why call green emerald and yellow amber?
I think he needed color names that began with vowels in order to form the words he used at the end. However, I think the trick of forecasting her selections (the colors in the envelope) didn't have anything to with the strange names he used.
Damn the O/X/Square/Triangle patterns... Just like your PlayStation buttons.
The way he said “Don Quixote” I-
No.
There is a sensor that in each pen that triggers when lifted, the magician listens to the appropriate signal in his earpiece.
10:21 For the X in SILVER OX, 58-Across, my response, in true J! style, is, "What is Beast?"
"we are wired to solve"
Looks like he was able to influence most of the people here.
he didn't influence anyone - you see these on comment sections for any magic trick because we want to know how it's done
It was not exactly suggestive because he determined the order she drew after she chose the marker.
Gwen's name tag is purple: 11:30
GWEN WAS THE SHEEP!!!
quizzify is worth way more than quixotry in Scrabble.
IMO this could be simply explained with a third person, telling him which marker she picked, a earpiece or a sign from someone in the crowd, a vibrating device in his pocket like a cellphone
That was amazing
the only missing element is putting the name gwen in his puzzle.
She didn't decide which animal to color, though, he did that after she had already picked a marker. So she didn't associate the color she picked with the animal, because she didn't know which animal she was going to color.
I guess she could have remembered the order in which she saw the images, but it seems unlikely??
This guy is amazing, he planed it all the way trough... must have been not easy to do so... Katy Perry, the magazine, the lady, someone with a purple marker... any disorder in his plan would've ruined his performance! well done!
;-)
Well, the guy DID get people here at the comment section to try and "solve" what exactly the setup was. So there's that.
I don't understand why the "Oh and by the way the sheep can be left blank" is relevant in the slightest. He clearly left the purple marker out on purpose, and he was telling her which animals to colour each time - so it wasn't even her choice to leave the sheep blank, it was entirely his when he put one too few markers in the cup.
Depending on how the trick is done, this is also a good way to reduce the risk of failure by having her appear to be making more decisions than she actually is. it basically guarantees that the sheep will be the correct colour.
i would've coloured them differently... :-)
Glen was in on it.
Yea yea, we're all trying to figure out the thing and that's the thing I fucking hate 'magic' anyhoo I reckon he's informed of which pen she's plucked and then he instructs her accordingly. The rest went over my head and I can't be bothered to watch this again. I do enjoy solving puzzles. And I don't really hate magic. I can marvel at the skill and enjoy the performance, but magicians usually frustrate my desire to solve, which is ultimately frustrating.
Ohhh I like Katy👍
That made no sense. He asks her to pick a random marker, then asks her to use it on the animal that he chose. There's no color/animal association made by her.
I may be wrong, if so, I ask that someone explain it to me, but if not, this guy is a fraud.
Yah he is a fraud. ö.ö
I'm assuming that he was telling her which animal to color based on the marker she chose, the priming thing was just a bit of misdirection.
yep, i agree, but watch the rooster @ 6:12 he seems to tell her "rooster" before she picks the green marker, hmmm
Was Rooster the last animal? If so there'd have only been one marker left.
not the last one, she could pick between silver and green; i don't think he would risk it even now with 50% chance
Gwen is in on it
Obviously he is somehow influencing her decision, since his "subconscious association" explanation doesn't make sense when he tells her to pick a pen, and then tells her which animal to color. HOWEVER, as someone mentioned earlier, at 6:12, he tells her to color the rooster BEFORE she picks the green pen. @.@
I'm a novice magician and the way he does the trick is using a thumper
A thumper?
It's a device attached to his body that usually vibrates
He has someone in the audience signal as to which color they choose
For example if he feels a vibration in his left arm he knows that the signal for her picking up the red marker ,
So he then instructs to color the donkey
Etc
1. SHE'S PAID or
2. HE'S WIRED to know the color picked
6 animals 6 colours = 6^6 bits of entropy = 46,656 combinations.
(remove purple, thus removing 1 animals and 1 colour)
5 animals 5 colours = 5^5 bits of entropy = 3125 combinations.
(remove horse, force first pen, thus removing 1 animal and 1 colour, pre-seed is likely misdirection)
4 animals 4 colours = 4^4 bits of entropy = 256 combinations.
(successfully pre-seed or guess 1 animal colour, thus removing 1 animal and 1 colour)
3 animals 3 colours = 3^3 bits of entropy = 27 combinations.
(dictate the remaining order)
2 animals 2 colours = 2^2 bits of entropy = 4 combinations.
(last animal will be last pen, will anyone ever select a non-colour "silver" before the colourful stuff? Insurance policy, making force/guess on 1st (2nd) pen easier.)
1 animals 1 colours = 1^1 bits of entropy = 1 combinations.
Simple easy math, not much else to it. It's harder to get this wrong then get it right. "Here are 3 coloured pens, choose 2". Anyone see exactly how he reduces the last 2 bits? Something even more overt then guess or force?
oh and if she chooses the wrong pen "Oh that's because I forgot the purple, see they're actually in the correct order, just bit-shifted one position"
***** Yeah good stuff... I just went straight for "It's exponential" and missed that the order control and 1 per animal, means there are only 720 combinations right from the start..... "pre-seed" is me hanging on to some belief that you can "NLP" some of this stuff, if you give someone a cold coffee, then tell them to judge someone they'll find them guilty, give them a warm drink and they find them innocent, not sure to what degree he uses this to force one of the selections, probably not at all.... Figure there is no risk in this, 1/4 is too risky for sure..... Really I'm not certain on exactly how he reduces those 2-3 last bits, don't think predicted, maybe one is forced and the other 2 come as a consequence, just a passing interest in this stuff not well versed in the techniques and possibilities.
***** Surely the moment the first pen is chosen/forced the whole thing falls into place with zero risk from that point on.... Anyone good with Set Theory notation?
Please make more videos who with me
Gwen's name tag is purple
Has he memorized what each popping noise sounds like on each pen, so that he can tell her directly which animal to color?
Assuming all the suggestions worked. How does he know that she would pick the colours in that order? Is he assuming that she would look at the picture and go like " oh,always pick the colour that matches the highest animal on the paper"
This is definitely a trick, mostly Cween is a planted audience. Here is why, he explained that's happening 'cause the pictures he showed before so Cween will choose the markers for the animals, but she actually did not make any choice, she just picked up markers and was being told to color the animals according to him.
Yes, we love to decode, and yes we are doing it right now. My effort to decode: Either she's a plant, or they edited the video to fix the roster problem (he appears to tell her to color rooster PRIOR to her selecting the color).
They were not her choices. she was instructed which animals to fill....
It's a magic *trick* not to mention the talk was about how people are wired to try and solve things. That so many people go "ah-ah! I've figured it out!" and proceed to talk about how lame the trick was end up completely missing the point.
so where was the purple sheep?
HOW?
People seem to forget the 'magic' part.
The caps of the markers produce a different sound when they are popped off. This clues him to what color marker was chosen, and then he directs her to the appropriate picture to color. Voila. Duh Enlightened One has spoken.