Reaching out again to the café to help find two solutions to something I want to be able to do for certain situations if they come up.

The first is to do a prediction of the exact amount of candy in a sealed jar. I am not picky on the candy but with Halloween coming up like jelly beans or smarties or something seems good or even candy corn. For this I have seen a version of something in an Lee Earle publication but I was hoping for something else.

The other effect concept revolves around a padlock combination. Where someone seals an item inside but I can open the safe without knowning the lock combo as that become an effect on top of everything else. I had heard Dunninger did something like this but can not find the material that was put out in or anything newer.

Thanks for your help!

Im not going to go into methods here as it's the wrong forum as such. But a few notes.

How would the candy thing work? Who's going to count it? What I would do is have a large bowl of m&ms or skittles, invite the participation to take a handful of candies and then tell them how many they took. I can think of a few ways to make that happen.

The padlock code has been done a number of times if I recall correctly. It shouldn't take too much searching to come up with the solution you seek.

Definitely no methods please!

The candy thing is more of the idea of there is a precounted amount in the jar and the person you comes the nearest to it wins type of thing.

I seem to be searching for the wrong things in the combo lock then.

I am satisfied I could achieve both. Feel free to PM me if you need help.

Best,

Atlas

For the candy, I'd use the handful of coins bit. Not how many are in the jar, but how many the other person grabbed. Treatments exist in many places, but my first exposure was Ross Johnson in his Simply Psychic DVD.

A padlock, totally ungimmicked, would do the second. Osterlind has one method, but I really liked Nate Kranzo's approach. Kranzo in Detroit.

Patrick

Coverage of the Dunninger safe can be found in my book Dunninger Knows.

You could use Spellbinder's "Cookie Jar Force" from The Wizards' Journal #16 to not only make the prediction (in a fortune cookie, for example, or inside an individually wrapped cupcake package) as to which cookie or cake will be selected after being mixed, and because the items are large, they can easily be counted when they come tumbling out of the jar to award two to the person or persons who came closest to guessing and the rest distributed one by one to the rest of the trick or treaters. Refill the jar quickly and reset for the next "audience."

Use a NW or PW and you are ready to go!

Have you ever heard of the central limit theorem? That can be used to get the audience to guess how many are in the jar. I've used it before (not in performance) and it is surprisingly accurate. There is a video on YouTube called wisdom of the crowds that gives a good demonstration.

Do we really have to give away methods on an openly searchable forum?