It was a ‘Mathe-Magic’ night meeting hosted by JK Tan and Victor Heng, with 80 members and 8 guests in attendance.

The audience was honoured with a visit by Ning Chai aka Magic Babe Ning, a multi-talented local magician who is well known for her spectacular magic performances as well as for the books she wrote, among several other achievements. She shared snippets of her exciting ten-year journey in the magic arena and updates of her life thereafter including her new family, travel adventures and her books.

Four new members – Jimmy Wong, Aaron Leong, James Buchanan and Jerome Bourgeon – were inducted into IBM Ring 115 and proudly received their magic wands from President John Teo.

Ian Tan kicked off the evening’s magic performances with an entertaining act for a young audience. With 3 boxes to represent addition, multiplication and brackets, he explained the correct sequence for these mathematical operations. He then stacked the boxes to mimic the correct sequence before covering them. When the cover was removed, the order of the boxes had somehow switched. This is like the “Mis-Made Lady” or “Skeleton In The Cupboard” trick. He repeated the procedure a few times but they kept producing the same results. Only when he got the audience to shout the magic word ‘Abracadabra’, did the initial sequence stay unchanged.

Chew Liang Huat used his 3D printer to create a solid frame. He then wrapped up the frame and passed a long, steel needle through its centre, aka “Knife Through Mirror Frame”. On removing the cover, the frame surprisingly had no signs of puncture holes.

President John Teo used monopoly game themed items in his performance. A volunteer used 4 tokens and placed them on any 4 of the 16 property cards. When a Community Chest card was turned over, it stated the exact sum of these rental value. The monopoly money inside an envelope totalled exactly the sum of the mortgaged values of the 4 properties. When the 4 selected property cards were turned over, each of their backs depicted the correct token used to select it. John’s second effect was a tribute to Ton Onosaka who left us recently. He performed “Tonte” using large sized cards where a spectator failed to pick the Queen of Hearts each time amongst several ten of clubs. Eventually the 4 cards became the 4 Queens!

Jimmy Wong aka Uncle Jimbo produced 3 gigantic green peas. He removed one from two in his fist and made it reappear when he opened his fist. He repeated the vanishing and appearing effects with the peas in a few different ways and ended his act by comically producing a pea from his mouth, each time it was removed.

James Pang presented 10 ESP cards with each pair carrying the same symbol. After a volunteer cut the deck, and performed a series of random swaps with the cards, they ended up in 5 piles of 2 face down cards each. When flipped over, each was a pair of cards with identical symbols.

Carson Goh expounded our calendar to show that certain popular dates all pointed to Saturdays.

Kai Emmanuel invited the volunteer to select a card and randomly insert it into a deck. He predicted it would be the 12th card in the deck. With his blindfold on, he poked a knife into the deck on the table. When the knife was lifted, a bunch of cards stuck to the knife’s sharp end were counted and there were 11. The 12th card in the deck was amazingly, the volunteer’s card.

Wee Kien Meng added 2 birthdates of 2 volunteers and to that, he further added a 9 digit number, randomly chosen by various volunteers. The final sum incredibly reflected the day, month, year and time of the IBM meeting in session then.

Alan Kwan performed a tear and restore with 2 different cards signed and held by 2 different volunteers. The kicker was each card, after restoration strangely comprised 2 halves of both cards.

The meeting resumed after the break with ‘Prof’ JK Tan demonstrating a number of intriguing mathematical concepts and mysteries, which he hoped magicians could be inspired to base their magic on. In “Beauty of 9”, he showed how a digit removed from a 3 row by 3 column of digits, can be found by using a few simple additions or subtractions. Similarly, the total value of the 3 rows of numbers in such a set-up, can also be quickly computed when one knows the ‘short-cuts’. These could be applied in card tricks. He also used a bag of coins from which he and a volunteer would grab a handful. The numbers of coins in both their hands would go on to match JK’s predictions. He also used the Magic Square concept to fill a square of numbers, and correctly done, the image of Einstein would be revealed when the board is flipped over. He also demonstrated how to derive the famous Fibonacci number sequence, and how to derive its total sum with some simple calculations.

Victor Heng presented a con-game type trick called “Rough And Ready” using a large handkerchief printed with playing card pips. A volunteer moved a token according to the stack of cards she shuffled. Yet Victor could predict the end card where her token landed on. His second effect was based on the detective story “10 Little Indians” by Agatha Christie. 10 cards representing the 10 victims were shuffled and the volunteer managed to locate the killer. When the other 9 cards were laid out in a 3 X 3 matrix, it became a magic square totalling “15” every which way. They actually matched the headline and a report in a replica of an old newspaper dated way back to1939!

The meeting ended with a monthly lucky draw and an exciting auction of magic paraphernalia.

Reported by

Low Hwee Lang (Ms)