Elementary by Drew Backenstoss
You offer to demonstrate how your skills might allow you to pull an ATM PIN from someone’s mind. Out of respect for the participant’s privacy, you request that he think of a substitute PIN. You even invite him to change his mind several times before settling on four digits. This new PIN is never written down or spoken aloud until the successful conclusion of the performance wherein you divine the number.

Here are a couple points that are worth emphasizing:

1) There is no math involved in the process used to generate the substitute PIN. The procedure in play is minimal, feels extremely fair and is completely motivated.

2) The PIN creation process takes approximately one minute – around the same time needed for traditional peek approaches.

3) The system delivers you most (if not all) of the PIN within seconds and WELL BEFORE the participant could fathom that you could possibly know anything. This feature allows you to relax and enjoy the performance along with everyone else.

4) This is one of those rare routines where the presented method and the real method are so closely aligned that it FEELS authentic to all involved (including you as the performer). Don’t misunderstand me, you aren’t ACTUALLY reading the participants mind, but it almost feels that way!

5) The method works in any language, anywhere in the world.

6) Once you become comfortable with the scripting and system(s), this is just as reliable as any of your favorite peek strategies. Speaking personally, over the last two years I have only used peeks for names, drawings, memories and the like – when I want to reveal a PIN, I use ELEMENTARY and the number only ever exists in the participant’s mind.

7) Most importantly, please understand that this is not “self-working” and you won’t be performing this within minutes of learning it. To become fully comfortable with the system(s), it will take some time and effort. That said, the work involved is comparable to learning a star sign anagram (so it genuinely isn’t that difficult). Once it clicks in your mind, you’ll find that you aren’t relying on memory as much as logic and deduction.

Not only will you learn the basic system, I also share nine variations – each one providing a wealth of additional enhancements and subtleties built off of the core method. These include a spectator-as-mind reader variant, two “silent” approaches, a handling that uses two participants for a double PIN reveal, and two versions that are perfectly suited for stage performances. After nearly every chapter, I have prepared practice sessions designed to help you gain confidence in the system(s) before using them in the real world.

The book also includes a bonus concept I call “Amalgamation.” This is yet another one of my favorite propless techniques. It’s an extremely deceptive and reliable verbal strategy to force thoughts ranging from names to countries to drawings (and more). This fits well alongside the overall performance aesthetics and philosophies found in the ELEMENTARY system, so I thought it would make a nice addition to the project.

I went to great lengths to capture every nuance of the systems within the book – resulting in a page count over 230 pages. That length is not a function of complexity but rather because I want others to be extremely successful and confident during performance. I hope readers recognize the book as a toolbox wherein the ideas and variations can be mixed and matched to construct a PIN divination perfectly suited for each performer.

After sharing this with a handful of people across the globe, I have come to appreciate that it is helpful if you get to experience the routine before learning the system. That way, you’ll have a clear idea on how efficient, direct and deceptive the method is. For that reason, I have decided to set aside a few hours each week to demo the most basic version of ELEMENTARY for anyone who may be interested in purchasing the book. In some ways, the “basic version” is the least deceptive approach I share in the book – so if you like it, I’m confident that you’ll be THRILLED with the other variations. The basic version is also the one that I anticipate readers will perform most frequently.