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A Note from Harvey Berg... It is now 5-1/2 years since Final Exam first came out. It was a wonderful experience for me, and regarded by very many people as simply the best book test ever. (Example: The Linking Ring: "The most amazing demonstration of mind reading imaginable.") During
this time, some people thought that the only thing short of
absolutely pure mind reading was that the performer had to know the
page number. Well, it took me all this time to figure a way to do it
without knowing the page number.
It's called Ne Plus Ultra.
It's the same basic procedure. The spectator freely selects one of
three novels (Pride and Prejudice, Madame Bovary, and The Age of
Innocence). He opens the book to wherever he wants (without telling
you anything), reads to himself, and you describe the details. And the
unintended bonus that comes with it - there is a lot less memory work
involved.
No kidding.
In addition to performing it for lay persons (students and faculty of two colleges), it was also done for the New York City SAM, and officially launched at the mentalist convention in Las Vegas (MINDvention), where I kept repeating it for small groups. It's been a rousing success. It fried them all, not one single person figured out the method, and even though I took special steps at MINDvention to allow the books to be examined, the gaffing was not noticed a single time. |
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Ne Plus Ultra comes with three books familiar to all: - Pride And Prejudice by Jane Austen These books, like the ones in Final Exam, are absolutely bullet-proof and can be read through and inspected by your audience members with nothing for them to discover. Ne Plus Ultra works 100% of the time. Ne Plus Ultra can be learned in 15 minutes. Ne Plus Ultra is the result of five years of observation of spectators in Final Exam and five years of feedback from performers like you. Ne Plus Ultra is the result of an "AHA" moment Harvey experienced when challenged to eliminate the one "weakness" in Final Exam mentioned above. |
| What if your
volunteer just opened up to any page of a freely selected classic book
well known to all and started reading? And then, with NO QUESTIONS, NO
FALSE STARTS you started sensing and describing in detail the scene they are reading?
What if this required less than 15 minutes of "memory work" instead of the hour or more for Final Exam? It turns out only Harvey could improve of his own work...read on to find out how! |
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NE PLUS ULTRA
(Latin: "No More Beyond") |
| "One of the best book tests I've ever seen. I'll add it to my act." - Jeff McBride at MINDvention |