The Mental Epic Mind Reading Magic Trick

The Mental Epic board is a classic of mentalism. More accurately, it is a classic of mental magic. The difference between magic and mentalism can be difficult to determine, however it will suffice to say here that the term mental magic covers tricks that both a magician and a certain kind of mentalist can perform before an audience. There are some mentalism tricks (or effects as they are usually termed) that magicians can not get away with and there are some mental magic tricks that some mentalists, due to their stage persona, can not perform. The Mental Epic board can be used by almost all magicians and mentalists.

The Mental Epic board trick cards comes in different forms but essentially they all work in the same way. What you have is a board, usually a chalk board or a white board that has between divided into six sections. That is two rows of three squares. Finally there are some kind of flaps covering the top three squares. These flaps are normally made out of wood but I have seen them as pieces of card or paper held in place with bulldog clips.

The effect is very simple to perform and, more importantly, very simple for your audience to follow. The mentalist lifts up the first flap and then writes a predication onto the first square before closing the flap. He, or she, then asks the audience to shout out any random object or idea. For example, the mentalist could have someone shout out their favorite animal, or any number, a color, sign of the zodiac, it really doesn't matter what they call out. The process is then repeated with the second flap, and finally the third flap marked cards lenses.


For the reveal, the Mental Epic board is turned around and the flaps are raised one-by-one to reveal that the mentalist has correctly predicated all the things randomly selected by the audience.
The Mental Epic board - verdict
How easy to perform: 2/10 (easy)
How easy for intelligent people to work out: 7/10 (difficult)
Suitability for stage performance: High
Suitability for small performance: High
Suitability for friends and family performance: Low-Medium
Conclusion
The Mental Epic is a classic of mentalism, and deservedly so. As you can see it scores highly in all aspects, except for performing in front of friends and family. The reason it scores low in this category is that to your friends and family it is impossible to put on a stage persona, they know you too well. You can use the Mental Epic with them but they will always just consider it to be a trick board. Instead of wanting to know how you did it, they'll want to know how the board did it.