Doug Dyment - Calculated Thoughts
In Ken Weber’s foreword to Doug Dyment’s “Calculated Thoughts”, Weber refers to Dyment as “mentalism’s best-kept secret.” And you know something? He might be right. Doug Dyment spent 25 years performing mentalism across the globe, and until now his material was kept under-wraps in privately distributed manuscripts, or entirely out of print. Now, for the first time, it is all collected and described in one gorgeous volume: “Calculated Thoughts” is finally here.
With more than forty ready-to-perform routines, this 400-page book is brimming with creativity and performance-tested material.
In our eyes, Doug’s “Quarto” is the perfect center tear. An entire chapter is dedicated to ESP cards, as well as a new, easy way to mark Bicycle cards, a memory aid that uses your feet, plus an impromptu star sign divination, drawing duplication, and other beautifully constructed mentalism pieces for both informal and formal performances. You’ll even learn a method for apparently slicing your thumb open and then healing the bleeding wound. If that sort of gore isn’t your thing, perhaps you’ll enjoy the deep dive into Magic Squares, including what we believe is the finest handling of an impromptu magic square ever described in print.
What’s refreshing about “Calculated Thoughts” is that it’s a creator’s lifework all in one place. “Calculated Thoughts” is the accumulation of a lifetime of mentalism secrets, sweated out through performance and refining from Doug and his illustrious coterie of high-profile mentalist friends.
“Doug Dyment is one of the deepest thinkers in mentalism and Calculated Thoughts is his Magnum Opus. The depth to which he explores each of his chosen subjects is simply breathtaking. He shines a highly perceptive light into some of the darkest corners of mentalism technique and reveals insights that will remain with the art for decades to come.”Marc Paul
“For those who’ve not had the chance to enter the mind of Doug Dyment…your time has come! For those in the know, it’s time to give thanks that all his material and much more are now available in a gorgeous hardcover book. I predict this will become a neoclassic of modern mentalism.”Raj Madhok
“Now you have the opportunity to discover what, up until the publication of this book, has been one of mentalism’s best-kept secrets; you are about to dip into the vast creativity of Doug Dyment, a true “underground” genius.”Ken Weber
Contents
Foreword (Ken Weber)
Magic Squares
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What Is It About Magic Squares, Anyway?
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Flash Squared
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Foundation Square
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Square School
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The Natal Square
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Fair & Square
Full Deck Stacks
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On the Ordering of Playing Card Suits
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Hiding a Sequence in Plain Sight
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The DAO Stack
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The 4D Stack
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QuickStack 3.0
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SnapStack
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The Q Stack
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The Zenith Stack
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The Chroma Stack
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The ChroMem Stack
Card Capers
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Menologue
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PokerFace
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PokerPlay
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An Immoderate Deception
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Major Arcanum
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Couplet
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Bob’s Your Uncle
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ESPerimental
Quarto
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Introduction
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Evolution
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Execution
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Consummation
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Contribution
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Codicil: Six Billet Layouts
Zenermancy
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Introduction
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Symbols: Introduction
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Symbols: Interpretation
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The Circle
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The Cross
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The Wavy Lines
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The Square
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The Star
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Transitions: Introduction
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Transitions: Interpretation
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A Reader Prepares 236
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Reading Dynamics
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An Abecedarian Adjunct
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Coloured Symbols
Wordplay
Mystery Mélange
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Penney’s From Heaven
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Spoiled for Choice
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FourSight
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The Real Thing
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The Vision
For the Toolkit
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BikeMarks 2.0
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Tick Tock Too
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How to Construct a Forcing Matrix
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Premise NV
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Marker Cribs
Musings
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On Performance
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On Overthinking
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On the Use of Props in Mentalism
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On Extrasensory Perception
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On Psychic Guilt
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On Predicting the Future
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On Learning Cold Reading
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On The Validity of Readings
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On Being a Perpetual Student
Borrowed Business
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Other Minds, Other Thoughts
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ABCDEFG
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The BBB Peek
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Design Duplicity
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Psi Coin
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C.C. Seer
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Figmental
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Bloodied
Afterword (Richard Webster)
398 pages.