Hands down the best propless effect I have come across. One that I will actually use that is
fooling, direct and entertaining which is rare for propless. 5 stars.
2 of 2 magicians found this helpful.
My review contains no disclosures of procedure beyond what is directly portrayed on the promotional
video (i.e., the list of colours).
The gist of the method is fairly clear from the demo,
and it’s clever and deserves exploration. There are a few obvious loose ends that prompted me to
purchase it to find out how they are dealt with. Aside from some useful advice at the very end,
deficiencies remain. A lot of assumptions are made, about where someone will stop, about colour
they regard listed items to be, and the likely range of favorite colours chosen.
This is a
potentially versatile product that is spoiled by inept tuition in terms of its content and its
structure; it also has an inescapably shaky method, and it contains intructions for the participant
that I regard as far too skimpy. It’s propless mentalism, of course. You are guessing, but with the
odds are designed to be tipped significantly in your favour in most cases.
I have spent
many, many hours over several days and over several weeks trying to make sense of Mello’s
instructions. Mello understands his method, but he appears incapable of explaining it in a logical,
lucid way to a normal person. The explanations are wrongly sequenced. He explains how to remember
the list of objects without beforehand clearly providing the logic behind the list and its
structure. The colour coding of his drawings is never explained properly. You are left to
reverse-engineer.
There are two versions of Psystem.
Version A, the first list,
is on the promotional video.
So far as I can tell, the outcome in the promo, blue, is the
best possible case. (This is stated neither in the promotional materials nor in the instructions.)
If blue is not chosen, the clear and firm instructions given to the participant need to change! This
is close to a terminal fault. (This extremely important information is casually slipped at 6:35,
long after the viewer is absolutely baffled. If I am mistaken, the fault is not mine.) No video is
supplied for how to deal smoothly with any non-ideal case.
The two versions are claimed
to have different pros and cons, but what these are is never specifically stated. I could not tell
you what they are.
There are two lists (versions), and the connection between them is
known only to Mello. Do we switch over, for some reason part-way through upon some trigger? Are
they alternatives for variety? He offers no clue whatever. Next, out of the blue, he combines both
lists in a ‘streamlined' version, for reasons he not explain, but evidently imagines that he has. Is
it meant to squeeze in a wider range of colours? I’m just guessing.
It’s great if you hit
(as the promo shows), so it may be worth a try, especially if presented merely as a warm-up or as a
test of your psychic compatability with your participant. As propless mentalism goes, it shows
promise, but the purchaser needs to reverse-engineer the method and re-populate his lists.
Some minor glitches in the first list are evident from the promo: e.g. I’d replace schoolbus.
They are not yellow where I live. And what colour is an elephant? Grey? Are flamingos widely and
instantly recognised as pink? Not everybody knows the colour of Elmo or Cookie Monster.
I
hope that the Discussion area will clarify the method, the tuition, and the presentation. I also
hope that the creator will add some clarifying materials to the downloads. Failing that, Penguin may
need to get someone else to provide the missing instructions.
This product has been
enthusiastically and credibly recommended in Unbiased Magic Reviews, which is why I eagerly bought
it. However, my guess is that David of UMR has successfully deduced the method and tweaked the
presentation. He probably has 20 IQ points more than I.
3 of 5 magicians found this helpful.
No doubt this is a terrific no prop mentalism effect that deserves all the praise it has received
but I think the amount of memorization is quite a bit more than has been advertised.
2 of 3 magicians found this helpful.
As always Matt is a genius in his thinking and coming up with yet another amazing propless method,
psystem is very clever,and very fun to perform and divine a color someone is just thinking of. I
highly recommend psystem.
1 of 2 magicians found this helpful.
I really liked Psystem 1. It's so clean and can be done literally anywhere with nothing. The only
issue I had was the instructional video felt a little unclear and confusing. You'll probably need to
watch it multiple times to understand it, but it clicked for me the next day. It's also very
reliable which is rare for propless mentalism. Note that you can swap out the items for whatever you
like, and this does require some time to memorize everything, but he gives you a very easy way to
memorize it.
Overall, I definitely recommend this. When someone wants me to read their
mind, but I have nothing on me, this might be the effect I do.