Magic Tricks

The actual moment when the ring grows is a great visual. (I had assumed, by the way, from the promo video, that the "growing" portion involved just pushing a large ring upward on your finger. But no, it's better than that -- you can show the "ring" snug around your finger in the moment before the diameter starts to expand before the spectator's eyes.)

But there are so many limitations that I don't see myself performing this very often. It's probably not a spoiler to say that there's some palming and switching involved, and it's a lot harder to get away with palming and switching in a trick that practically screams "palming and switching" because that's the only way it can be done.

In fact, the beginning of the DVD shows a demo of Dan doing the trick from start to finish, seated across the table from a spectator. Normally, those demos also appear in the online promo video for the trick -- that's why they're created -- but in this case, it wasn't included in the promo. This looks suspiciously like the sellers realized that a complete start-to-finish demo of the trick would make it obvious that the trick relied on ditching stuff in your pockets or under the table, so they left it out of the online video. (The promo video even says, "Everything's clean, everything ends clean". Hey guys, every trick "ends clean" if you're allowed to ditch your gimmicks under the table!)

It's also very angle-sensitive. The online ad says it's "good for street, parlor, close-up", but then on the DVD Dan says it's really only good for up to about 3 people.

If you haven't bought Dan Hauss's "Rattled", you'll probably like that one better -- angle-proof, examinable, gimmick does all the work. I could only ever really see doing "Growing Ring" for a small group sitting across a table from me.