Name a vegetable. Think of a two-digit number. Pick a card. Mentalism runs on the fact that a free choice is not a random one — and this measures how far from random it actually is.
Eleven questions, one at a time. You see how many people gave your answer as soon as you give it.
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The most common answers so far, for every question. Free to quote, with the sample size beside each one so you can judge the weight yourself.
Asked to choose freely, people behave in ways that are remarkably consistent. They avoid the extremes. They avoid anything that feels too obvious, which makes the second-most-obvious answer the popular one. And they reach for whatever has the strongest identity: the vegetable a child draws as a cartoon, the card that has been the signed and marked one for centuries.
The two-digit question is the clearest case. Asked for a number where both digits are odd and different, people rule out the round numbers, rule out repeats because the instruction already did, and then reach for something that feels arbitrary. The trouble is that the same number feels arbitrary to a great many people at once, which is precisely what stops it being arbitrary.
A force is any method that makes somebody arrive at a chosen answer while feeling they chose freely. Some are physical, done with the cards. The ones on this page are psychological: name the most likely answer, be right often enough, and let the misses be forgotten.
What the folklore cannot tell you is how often that actually works. If the top answer takes 40% the effect is close to reliable. If it takes 9% it is a gamble dressed up as mind reading. That is a number, and a number needs a sample.
The tricks on this site take the other route. Rather than guessing what somebody will choose, they make the method independent of it: the Gilbreath principle survives a genuine shuffle, and the binary card trick works for any number at all.
Mentalists have assumed carrot for a long time, and it is one of the oldest defaults in the business.
The running count above tests it against real answers, with the sample size beside it so you can judge how much weight it carries yet.
Asked for a two-digit number with both digits odd and different, people avoid the obvious. They skip round numbers, skip repeated digits because the instruction ruled them out, and reach for something that feels arbitrary.
37 feels arbitrary to a great many people at once, which is exactly why it stops being arbitrary.
Any method that makes a spectator arrive at a chosen answer while feeling they picked freely. Some forces are physical, done with the cards.
Others are purely psychological: name the answer most people give, and be right often enough that the misses are forgotten.
Yes, and please link back so a reader sees the current count rather than a snapshot. The sample size is published beside every result.
The method and its limits are on this page rather than hidden, including that this is a self-selected sample of people who found a card magic site.
The card question has its own page, with the full deck and the running count: what card do people pick? The rest of the site is self-working card tricks you can play in the browser.