This book right here,
The Magic Misfits, tell everybody what this is
about, and where it's going. Yeah. So I wrote a book for-- a
middle grade book for kids 8, 9, up to 89. It follows a group of kids who
love magic, and they wind up-- this boy Carter winds
up in a small town. He's an orphan and he meets like
minded kids who enjoy magic. And there's a purveyor
of a magic Shop in this town named Mr. Vernon. And they use their
skills of magic to help stop diamonds from being
stolen from a carnival owner. It's the first book of four. So one will come out a year. I just finished
writing the second one, and I'm excited by it. I don't know, it's fun. Wow. I think it's fun to be able
to write stuff that I want my kids to be able to read. And impart some subtle lessons
of inclusion and diversity, and being proud of
what makes you unique. And coming together with your
different unique abilities, and joining forces
and cooperation. I just think those are
good things to talk about. What a great idea. That's great. It's at bookstores everywhere. Everywhere Papa? Are they everywhere Papa? Hey Papa. Where can you get them Papa? You can get them everywhere Gid. That's wonderful Papa. You want to see a trick? Yes I do. OK. So-- I love magic. This is a deck of cards. These are actually
playing cards you can buy. They're Neil Patrick
Harris playing cards. They're all-- and the money
goes to Red, a great AIDS organization. Theory11.com. All different cards. I'm going to flip through the
deck, riffle through the deck and you say stop. Stop. Look at the card. Uh huh. I'm going to show the camera. I don't want to see. You see it? Got it? Yep we all saw it. You all see it. You could have picked this card. You could have picked that card. I'm going to do a crazy awesome shuffle
that I just learned how to do. Wait. Wait. I just learned-- hold on. It's a one handed
shuffle, hold on. I'm not buying this at all. What was your card? The one you're going to show me. No. What was the card really? It was four of clubs. Four of clubs. Yeah. Four of clubs. Correct. This is a better trick. I was just talking like cards. This is a wish list that
I made of different things that I want for Christmas. The MPH holiday
wish list of 2017. Inside there's a robot dog. Dying to have a robot dog. There's Nick Jonas headphones. Nick Jonas. There's a whole bunch of things. Lightsabers. So here's what I want to do. I want you to pick
something in this. I have made a prediction
over here in a box. So hold out your hand. OK. And I'm going to set this here. OK. Lift it up a little bit higher,
and pull it closer to you. Because what I'm
going to do, is I want you to riffle
through and look at me. And when you think you
are on the right page, I want you to just stop. OK. All right, so riffle through. OK. Well I have to look-- I can't look at you. Look at me until you think
you're on a page that you like, and stop whenever you think,
and then glance at the page. OK. And then, perfect. I've made-- Now I'm going
to make it suspenseful, and I'm going to
ask you to give me some hints as to what this is. Does this thing that I
want, does it have a cover? It should Papa. [LAUGHING] But this thing is not
literally the cover, it's what's more
inside the cover. Yes Papa. And is this something
that everyone can enjoy? Children could
enjoy this as well? Yes Papa. They should be
supervised, but yes Papa. OK. This box has been sitting
here this entire time. For the first time,
will you say-- will you let everyone know. And we haven't planned this. No. Will you let everyone know
what it was that you picked. Hot tub. Truly seriously? Yes, hot tub. I have my book. My magic misfits book, that's
what I'm here to promote. It wasn't hot tube at all. No, you have your card. Why would you pick hot tub? Hot tub doesn't even
fit in the box Ellen. But you said it
wasn't the cover, it was what was in the cover. Wait a second. I figured this out. How? Wait. What was your card? And the four of spades. Clubs. Clubs. Nice. Oh my God. That's so good. Oh my God. The Magic Mischiefs
is available wherever books are sold right now.
It sounded like NPH riffles at least a few more cards after Ellen yells stop, so I would guess that it's some form of a riffle force. He spends an awful lot of time "squaring" up the deck, and I could imagine him grabbing a break in that action. If it was truly a random choice, I would imagine that he wouldn't have used a riffle, but rather a more traditional "pick a card" type of selection.
Ellen's selection of the gift doesn't have to be scripted either. One way to do the trick is for the notepad to have "hot tub" on multiple pages, and have those pages cut differently so they will be revealed by the riffle. NPH explicitly tells Ellen not to look while she riffles.
A further alternative (which is not used here), is to have only a few different gift choices repeating throughout the notebook, and have multiple books in the box, each with a cover labeled for that particular gift. Notice that NPH asks Ellen what the gift is prior to opening the box and pulling out the book. On the first watch, I assumed this is the way the trick was done, especially since NPH carefully puts the lid back on the box. However, NPH then throws the empty box.
Forced card with gaffed riffle notebook where every other page is cut slightly shorter than the others. This is a style of riffle where if you riffle one way, all the choices will be different but riffled the reverse way, all the choices will be the same.