The Mystifying Reader

• Indoors
• Equipment: Pencil and paper for each Cub
• Formation: Circle

Give all the Cubs a slip of paper - each the same size and shape as the others. Then ask everyone to write a short sentance of four or five words. The words should be written plainly and should not be shown to any other person. Then instruct them to fold their papers and bring them to someone previously selected to act as the 'guardian'. No one, not even the guardian, should attempt to read the papers, still folded. As you gravely close your eyes, place the folded paper against your forehead and remain a moment in deep thought. Then call out any sentence that has occurred to you and as who wrote it. One of the Cubs, who is an accomplice, and who did not write a sentence, admits authorship of the sentence. Then unfold the paper, apparently to verify his announcement (and read the sentence to yourself). Then place the paper in your left hand and ask the guardian for another.

Repeat the same preliminaries and then call out the words written on the previous paper, which you have had the opportunity to read. This will be a bona fide answer and one of the Cubs will have to admit to writing the sentence. Keep the performance up in this manner until all the player's slips of paper have been read. In order for the trick to be successful, the accomplice must be careful to conceal from the audience the fact that he has no include a sentence in the collection given to the guardian.