Magic - Three Rope Mystery Trick

Lawrence Cummings: Hi, I am Lawrence Cummings and I am a professional magician with Magic up Close. Today, I am going to show you how to perform simple magic tricks. This trick is called The Three Rope Mystery, I have been while I was in school, I used to do a trick on my teachers once. I had these three pieces of rope, one small, one medium and one long. I told my teacher, I can make these three pieces of rope, the same size, they said, Well, if you use scissors, you can. I said, No, without using scissors, I can make them all same size . This is what I did. I took all the ends, brought them all to the top just like this and I went, Look, look, they are all the same size. What? They are not the same size, of course not, the middle is still long and one is small. But what if I bring the middles up to the top, just like this, now they are the same size, we have, one, we have, two and we have three pieces of rope that are same size. Now, this is what made my teacher mad at me. I took the ends like this, tied them into a knot, just like this, that is called a square knot. Took the other ends, tied them into a square knot too and I looked at my teacher and I said to him, I will fringe you meaning I set you up. But there, he grabbed the rope from me, we had a little tug of war and something strange happened.

Oh, it happened again, but big one, small, one long, one medium, here we untie that. There is the small one, there is the medium and there is the long. To this day, my teacher can not sleep properly and that is how you do that -- that is you perform that trick. Here is a secret, what you need is three pieces of rope, one 12 inches long, one 24 inches long and one 36 inches long. I take tape on the rounded sides, so they will not fray, after a while they will fray and come apart. Here you go, here is the secret, you need to hold your hands, this is towards the audience, of course. where you are stand behind your hand is the small rope, underneath your thumb, then the medium and then the long one.

You are going to reach behind, when you are talking about, make them all the same size, you are going to grab the small rope underneath the long rope, bring it up next to itself over here, underneath your thumb and hang on to it. Bring the long rope, bring it up, put it over here and then bring the medium rope and put it next to the long rope. So this is the medium, these two are the long ropes, you are going to then when you are ready to stretch them, you are going to grab these three pieces and bring it down. What is happening is that the long rope is pivoting on the small rope. So, now you have something like this, all this is behind your hand, so nobody can see what is happening. I sometimes hold my hand like this with my fingers over, the secret, so nobody can see what happens. Now, this point, you are going to count the three ropes as three separate ropes and this is how you do it.

You are going to switch hands from left to right, you are going to pull out the medium and count out loud, one, then you are going to take these two, the ones that are connected, you are going to put it down here, grab over your thumb, reach for the other thumb, grabbing the medium rope at the same time and counting out two out loud. You are going to count the medium rope a second time as three. So it looks like this, one, two, three. Now, the last part, take the ends, you take the two ropes that are crossed over and you are going to do it one more time like this and you got to tie your knot. I like square knot, you can tie any knot you like, it should work and I do it again over here.

We can just tie the small rope around the long rope, see this part here is actually the long rope. Then, when you are ready you just pull it down, it slides, it slides down and all you have to do is just untie it and they are back to the normal. The small one, the medium one and the long one and that is how you do The Three Rope Mystery and next is how to do a Battery Not Included.