Chan Canasta Forces A Word

In researching the book Chan Canasta: A Remarkable Man, I came across another version of Canasta’s famed book test, one in which he used a word constructed from letters called out by members of the audience. A video of this routine, as performed on a Dutch television show, has now appeared on You Tube. You will find it at the link below. Thank you Gaafman.

While the routine does not compare to Canasta’s Great Book Test it does show Chan demonstrating some of the skills that made him the first genuine psychological magician of the modern age. Chan billed himself as the psycho magician and there was a genuine element of psychology used by Canasta in his performances. Some of that can be seen in this video.

If you watch the video you will see that the starting point of the routine is Canasta asking members of the audience or panel to call out letters so that they can create a word. The word he wishes to create is Sprak. Let’s see how he goes about it:

“First of all, let’s start. Let’s make up a word,” says Canasta. “I go to the blackboard and I shall ask members of my panel and you ladies and gentlemen in the theatre to shout, to call out, any letter of the alphabet that you wish. Will you please do so, go ahead?”

A member of the panel calls out A. “Faster,” says Canasta, writing it down. Very quickly now we hear the letters K C and P and Canasta writes them down in no particular arrangement on the board. And then he does something very interesting. He shouts out S and writes it down with the other chosen letters. It is the first letter of the word he will force. The fact that he called it out seems to go by unnoticed.

“Who else?” asks Canasta and the letters Y and G follow. “Too many says Canasta but someone else shouts out O. He does not need another vowel. It might confuse matters. So he writes it in a smaller font and away from the rest of the letters.

Canasta recaps and writes the letters down a sccond time, in a line.

“We have here S P C K A Y G”

He completely ignores the O. Note that as yet he cannot make the word Sprak from the letters on the board. “I don’t think a word can be made out of it can it, in Dutch?” he says. But he leads the audience in the direction of his force word by appearing to try to make a word from those on offer.

He writes down S P A K, leaving a space. And then says, “R perhaps instead of C.” He openly inserts an R in the space to make the word Sprak. This is a very clever ruse. It sounds plausible “R perhaps instead of C” but provides the key to him creating his force word.

“Sprak is alright? Is that a word?” The panel tell him it is and that it means 'spoke.' Apparently unsure he asks if the spelling is correct. He is assured it is.

He underlines the word on the board. “Let’s take the word sprak and let’s make that our word.”

Canasta’s attitude to the creation of the word is interesting. At the conclusion it might be obvious that the word had to be forced. But Canasta always acts like any word could be chosen. Similarly he suggests that three cards that will be used to arrive at a page could be put in any order.

A common theme in Canasta’s presentations was that ‘whatever you want will be’ but you have to want it enough. And when he failed, as he sometimes did, the audience simply thought they didn’t want it enough. But next time they would try harder. Next time Canasta would succeed. It was all part of Canasta’s enduring charm.

Have fun studying the rest of the video and noting how careful Canasta is with his words. How he always appears to give the audience a chance to change their minds while in reality locking the doors on all other possibilities except for the outcome he intends. Every performance is a master class in psychology.

Chan Canasta's Book of Oopses

Which card? That was the question posed by Chan Canasta on the cover of the Radio Times (8^th Jan, 1960). This novel interactive trick was used to promote his new series of psycho magic on BBC television.

Having thought of a card, readers were asked to turn to page 9 for the results. If you click on the photo you should get a better view of the cards. And having chosen one you can read Canasta's prediction in the very next paragraph of this article.

'Yes,' says Chan Canasta 'you probably chose the five of spades on the cover. If you didn’t, however, don’t worry. The eight of clubs and the ace of clubs - or even the seven of diamonds - were also likely choices.'

Note Canasta’s well chosen wording. He never actually said that he would guess the card you thought of. He merely asked you to think of one and then turn to page 9. You may or may not have thought of the five of spades. You’d be damned impressed if you did. But if you didn’t, Canasta brushes the error away as if it didn’t really matter. And leaves you with the feeling that any mistake was your own.

In 1966 George G Harrap & Co published Chan Canasta’s Book of Oopses, a small 48 page volume of interactive tricks. It was billed as 'a collection of thrilling experiments in which the book itself plays the part of the mind-reader.'

Each double page spread was comprised of a set of instructions on the left-hand page and a diagram on the right-hand page. Following the instructions you chose one of the items on the opposite page; a playing card, a symbol, a number or word. When you'd made your decision you turned to the back of the book and looked at Canasta's predictions. Hopefully he would be right. But if he was wrong he offered a humorous and delightful apology and said 'Oops.'

Canasta was very clear about the nature of the tricks, saying in the introduction ‘Well, in many cases the working of the trick is certain, depending on logical or mathematical principles that are cleverly concealed. In other cases, the tricks are of a psychological character, so designed that they are successful only about 80 per cent of the time.’

‘Thus you see the Book presents a kind of challenge to you and to itself. When it fails - Oops! - it shrugs its page sadly and admits failure. But, when it scores a hit the effect is nothing short of miraculous, giving you an eerie feeling that it possesses some occult and incredible powers. This, in fact, is true in a sense. The psychological tricks are planned so that you are led unconsciously along certain mental paths without realising it.’

Original copies of the book are highly sought after and have been selling for around $200 on the internet. But now Martin Breese has reprinted the book and offered it at a much lower price. The original was printed on a sort of black cartridge paper, inadvertently making it difficult to copy, but the reprint is a good one and made on harder wearing glossy stock. You can find the reprint on Martin Breese’s website.

At least one of the Oopses seems to be based on something Canasta performed on television. I’m talking about Oops 10 which is entitled Making a sentence of nonsense. The reader is asked to choose four words from ten on offer to make a simple sentence.

On his show Canasta had tried a very similar trick in which a panel of celebrities did the choosing. In The Budget magazine for February 1960 Gus Southall wrote:

‘Then on to a mass experiment with four sets of large cards each bearing four words. These were shown quickly to the panel and the studio audience who were invited to compose a sentence from them which should agree with one previously written down by Canasta. Unfortunately it was a total failure.’

Obviously not the most successful of routines but Canasta had tried it on an earlier show, where it had also failed, so he seemed keen on it. When I met Canasta in 1996, I asked him about the trick and he told me a story that had been told to him by film actor Michael Rennie.

It appears that Rennie had arranged to take his mother out to dinner but she was reluctant to go. The reason was that she was a big fan of Canasta's and didn't want to go anywhere until she'd seen his television show that evening. Rennie, reluctantly, is forced to watch the show with his mother. He was not impressed, the show was the usual mixture of hits and misses. One routine in particular was a spectacular failure, the one that Gus Southall later reviewed. The celebrity panel were shown words on cards and asked to choose some and arrange them into a sentence. They did. But when Canasta's prediction was revealed it was utterly wrong.

For Rennie, who was perhaps watching Canasta for the first time, this was a total shock. He turned to his mother and said, 'You made me stay in for this? He was completely wrong.'

'No,' said his mother 'he wasn't wrong. They were!'

Which perhaps tells us a little about Canasta's enduring charm. I asked Canasta about the routine and how he had intended to make it work. It was clear he didn't have a specific method in mind, just hope that his persuasive powers might bring about the right result. 'It might have worked,' he said, 'but whether it worked or not, I knew it would fill seven and a half minutes.' Filling the time must have been a major consideration when you're the sole artiste on a weekly television series.

I hadn't known about the Book of Oopses when I met Canasta. T.A. Waters told me about it and, later, Peter Lane kindly loaned me his copy. It was years before I managed to get hold of an original copy of my own. I think Oops 10 in the Book of Oopses is a version of the routine he used on his television shows. It's a wonderful effect. Maybe one day it will work.