Mark Leveridge Magic

A Wrinkle On - Ropey Rope

BRIAN BANWELL

Brian mentioned to me a nice variation of part of the rope blendo sequence in Ropey Rope, and gave me his permission to pass it on.

In the plot, instead of having the 5 small pieces of rope tie themselves in a chain and then having the knots vanish to leave a smooth piece of long rope, Brian prefers to have the knots visually spring off the rope.

To prepare this, instead of tying the four very small pieces at regular intervals right round the rope to create a sliding knot as in the original instructions, tie the small piece round a folded bite of the rope.

In other words, select a position about a quarter of the way from one end and fold the rope at this position in half. Take one of the very small pieces and fold it round the top part of the loop and tie it. If you've done it correctly, if you pull the rope taut, the rope loop will straighten out and the small rope knot will ping off.

So, simply tie all four small rope pieces round rope loops at regular intervals along the long piece and load that into the change bag.

When you reach the point in the routine where the five small pieces have apparently knotted themselves to make one long piece, instead of replacing the rope back in the bag, you hold the rope ends between your two hands and as the children say the magic word, you pull the rope taut and all four rope knots will spring off and onto the floor!

NIGEL CURTIS

Nigel emailed to say that he found it awkward trying to keep the rope and rolled silk bundle together prior to use but that he had come up with a simple way to get round the problem. After threading the silk through the rope gimmick and rolling it up, Nigel simply pushes the bundle into the hole in the handle of the scissors he is going to use. Not only does this keep the silk from unrolling, it also means the bundle and the scissors can be removed quickly and in one smooth movement.