Page 387 - Brion Toss - The Complete Rigger’s Apprentice

string need to be in order to be 1 foot above the Threading the Needle, using the long piece from the
Earth’s surface all the way around? Professor’s Nightmare.
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The amazing answer is: 6 feet 3 ⁄8 inches! Wrap the string around your thumb, from the
Here’s the math: A circle’s circumference is its base out, making the turns come toward you over
diameter multiplied by π (3.14159. . .). 8,000 miles the top of the thumb (Figure 11-14A); 4 feet (1.2m
5 π = approximately 25,000 miles. To get the string or so) of the end hangs down below your hand. After
a foot off the surface all the way around, you just you put on eight to ten turns, bring up a bight, with
add 2 feet to the diameter (a foot at either end). the end on the inside (away from your fingertips),
The diameter is now 8,000 miles plus 2 feet, and and pinch it between your thumb and index finger
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π 5 2 feet is 6.283 feet or 6 feet 3 ⁄8 inches. If you at their very tips.
want to work it out in big numbers, 8,000 miles is “Now, this is just a beginner’s exercise,” you
42,240,000 feet (8,000 5 5,280). Eight thousand explain. “When you get really good, you can thread
miles plus 2 feet is 42,240,002 feet. The circumfer- a sewing machine while it’s running. But this is a
ence of the second is 132,700,873.7 feet. The dif- good start. See, I’m going to pick up this end here”—
ference between the two, somehow, against all intui- and you pick up the end you left hanging down at
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tive math, is 6.283 feet, or 6 feet 3 ⁄8 inches. I don’t the beginning of the turns—“and thread it through
know about you, but no matter how painstakingly this little-bitty eye, so it’ll look just like this”—and
and exhaustively I prove it, my brain says, “It just here you slowly thread it through the eye, which is
can’t be so.” Go figure. just barely big enough for the line—“only I’m going
to do it faster than you can see, so fast that I need
all these extra turns here to keep the string from
THREADING THE NEEDLE

Back into action for you now. Start by talking about
the importance of dexterity in pulling these tricks
off. Magicians, you note, are fond of saying that the
hand is quicker than the eye, but they usually don’t
explain how to train a hand for such speed. But you
can let your audience in on a little exercise called

Figure 11-14A–B. Threading the Needle. Wrap the
string onto your thumb starting with the end hanging
down 4 or 5 inches. Make the turns with the standing
part coming toward you over the top of the thumb.
Bring up a little bight of the standing part after you
have enough turns, give it a half-turn counterclock-
wise, and pinch it with the long end innermost from
your thumb and forefinger tips. Pick up the short end
and make as though to thread it through the small
bight with lightning speed . . . (A) . . . but instead sim-
ply pull the end taut. This will cause one of the turns
to fly off the base of your thumb and emerge in the
little bight. It looks exactly as though you’ve threaded
a needle at impossible speed (B).

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