Contimental by Max Maven 

 
 

This is my not so literal transcription of Maven’s effect Contimental as 

performed by him on video. 
 
Effect:  The magician chooses a spectator in the audience.  Here is what he 
says.  

 

 “Madam, I’d like to take a trip to Europe with you—a mental trip.  

Let’s go to any country in Europe—I’ll even give you Scandanavia.  Let’s just 
not pick a country in Eastern Europe, the names there change every week. 
So, I want you to think of a country in Western Europe or Scandanavia.  Got 
it? Good.  Now visualize the name of the country.  Now I want you to focus--

you’re kind of jumping all around there—focus on the letters.  You’re still 
jumping around there, all right let me try, I’m going to try to get the letters 
here, but they may come in a little jumbled.” 

 
“I’m receiving an A,” says the magician. The spectator nods her head 

yes. 

“Good.  I’m also receiving an N.”  The spectator nods her head yes 

again. 

“And I’m also getting a D.”  The spectator embarrassed for the 

magician laughs “No.” 

The magician, surprised, replies playfully, “Ooh, this is going to be 

more difficult than I thought.  Focus clearly please.  Okay, I’m getting what 
looks like an R.” 

The spectator again says No.  The magician in mock outrage says, “I 

thought you were a nice person!  Okay, let’s forget about words.  Maybe 
you’re a more visual person.  I want you to think of some strong image 

associated with the country.  It might be an image of an important place of 
interest, or maybe what the clothing looks like, any strong visual image.  Got 
it? Ahh, good that’s much better.  I’m getting the image pretty clear I think.  
I’m going to write the country down on this pad.  What is the country you’re 
thinking of? Spain? Yes, that’s just what I wrote.” 

 
And indeed as the pad is turned over, it reads Spain. 
 

Method:

  This principle is called progressive anagramming.  The 

magician can tell which country is chosen based on the spectator’s responses 

to his guessed letters.  Believe it or not, with only two No answers, the 
correct country out of 20 can be determined.  The performer must memorize 
the following table (another option is to have this crib sheet attached to the 
side of the marker the performer uses to write his prediction): 
 

Call out capital letters until you get a no.  Then call out small letters until you 
get a second no.  The country at that letter will be the answer.  If you reach 
a country with a line next to it, stop there even if you don't have two nos yet. 

 
A 
l   

Sweden 

g Liechtenstein 
i Luxemborg 
-- Belgium 
 
N 

l Austria 
t Wales 
i Portugal 
-- Italy 
 
D  

r Spain 
e Norway 
c Germany 
-- France 
 

L 
-- Denmark 
 
E 
o Finland 

h Scotland 
-- Holland 
 
R  
-- England 
I  

-- Netherlands 
S  
-- Ireland 
 
-- Switzerland 

 
 
Let’s try a couple of examples: You say A. Spectator says No.  So now you go 
to the small letters underneath the A.  So you say L.  Spectator says yes.  

You continue right under the l, so you say G.  Spectator says yes.  So you 

continue with i.  Spectator says no.  Since this is your second no, you know 
the correct country is directly opposite  that  letter  i.    You  now  know  the 
answer is Luxemborg. 
 
Let’s  try  another.    You  say  A.    Spectator  says  yes.    So  you  go  to  the  next 

Capital letter. You say N.  Spectator says no.  So now you go to the small 
letters under the N.  You say L. Spectator says yes.  You go to the next small 
letter, you say t.  Spectator says yes, you go to the next small letter you say 

i.  Spectator says yes, now you see a line under the t.  The line tells you that 
you’ve reached the correct answer even though you have only got one no 
answer.  You tell the spectator their answer—Italy. 

 
Another  one.  A, yes. N, yes, D, yes. L, yes, E, yes, R no.  So you go directly 
under the R and there is only a line.  That means you have got the answer—
England. 
 

One last one, then play with it yourself.  A, yes, N, yes, D, yes, L, yes, E, no.  
So you go to the small letters under the E.  O, yes, H, no.  You’ve now got 
two no answers so you must be at the answer—Scotland. 
 
This can be a very powerful effect, but it does take some selling, otherwise it 
just looks like a guessing game. When you make the first statement, nod 

your head up and down to try to get agreement or disagreement without 
specifically asking for it.  Be playful about the spec stumping you, set up the 
expectation that you may not be 100% accurate.  Also, as I indicated in the 
Effect section, if the two No replies are coming fairly early in the process, you 
can declare failure and switch modalities to the visual.  This can be quite 

effective. 
 
A warning: not every Western European country is listed here.  Some notable 
missing countries are Greece, Iceland, Cyprus, Malta, and the United 
Kingdom.  If you are worried about this here are two suggestions that might 

help: 
 
By setting it up so that you and the spec are going on the vacation trip 
together, you should get one of the less obscure countries. 
 
You can simply eliminate the United Kindgom or Greece as possibilities by 

saying “Let’s go to a country like England or Greece.  Pick a different country 
where we might enjoy vacationing.” 
 
 
It takes a while to get this down, but once you have it, it’s an awful lot of fun 

to perform, and it looks like real mind reading.