When I was thirteen years old, one of my favourite hobbies was conjuring. Every Saturday morning, I would faithfully trek across London to attend classes at Davenports Magic Shop, an Aladdin’s cave of a place which was all the more wondrous for being located in an underground mall deep below Charing Cross. There I learnt how to baffle people with card tricks, make money disappear,[1] and pull rabbits from hats.[2]
Of all the tricks I mastered, my favourite was the shell game. One of the oldest tricks known to magicians, its premise is simple: behold, three small wooden cups. Beneath one is placed a small ball. The cups are shuffled and some innocent bystander asked to guess where the ball is. No matter where they guess, their answer turns out to be wrong: the magician always wins.
