Black Magic

Rachel BrewsterFollow

Date Collected

Fall 11-2017

Place item was collected

Logan, UT. Utah State University

Informant

Rachel Brewster

Point of Discovery/Informant Bio

I was born in 1997 (20 years old) in Kalamunda, Western Australia, Australia. I moved to Melbourne, Australia when I was ten years old. I now live in Logan, Utah, USA. I attend Utah State University and I play on the USU Women's Basketball Team. I am studying exercise science with a minor in psychology. I love hanging out with my friends and playing card games, doing trivia or telling riddles.

Context

I collected this folklore in Logan, Utah but I first found out about this game/riddle about four years ago when I was travelling to a basketball tournament with a lot of other basketball players from all over the state. We played this game on the bus while we were travelling from Melbourne to Sydney which is about a 12 hour drive. This game is really fun whether you play it with a big group or a small one but if people find out how the game works then it gets ruined. you can really only play this game with people that have never played it before.

Text

The game "Black Magic" is kind of a riddle game where you and someone else

make the rest of the group think that you can basically read each others minds.

so... you need two people who know how the game works to be the ones that trick

the others, one of them has to be the guesser and the other one is choosing the

items to guess. The person who is the guesser must leave the room, once they

have left the group must come to an agreement on which item in the room the

guesser is going to try and guess. Once that has happened and everyone knows

the item, the guesser can reenter the room. Now, here's why it's called "Black

Magic" and why it gets ruined as soon as people realise what's up. The person that

chose the item to guess can point to any object in the room and ask "is it this?" but

as soon as they pick a black object... the object AFTER the black object is always

the item that the group picked! It takes a long time for people to figure it out. The

first time I saw it being played I was mind blown hahaha!

Texture

I get pretty excited talking about this game because its so fun whether you know how it works or not. It's funny to watch other people be super confused and try to figure it out. You can hear the excitement in my voice when I'm trying to play or when I'm explaining the game.

Course

English 2210

Instructor

Dr. Lynne S. McNeill

Semester and year

Fall 2017

Theme

G6: Socializing Games

EAD Number

3.3.28

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