

It can be hard to believe that anyone could throw an ordinary playing card like a shuriken hard enough to hurt someone. For instance, in Merritt's first scene, he "senses" a man is having an affair by throwing out calculated guesses and modifying those guesses based on the man's guilty body language. Once the other person believes you know more than you do, they might inadvertently share information that is actually secret while being convinced you knew the secret all along thanks to your "psychic" abilities. The other tactic is "hot reading," where you secretly dig up information regarding the other person beforehand, and impart that information to the person to make them think you know more than you actually do. to arrive at various conclusions about their personal life. The two most famous tactics mentalists use are "cold reading," where you observe a person's dress, body language, emotional state etc. In reality, a mentalist can make use of a variety of observation and conversation techniques to extract information from a person without directly asking them. In truth, Merritt's talents are an exaggerated version of real-world mentalists.
