In general, the effects produced by a person working alone are the same as those presented by performers employing one or more assistants. While there are many tests, such as divining the names of chosen cards, numbers, names, etc., the large majority of these acts consists in the performer's revelation of facts concerning questions secretly written by the spectators. Of course, the performer must, in all cases, ascertain through some secret means what has been written in order to play the role of mind reader, and it is these secret methods that are disclosed in the following pages. Where the performer works alone, it is necessary that the spectators write the questions, figures, drawings, etc., on paper, which the performer can manipulate so as to gain secret knowledge of the spectators' writings.

Many of the fundamental principles are the same in the one-man and the two-man acts, but the single performer must necessarily do all the work, and many ingenious subtleties have been devised to enable him to glean necessary knowledge without being detected.