{"id":7613,"date":"2026-01-03T23:33:50","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T23:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/?p=7613"},"modified":"2026-01-03T23:45:26","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T23:45:26","slug":"searchcipher-my-latest-phone-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/searchcipher-my-latest-phone-app\/","title":{"rendered":"SearchCipher – my latest phone app"},"content":{"rendered":"

The original Akronym effect (created by Yves Doumergue and available from Conjuring Lab<\/a>) uses Wikipedia – spectators navigate through Wikipedia articles, clicking on random links and selecting words from the article titles they land on. Through letter extraction, their name is revealed. It’s a clever effect that has earned strong reviews from professional mentalists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

But it is expensive, and I wanted something that I have control over. So I decided to create my own trick with a similar revelation. So not wanting to directly copy their effect I decided to use Google Search as a means to display “random” words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my effect, the spectator scans a QR code on my phone and opens up a “google” search page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Astute spectators might catch that this is at my web site, robertjwallace.com, but I can explain that this page is my solution to getting search results with ads. This page searches and tells google not to return any ads (hey magicians do lie \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After they get to this page I ask them to roll a die, in their mind if there isn’t one available. They tell me what they rolled.

i tell them to enter in any simple search, such as their hobby or their profession, for example “magic”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A “searching” spinner appears and then after a moment the search results are shown.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In this example the spectator, named Andy, said he rolled a two. So I ask him to read off the second word from each title:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  • Magia<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Industrial<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Admission<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Eye<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    Then I circle the second letter, because they rolled a 2, and they see their name “a n d y”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I don’t know any of the features of the Akronym effect, but for my effect I coded multiple outs. These outs are coded on the results page so a quick glance at the screen can tell me what I need to do to the reveal, including the case where the search did not find a solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I coded this using claude.ai for the coding. I have my own server that hosts the google page. Google has antibot software making it difficult to get their search results, so I ended up installing a search engine on my home network, searXNG which is working great. Since my website is hosted on a shared server at Bluehost.com, it was easier to have claude.ai write a WordPress plugin that manages the interface between the google search page and the searXNG engine on my home network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Conclusi\u00f3n<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    I am more and more impressed with how fast AI is moving in niche applications. While a little technical knowledge is helpful, I found it remarkably easy to create this and other phone apps for Android phones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    One key is that I use more open platforms. I run my home computers on Linux, not on Mac or Windows. I use WordPress which is a very open platform. My phone is an Android which lets me directly install apps, rather than forcing me to use an app store.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The original Akronym effect (created by Yves Doumergue and available from Conjuring Lab) uses Wikipedia – spectators navigate through Wikipedia articles, clicking on random links and selecting words from the article titles they land on. Through letter extraction, their name is revealed. It’s a clever effect that has earned strong reviews from professional mentalists.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[171,7,142],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai","category-magic","category-tricks"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Bob","author_link":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/author\/admin\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7613"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7626,"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7613\/revisions\/7626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}