Cut Rope in Half Magic Trick Revealed

Video Transcript

"Hi everybody, here is how you do the cut and restore rope. This is a great version, it is in the Klutz book. I am just kidding go get the Harry Potter book because it is really cool and it is about magic, I was just making a joke. But anyway, Klutz book is a great book, its got a lot of really good magic in it, some of that stuff we are going to do versions of here. This is the version of it they do in that book and I like it a lot. I am going to lay this out on the table so that it's a little easier for you to see. The loop needs to be, it is sort of long on one end and short on this end. What we are going to do is tie it in a square knot. Now the way you can tell it is a square knot is like this, the two loops, see the two loops are together like this. If it was a granny knot it would be this way and it is sort of twisted. You want a square knot or else this trick is not going to work. So the square knot is you do your whole left over right, right over left and you push that through and that gives you your square knot like that. So, one of the properties of the square knot is that if you pull on it like this it will upset the knot and it will slide right off the end and that is the secret of the trick. So, you take rope, you tie your square knot just like that and it is better if you can leave it short on this end. Now, on this short end the piece of rope next to it right here is where you are going to cut with your scissors. So we are going to cut right there with the scissors, that gives us this. Now that looks like two pieces of rope tied together, because they were cut. The cool part is if we take this and pull on it now, that is going to upset the square knot. Now in that case it popped right off because I made it a little short and that would be okay. If you pulled on it and the knot popped right off that would be an okay way to present the trick. But let me show you what happens if you do it the other way. We tie our square knot here just like that, this time it is a little longer. We are going to cut right here, it is going to upset the knot, now it is going to stay on there and we are going to wrap it around the hand and just like we did with the 3 to 1 ropes, we are going to steal the knot off the end. Now using that same wand idea like I told you before I am going to pick up the scissors, wave them over the rope and I am going to show it and I am going to drop into my pocket while I put the scissors in there and then I am going to show the rope restored just like that. That is how you do the cut and restore rope."