Ted Talk Magic

"I have taken the world's two nerdiest hobbies and combined them into one career," said David Kwong, a magician and a New York Times crossword puzzle constructor who delivered his Ted Talk in March of 2014 in Vancouver. Kwong connected his two occupations by one defining characteristic: humans' instinct to create order from chaos.

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qCWAsd2GP8 or http://www.ted.com/talks/david_kwong_two_nerdy_obsessions_meet_and_it_s_magic?language=en#t-19684 

By focusing on the human instinct aspect of his occupations, Kwong was able to present a topic that was familiar to the audience, yet was also able to place a little twist on that familiarity. The audience expected a magic trick, but they did not expect a trick that would examine their own minds more than Kwong's steps behind his magic trick. I like to think of this as getting to the base of Kwong's passion. Kwong's passion was not performing magic tricks or making crossword puzzles. It was figuring out how the human mind deciphers and reacts to the outside world. Talk Like Ted Chapter 1 advises speakers to talk about what they are passionate, and that is just what Kwong did, making his speech worthwhile.

My favorite part about the speech was Kwong's random comments about how many points a word would be in Scrabble. These interjections not only demonstrated Kwong's passion for puzzles (especially Scrabble), but they also provided a cute way to keep his speech cohesive. I was surprised when Kwong even knew the points in Scrabble for the name of the random lady that he chose from the audience. That took quite a bit of talent and memorization.

A picture with each of the letter tiles used in Scrabble. In his speech, Kwong said that the value of his audience member's name Gwen would be 8 points. When the values of each letter are added together (2+4+1+1), the value equals 8. Image retrieved from https://farm1.staticflickr.com/51/376731969_761d6eb9a1_m.jpg

My least favorite part about the speech was the mind game that Kwong played with his random audience member Gwen, despite the fact that it was the centerpiece of the speech. For me, there were simply too many flaws in the game. Kwong presented a variety of factors that played into his little puzzle, but those factors would have in no way affected Gwen's choices of color for the animals on the coloring sheet. Gwen may have not read the paper that morning, especially the crossword puzzle that features a code with the color for each of the animals. The code even specified that the sheep could be left blank, but Gwen didn't choose to leave the sheep blank; Kwong did. He is the one that left the marker out of the cup. Also, how could the subliminal messaging that Kwong revealed, such as the blue horse in the puzzle pieces, affect Gwen's choice of marker? She didn't get to choose the animal that she was coloring. She simply got to choose the marker. Perhaps she chose the colors by the order in which the colors were presented through subliminal messaging? Yet Kwong does not specify this detail.

David Kwong compares the results of audience member Gwen's coloring with his own predictions. Image retrieved from http://tedconfblog.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/ted2014_dd_dsc_3190_1920.jpg

Despite the flaws in his magic trick, I enjoyed David Kwong's Ted Talk. Overall, he delivered a very strong speech, maintaining great eye contact, engaging the audience in a conversational tone, and keeping his hand gestures to a medium. Additionally, Kwong led me to examine my own hobbies and interests, as Kwong did with his, and try to get to the roots of my passion.