James Randi and Richard Feynman became friends after Feynman attended one of Randi's lectures at Caltech. Along with an interest in exposing questionable or even fraudulent science and pseudoscience, both men shared robust senses of humor. James Randi was kind enough to tell us about an ongoing game he played with Feynman; his story follows.

The arrangement was for our mutual amusement; I would present him with brainbusters. I would pull some kind of trick on him when he was least suspecting, in the middle of lunch or some such thing. Then he'd probably spot that I was doing the routine with him and he'd say "Was that one of them?" and I'd say "Yes, that's one of them."

He had the privilege of asking any question about it, as long as the answer to the question was yes or no. He could ask it at any time that he would want, and he could take as much time as he could want. There was no limit to the number of questions, he could go on forever if he wanted. There was no deadline set on it or anything like that, and he would call me at the oddest hours of the day or night, no matter where I was in the world, and would ask me some pertinent question.

I had to answer him yes or no, or tell him that it was not answerable by yes or no, because it could be a meaningless question in connection with it. In every case, he was able to solve how the trick was done, if he thought about it long enough and got a yes or no answer.

Some of them took him a couple of days, some of them took him several months to figure out. He would sort of keep them in the back of his head, but he was so enormously curious about the whole world, of course, that this fascinated him entirely.

He had already come to the conclusion when he met with Geller and Geller did some tricks for him, that they were tricks, and he simply didn't know how those things were done and that wasn't his expertise. Geller wasn't about to do a yes or no thing with him, so his conclusion with Geller was simply that he didn't know what was happening but that they were, pretty obviously to him, simple magic tricks with which he was unfamiliar.

One trick that I remember quite well, which was a lot of work for me, was that I called him one day just before he went into class. I sometimes sat in the back of the room when he did classes because they were always fascinating to me, although I had very little idea of what they were talking about. But nonetheless it was very interesting to see the byplay between him and his students, and I can tell you as an aside that when the bell rang at the end of the period the students were totally deaf to it. They didn't hear it at all, and I don't think that Dick heard it either.

The students that were about to come into the room for the next class, whether it was with Feynman or not, were lined up at the door and they had to start tapping at the glass in order to be admitted, because class didn't come to an end. It was just one of those things that went on forever, obviously. After the class they went down the halls very quietly, in conversation with one another about some point that had been brought up. He was worshipped, there was no two ways about it, worshipped by his students. He could do no wrong by them, and they didn't want class to end and they just resented the fact that the bell rang ---- and in any case, they probably didn't even hear it!

I called him just before he went into class, and he said "Oh, you got me just before my lecture, I'm just going into class now", and I said "Well, what about lunch?" and he said "Yeah, sure, that's fine". I said "I'm out at the airport, I'll come in from the airport and we'll do lunch".

He said "Oh no, no, no, no, I'll pick you up, I'll pick you up", and I said "But it's a long way to the airport" and he said "No, no, no, I'll pick you up". He was driving a Thunderbird at the time that he was very proud of, it was an ancient one, but nonetheless he was very proud of it. I said "OK, I can wait around here, I don't mind", and gave him the name of the terminal where he could meet me.

So he went in, and did his class, and came out of class and he hopped in his car. Now, this was in the days before cellphones, so we weren't in touch with one another easily. So he hopped into his car and a good hour and a half later he pulled up in the car and I asked his help to get the suitcase, which was very heavy, at the back of his car, into his trunk. Now, understand, I'm telling you these details because they're pertinent to solving the puzzle I'm about to present to him.

So I asked "Have you had lunch?".

"No, I haven't had lunch."

"Well, OK, let's go to lunch."

So we drove in conversation all the way to Los Angeles to his favorite Mexican restaurant and popped inside. The maitre d' saw us and came over and greeted us because I had been there a few times before. He sat us over by the window, and we sat down, and he poured coffee for both of us.

Feynman had used his spoon to stir his coffee, and I simply reached across
the table and said "Watch this."

I picked up the spoon that he had just used to stir his coffee from the side of his saucer and asked him to hold it between his fingers. He looked very amused and he held it between his fingers. I gently manipulated the spoon between my thumb and my forefinger and it started to get flexible.

His mouth dropped open, and the spoon got more flexible and it twisted around and around and around it suddenly fell into two pieces. It fell on the table and he picked up the two pieces of the spoon and tried to put them back together again and he looked at me and said "Oh! Was that it?"

And I said "yes, that was it".

"Now I've got to try to figure it out!"

This one took him six weeks or so as I recall. I had to leave Los Angeles shortly after that. I went back to New Jersey, where I lived at the time, and at two o'clock in the morning the phone rang. I picked it up --- I was sound asleep, of course --- and he said "Hi, Dick Feynman here! Listen, if you had said to the waiter..." and I said "Dick, wait, it's two o'clock in the morning!"

He said "No, it isn't! Ohh... you live in New Jersey!"

Now, Feynman was aware of everything in quantum physics and very deep stuff like that, but it seems that he wasn't aware of the fact that the Earth turned on its axis in a counterclockwise direction as viewed from the North Pole. He just didn't give any attention to this at all, and I told him "yes, it's two o'clock in the morning".

"No, it isn't... oh, yes, yes it is where you are, OK."

But he went ahead and asked me the question, and I answered him "no, that wouldn't have made any difference."

"Ah, then that only leaves two possibilities then! I'll call you back."

Click.

I grabbed the phone and said "Dick? Hello?" and then I lay awake for the rest of the night staring at the ceiling thinking he would again forget that the Earth rotated on its axis.

However, he didn't call back that night, but he did call back the next day, and he solved it.

What I will point out to you now is the fact that when I called him and said I was calling from the airport, that was a lie. I was actually little more than down the street from where he was and I knew what time his class began and I knew I'd get him just before class.

I had arrived the day before, but what I did was I arrived at the hotel but I didn't call him, and didn't tell him I was in town. This would just set him up for the stunt. I packed my suitcase, and even put some extra stuff in there to make it extra heavy, and took a cab out to the airport after I spoke to him on the phone and he said he'd pick me up at the airport. I took a cab out to the airport and just waited around for him to show up in his car.

Now, he would assume that I had just arrived. That was exactly what I wanted him to assume. I said I needed his help to get the suitcase into the back of the car. Now, if I had arrived with an empty suitcase, that wouldn't have worked of course. I had to arrive with a sufficiently heavy suitcase that he would assume that this was my suitcase, my only suitcase, and help me load it in the car. So he was completely deceived of the fact that I had already been in LA for a full day. During that day I dropped around to his favorite Mexican restaurant, which was where he almost always had lunch, and I got hold of the maitre d' and told him "Dick Feynman will be in here tomorrow for lunch and we're going to pull a stunt on him."

"Oh, great!" He thought that was just fine.

I said "Make sure we sit at that table over in the corner there", and I went into my pocket and I pulled out a spoon which I had already prepared by fatiguing it. I said "This is one of your spoons, and it's special, so make sure that this spoon is on the side of his saucer when his coffee comes".

He said "OK, sure, I'll arrange that."

And so that is how this stunt was set up, and when he came out and picked me up and drove me in he was quite relaxed, of course. We chatted on the way and came to the restaurant, sat down, and that's the way he was set up for the stunt.

Professional psychics do this sort of thing all the time, of course, if they really have someone important like a Dick Feynman to fool. He was totally taken in by it but he zeroed it down. He found out, by asking questions answered with either yes or no, that that's how it was done.

That's an example of the kind of thing that I would set him up for.