Anyone looking for a sensational method for revealing a prediction will, in 'Pyrolixier', find the ideal prop. Take a broadsheet and open it out. Next, momentarily touch the newspaper with a lit cigarette, so that it catches fire. To everybody's surprise, the smouldering fire traces a well-defined path through the sheet of newspaper and, in that way, slowly but surely, burns out a clearly legible text or a drawing in the paper. You've predetermined the cut-away lines which the fire makes in the sheet.

A mystifying trick