I was at a bar last weekend and watched the guy next to me talk to a girl for like ten minutes. He wasn't doing anything wrong, honestly. He was polite, he was asking questions, she was answering them. Where are you from? What do you do? How long have you lived here?
And I watched her go from interested to checked out in real time. Every answer got shorter. By the end she was looking over his shoulder for her friends.
Here's what he didn't understand. A question gets you an answer. An assumption gets you a reaction.
"Where are you from" gets you a fact. But if you look at her and say "you're definitely from Texas" — now something happens. If you're right, she wants to know how you knew. If you're wrong, she gets to correct you, and people LOVE correcting you. Either way she's not just answering anymore, she's reacting to you.
Being a little wrong on purpose is the point. You're not trying to guess right. You're giving her more to respond to. That's the whole game.
Try it once this week. Doesn't even have to be a girl at a bar. Barista, coworker, whoever. Swap one question for one assumption and watch what comes back.
— Noah Danenhower
P.S. Reply and tell me what you said and what happened. The best one might end up in a video.
P.P.S. There's a lot more where this came from. I'm working on something big about this exact skill.