Don’t think we need spoiler boxes, the thread title invites them.
My first thought was that he just had someone the same build as him get a similar haircut and put them into the same suit to run out with the flag and run around waiving the flag fast enough that people wouldn’t realize its a different person. Teller kind of eluded to this by saying he guessed the end of the trick when he ran out with the flag. But rewinding, the putative third assistant looks exactly like the same guy, and he stops running to pull out the divider so the audience has a chance to get a good look at him, so I think your right that it has to be either a twin or someone who really looks like the same person.
On the other hand, a twin seems kinda hard to keep secret, since anyone familiar with the guy would now how the trick was done. But then, maybe they just pull out the trick on special occasions.
Actually, watching it again, isn’t it Penn who drops the real iPhone behind the Elton John cutout when he hangs the necklace on him? Then pulls out another iPhone, makes that go away, then the fish gets put in later.??
Ah, what the hell. I need a nap now.
ETA: Found a video from the iPhone!
I was Googling around about “Fool Us” and found some other people talking about it on magic boards. I guess it’s just a rigged box where there is some sort of tell in the hinges or something that lets the magician know the order in which the balls were removed. There was a link on one of the forums to a site that sold such a trick for 150GBP. The site doesn’t say how the trick is done, obviously, but I guess it’s so ho-hum that there’s no reason for P&T not to know it it’s just a run-of-the-mill pre-made trick.
No idea why they had Jolley perform it, tho.
One thing I thought while I was WATCHING the trick was that Ross would actually go for the pocket when Jolley said the color of the ball, before he said which order Ross had removed the ball. So it’d be like “Hmm, red red red…” [Ross goes for left jacket pocket] “Oh you got red third!”
But, this method is too chancey I guess to be reliable. LEDs on the hinges is more plausible.
Are you guys in the US? Are you seeing this a week ahead of the UK? Reading this thread, folks seem to have seen tricks I haven’t seen yet. I’ve not seen an ep which starts with kids, nor a trick with a fish.
I believe the “kids” referred to are the duo of ~20 year olds who call themselves “High Jinx”…the trick with the fish is from the original special that aired about 6 months ago.
Penn also said something about them having a career like Houdini’s if they managed to keep their secret. That started me wondering if he had an identical twin. Sure would explain a lot of his tricks/illusions.
So any thoughts on the French guy’s card trick? I figure it must have been a “push” despite P&T dismissing the idea.
He was getting the audience to throw the ball about but really wasn’t giving them much choice, eg “pick a high card say ten, jack, queen, king, ace” so he was limiting their choice somewhat.
Then in the reveal he swiped the deck right to left (from our POV) to spell out the card but if he went left to right it would have showed the other possible choice.
My guess was that he was plain dealing off the bottom and the “fumbling” when counting was to mask it. When P&T handed him the deck there was a close up and the bottom 5 cards or so were not aligned smoothly with the rest of the deck which made me think he put them there as the deck was handed to him [his left hand was down by his side out of sight for a few seconds just before the pass happened].
Don’t know how he matched the pattern on the back of the deck though as P&T apparently brought their own deck in - unless the TV broadcast didn’t explain that bit right and they just brought in a pre-checked deck the conjurer had given them himself.
It seems that P&T have to put through one guy each week regardless of if they know or not!
I don’t think there’s any possibility at all of the card choice being forced. The choices the audience got to make were:
Black or red
Suit after the color had been chosen
High or Low card
7, 8, 9, 10, Jack, Queen, King (the high cards)
So he named the card choices after the audience had already chosen for the card to be a high card. He can rule out aces if he wants, but every other card in the deck would be a valid choice. That’s still 48 different choices he has to prepare for! The ace can be counted as being high or low, so he can effectively leave it out.
He’s got a fancy pack of cards that spells out anything he wants. Each third of the deck has four orientations he can play with, and he just decides which way around he needs them to be so they spell out the random card.
I strongly suspect that all seven episodes were recorded in one go over one or two days, and then edited so that one act from each show went through. You’ll observe that Penn and Teller and Jonathan Ross wear the same clothes each week, but the audience changes between acts (keep an eye on the people sitting behind Penn). They could easily have recorded twice as many acts as we’ll see over the series to find seven that fooled P&T.
It was filmed over about 4 or 5 days in May, I think. I remember having seen a link to a page where you could apply for tickets to be in the studio audience.
Just so. I suspect that he has designed a pack that can display any of the card names, properly flipped around, which is what he spent all that time doing. The cards all looked blank, and I wasn’t watching but I know of at least one way of pulling that off. More, if there was writing only one edge of each card.
I also assumed the shows were edited in such a manner, and was surprised to see an episode where none of the acts “fooled” P&T - anyone have any thoughts on this week’s tricks?
The dragon was hilarious. The CD trick was kind of retarded (his thimble magic was a lot more impressive).
The card trick guy kind of blatantly put a bunch of cards on top of the deck after he knew the host had picked the 7th card. Not sure how he counted out the right number of cards on the fly though, though I’m guessing if he’d pick a higher number he would have had to do it another way (which Penn alludes to, by saying that part of the trick went well for the magician, I’m guessing if the number is small, the magician just quickly counts out the right number and puts them ontop, but uses another method if the host were to pick a high number) .
