We haven’t been doing this for a while so I thought we should have a new one.
This act was astounding on it’s face. It stumped P&T totally. Any Card At Any Number is a well know magic trick. The perfect version of it is impossible, but this magician makes it look possible.
This next video reveals how it was done.
Summary
The solution is once again technology. P&T have been fooled this way before. In fact the number is not actually a free choice by a random member of the audience. The card names was a free choice. However, a different audience member has made a free choice of a number, but when asked to state that number the audience hears a pre-recorded voice provide the number of the position of that card, known because of the order of the deck. In this case the selected cared, the 6 or Spades was at position 47, and that’s what the audience heard believing it was spoken into the microphone held by the magician, but actually the audience member said some other number.
Markobi appeared on Penn and Teller and absolutely killed it. He’s the current, I think, World Champion of close-up magic. You know something is great when you see Tellers jaw drop in amazement.
An incredible act achieved through sleight of hand alone. Fooling Teller like that when he’s got his eyes right on Markobi’s hands the whole time requires an incredible level of skill. There’s no underlying secret in this case, he’s just that good at card manipulation.
This is not a clear cut case of instant stooging. The audience member wasn’t asked to read something off a card or repeat something unheard by the audience. He stated his free choice of a number but the microphone wasn’t on at the time and something else was heard by the audience through a sound system. The magician did prep the two volunteers not to react under the guise of past participants “freaking out from the experience”, but that’s a common technique when a volunteer assistant may see how the trick is performed to prevent them from revealing what they’ve found out.
Like all other acts on the show it was cleared before hand by a consultant who knew all the details. In this case it required production personnel to cooperate with the sound system also. If a rule was broken I doubt this trick would have aired.
She also asks the first volunteer to reiterate that she made a free choice, but with #2 she just says “great” and quickly moves on.
Eh, I’m not a magic lawyer (and the show’s for entertainment anyway), but it doesn’t sit right with me.
According to the explanation video:
She has an assistant backstage who knows where every card is in the deck. The first volunteer freely picks the six of spades, but for the second volunteer they mute his mike and play a prerecorded voice saying “47.” The second volunteer doesn’t react because he’s been instructed not to.
That seems unlikely to me, for what should be obvious reasons:
[spoiler]Aside from the fact the volunteers don’t seem confused or surprised, it’s incredibly likely one or other other would openly react to that so obviously that the trick would be instantly blown to smithereens. It explains her “please don’t react” bit I guess, but they were told not to react to the prestige, not that they’d have their voices dubbed and not get the choice they were offered.
It could ruin her entire show if she’s doing a full act somewhere. It’s unbelievably risky…[spoiler]
Right. She avoids letting him speak at all. She doesn’t even ask him his name, doesn’t really chat with either of the volunteers. And using a hand mic is so 20th century.
It’s kind of cheesy magic, but this show is about fooling Penn and Teller. I’d say anything within the rules they’ve specified is legitimate. Their knowledge of magic is legendary yet they seem to have a technology gap. I’ve seen a couple of other acts that fooled them, one in the same way as this one operated so they should have known better. In that act there were two young women, twins maybe, who performed a mentalism trick while wearing headsets. Sister A was shown some bit of information that Sister B could not see. She asks Sister B what she had seen and it seems Sister B is able to tell her, however Sister B’s mic was off and it was actually Sister A saying the answer. In the other one, another sort of mentalism act a young woman could name the random song playing on her iPhone that a volunteer listened to through an earpiece. My wife picked this one up right away, she was looking at her watch which was telling her what song was currently playing on her phone.
