Penn & Teller were on Late Night With Seth Meyers Monday night, just watched the episode on DVR.
They did a card trick. Penn pulls a deck of cards from his pocket, Teller “shuffles” the cards, then asks Seth to grab a few off the top & give them to Teller. Penn then tells Seth how many cards he grabbed, and what the next card in the deck is. Seth turns it over, and there it is!
You can very obviously see Teller showing Penn the cards at 1:30. All Teller had to do was memorize the sequence, and Seth could have grabbed any number of cards, would have made zero difference.
Sure, if Teller performed a false shuffle, that’s the obvious solution, and it would have been lame if they ended it right there. But it was obviously just a teaser for the rest of what they do with the deck and the rest was pretty cool, especially the ending.
Did you guys watch the video? There was no screw up despite the title of this thread.
Like the OP said, Teller obviously shows Penn what the card on the bottom of the pile he’s holding is and if a false shuffle was performed and Penn memorized the sequence of cards and the viewer figures that out (easy to do), then the trick is not so cool…if that’s all there is.
P&T don’t mind if we’re not that impressed up to that point. They are building up to the big finish, which they deliver on. No mistakes are made.
Oh, I don’t think he screwed up. Just saying if he did, I wouldn’t be surprised if he talked quite openly about it on his podcast. He’s done so many times for other things, such as going slightly awry with fire eating.
I love P&T, but the whole routine was fairly lame and the payoff not that big (but hey, that’s okay, their mix of simple, not so simple and honestly gobsmaking effects is part of their thing).
Is it in error that we see Teller flash a card at Penn? Well, they clearly made no attempt to hide it, so no, I think that was part of their presentation, it serves as a misdirection for the second part.
On last night’s Penn & Teller: Fool Us, they did a bit where Teller [I assume deliberately] gave a little too much away. Penn ribbed him for it, then talked to the audience about Teller’s “mistake.” Then they pulled off an amazing trick.
I think Teller making “mistakes” is slowly becoming part of their act.
rE: the same Fool Us episode, one entrant had P&T sit at the table where he dealt them a royal flush from their own deck while blindfolded. The audience got to see the guy dealing from a camera above him. A few times, he seemed to pause like he made a mistake, and he also acted a little nervous.
Penn remarked he only knew of one magician who could use the guy’s same dealing technique, because that magician had 14 years of practice while serving time. Without exposing the trick entirely, Penn insinuated the guy was using extraordinary skill in handling the cards. I guess the nervousness and fumbling was all part of the trick.
The second part of the trick was the same as the first part of the trick, though.
Teller takes an ordered deck and out does a false shuffle
Teller shows Penn the cut card, Penn announces that it is the 13th card. Teller counts.
Penn accurately “predicts” what the 14th card is
Penn does another false shuffle
Penn presumably sees the cut card somehow (I don’t see this in the video, but he’s holding the stack so it shouldn’t be hard for him to catch a glimpse). After announcing this 2nd cut card, Teller knows what the top card is and conveys the information to the band.
Magic?
All of the above is possible if both Penn and Teller have the deck order memorized before and after Penn’s false shuffle. Which is really impressive, if you ask me, but these guys have set a high bar. The showmanship wasn’t up to normal Penn and Teller standards, IMO, and I say this as a big P&T fan.
More than likely, that story is itself misdirection, designed to lead you away from how it was actually done. The hesitations you noticed may well have been misdirection too.
This never happens, the information conveyed to Teller is that the card is the 31st in the stacked deck (because Penn announces there are 30 cards in the cut part of the stack).
You say the second part of the trick is the same as the first, but they are subtly different: in part one the number of cards is known (by Penn) because of the flashed card; In part 2 the card is known (by Teller) because the number of cards is revealed.
Question, when you say “Magic?” the answer of course is surely “no”, but then it always is “no”, so what meaning were you trying to convey?
Yes, they are technically (subtly) different, but the trick is still the same – Penn sees the king of spades and knows that it’s the 13th card, and knows that the 14th card is the 3 of diamonds because he has the order memorized. In step 2, he sees the 10 of spades and knows that it’s the 30th card, announces that to Teller, who knows that the 31st card is the 6 of clubs (I don’t remember the exact cards but you get the point). It doesn’t so much matter whether they say “It’s the king of spades” or “It’s the 13th card,” if you have the order memorized then those are equivalent announcements.
Meaning there’s no glitz or glamour. If they’d come out and said, “We both have this deck order memorized, and we can do this nifty false shuffle and still have the order memorized,” and then proceeded to rattle off the order of the cards while an audience member confirmed that yes, they did indeed have the order memorized… not very interesting, and yet that’s exactly how it felt watching it. Which is more of a David Blaine vibe than a P&T vibe.