Well we thought he was going to predict the cards they would pick, but instead he got them to pick the ones with 4 and King on the back?
That is the basis of every prediction trick, Penn made it sound like more than just that, unless he was just speaking in code and it means something else entirely.
That isn’t exactly right, I meant that was the basis of prior to the fact prediction tricks. I assume his picture was made prior to the selection of the cards. There are plenty of prediction tricks where the prediction is actually produced after the fact.
Maybe a side question, but I’ve seen three general techniques for the “pick a card” type tricks.
- Force - somehow make the person pick what you want
- Peek (maybe my word) - Be able to tell what the person picked.
- Manipulate the prediction - Make the prediction match what the person picked.
Are there others?
And are there regular terms for the second and third one. I know force is common. And Penn and Teller use the word “peek”. I haven’t heard anything for the last one.
I try to determine which of these are most likely then go from there.
New episode today (S7E7). Nothing particularly noteworthy, though I really admired Jaana Felicitas’s pas de deux with a chair.
The salt pour guy (Mario Lopez) had a flesh colored adhesive over his real nipple, I think that’s how he made it “disappear” (or else he pulled his skin back far enough to conceal its actual placement). Kind of lame if that actually fooled them.
Clinton W. Gray’s bit of banter with the Arm Chopper of Doom was pretty hilarious. I was sweating for Alyson.
I think I understand how Felicitas did most of the chair dancing, except for the part at the end where she takes the chair way off to the side of the stage. At that point it seemed to be hanging from above, rather than the way she was manipulating it before with the wires in the usual manner for this kind of act.
Am I right about that? Did she take it over there to hook it up to wires hanging from above? If so, it was a pretty slick move. Nice act.
P&T couldn’t be serious about not knowing how the nipple act was done. I thought it was pretty obvious he was using his left hand to pull the nipple up to appear as if it wasn’t there. Good little sleight of hand, but not worthy of a FU trophy.
I think they just wanted to give Lopez the trophy. It could be a tough call on each part of the salt trick, so they went with the nipple. Definitely just pulled his skin up to hide the nipple then let it fall back in place. They rest of the act was fantastic, glad he was there whether he won the prize or not.
It must have been suspended from above at that point. There may have been a thread that ran up to the top of the stage all along to help some of the actions. Another great performance, Teller is not impressed easily with that type of thing.
I enjoyed every act in the latest episode quite a bit.
The salt guy was the highlight of the show. Lots of different techniques with salt coming from lots of different places. It was so entertaining I gave up trying to figure it all out and just enjoyed. Seems like P&T did the same.
The chair dance was very pretty, if not terribly mystifying. The hand guillotine offered no surprises but the banter was great. Even the relatively lame underwear prediction was presented in such a fun way it was hard not to like.
And Penn’s stupid rope trick was the perfect capper. A very fun hour of TV!
Me, too! The whole show had a freshness to it. I am just sooo tired of the typical “I will find your card” or “watch me manipulate a coin” tricks. Real Experts may be able to enjoy the perfect technique of a particular performer, but to me that’s like the people who can watch a movie over and over and claim they are enjoying the tremendous cinematography or sound editing. If I don’t find something about the plot or characters or dialog that holds my interest, I change the channel.
So, I don’t know if anybody is really allowed to say. But, I had a question on the Arm Chopper of Doom.
Which is to say- a few years back, I was pulled on stage at the local county fair at a magic show, and the magician had a device very similar (if not the same… I’d have to find the picture of me with my hand sticking through). The magician used carrots in the little holes above and below my hand to show the blade cutting through. Otherwise the trick was pretty much identical.
As i was on the stage, I took a look in the device from the top, and it appeared to just be two wooden slabs with a space just large enough for the blade and when I looked afterwards, as i pulled my hand through, it looked very much like the full blade at the bottom of the device.
So, when I saw this pop up- my first thought was… Well, there’s no way this will fool them, this is clearly a pretty common magicians show trick. (I was very surprised that Penn indicated Teller may have been fooled). Then I thought, well, heck, maybe i can see something, if I just watch from this angle. (Which was really nothing but vanity, its not like i’m a magical expert or anything) Of course I didn’t see anything.
For the life of me- Having lived through it once and seen it once now, I haven’t a clue how this is possible while having the end result be the blade in tact at the bottom as I saw it. I’ve been pretty mystified about it, i’m curious if anybody has a hint or clue about what goes down with that thing?
You’re assuming that the device you saw has only one blade. Is it possible that there is a second blade hidden in the bottom of the device? The one at the top can, at the control of the magician, be shunted out of the way when he pretends to chop through your arm, and by the same mechanism he can reveal the bottom blade, making it seem as though the top blade travelled all the way to the bottom.
I’m not assuming there was only one blade, just trying to say what my observation was as a guy who is into magic, has a base level understanding of various tricks and methods, and was actively trying to see how it was going to happen. I mean, obviously there is more to it, than what I was able to observe, and a blade didn’t magically go through my arm. So, something happens to the blade in transport. I just can’t figure it out. I didn’t see anything that looked like an escape for the blade above where my hand was at. I know how little finger guillotines work, because i’ve had a few, and this may just be a crazy advanced version… but I don’t think so. The blade has to either collapse at a certain point, retract and “reform” with smaller blades to cut the carrots in the carrot holes or something like it.
The dance with the chair left me mezmerised. It looked so simple and so magical.
Though rewatching it showed that during the very last move where she brings the chair back to her hands you can clearly see the wire digging into her left bicep. So even if it was hanging from the above she was still controlling it at least in one plane. But was it hanging at all? I’m not so sure, and I kinda want to think it wasn’t. Maybe she did some combination of a flexible and a rigid wire? In the beginning just before she levitates the chair for the first time you can see two the wires attached to her thumbs.
How does Mario Lopez do the salt pours?
He kept moving his hand around, so sometimes the salt was coming from his sleeve, sometimes from underneath his jacket, sometimes from his pockets, etc.
His act was so much fun I wasn’t bothering to look for every detail, but I’ll bet if you watched again and slowed it down you could figure most of it out.
S07E08 (8/24/20)
Lea Kyle’s quick-change routine was truly impressive. I’m glad she took the win. (And I’m not just saying that because I’m a lonely guy and she’s a pretty girl taking off her clothes. Honest.)
Takamiz Usui’s quick-change Rubik’s cube was neat too, but not quite as titillating.
Lea Kyle was amazing. Even the basic quick change stuff was amazing because she was doing it right in front of everyone. I don’t know how she did the color changing dress, even in slo-mo I can’t really tell how the green is getting peeled away. Without the advantage of video and no anticipation of what was happening there’s no way P&T could have figured out every technique she used, she fooled them good.
Do you mean the part where the green dress flies off the rack and onto her body? I thought that was so magical and seamless on first viewing, it’s blink and you miss it fast. I rewatched it over and over again and it looked like her outer layer was being sucked out through an opening in that black closet (kind of reminded me of that fight scene in Wayne’s World 2, when Mike Myers’s shirt is ripped off). The color changing dress, where it gradually fades from green to pink, looks like it’s directly being affected by those “candles” she’s applying, so I’m assuming it’s some sort of heat-sensitive material. It’s an astonishing act through and through.
The flying off the rack trick shows up in slo-mo, the dress on the rack flies into the wardrobe thing behind her while the dress she’s wearing gets pulled off from the back at incredible speed.
The color changing I’m not sure about, it looks very much like material getting peeled off but in some way I can’t make out. I doubt those candle-y things had anything to do with it, there was too much area affected too quickly for any such effect. I think it’s being pulled off from the center of her back, it’s stretchy material, and it detaches in the middle first so that it appears to hold shape until the top and bottom parts are pulled loose. She’s also very talented with a needle and thread, she may have some techniques with cloth that won’t ever occur to me.
Is there a helper in the wardrobe? If so, he pulls a chord that whips that dress to the wardrobe while her layer of clothing changes.
It was impressive, but I found the Rubik’s Cube trick even better. How did he do all that stuff?