# Penn and Teller Fool Us (season four) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 13, 2017, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/penn-and-teller-fool-us-season-four/791198 "2017-07-13T22:37:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2017, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/penn-and-teller-fool-us-season-four/791198/241 "2017-09-18T21:54:31Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > The fact that they said, “We didn’t see you _load the frog_”, would seem to strongly imply that they know how he accomplished the magic. To wit: He loaded the frog. > > They didn’t see it, but they know (and detailed in their description) exactly how he did it. That seems distant from, “We do not know how you performed this trick, and you fooled us.” Obviously the frog was loaded, he didn’t materialize it out of thin air. They didn’t see him load it though, and think they are admitting that they were fooled because they thought they knew everything that was going to happen in the routine but Blass slipped it past them. Considering how obvious it was when he switched to the frog deck then I think he did fool them. They’ve given out the FU prize in similar circumstances, knowing that a deck switch has occurred but never catching when it happened. In this case I think they missed the obvious, but that was due to the magicians skill in misdirection. ETA: They haven’t been consistent in what the criteria are for fooling them though. ---
**Author:** ![TheHYPO](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a698b9/32.png) [@TheHYPO](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheHYPO)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2017, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/penn-and-teller-fool-us-season-four/791198/242 "2017-09-19T04:43:34Z")
I was out of town for a week, so I’ve fallen behind. Therefore, I will just piggyback on some of the comments by the rest of you wise folks: > [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > **Dennis Watkins** : Puts a set of ten cards, Ace to 10 in ascending order, into a wine glass and covers it with a cloth. Has Penn & Teller shuffle a different set of ten cards (face down), and then a lady in the audience is asked to choose a card that will be flipped backwards. He goes back to the wine glass and reveals the original ten cards now match the shuffle order and the correct card is backwards. > > I think I know how he did it (the only real mystery being the question of how he flipped the one card, since P&T didn’t see the cards post-shuffle), but the more impressive thing for me was that Penn hid the code words so perfectly that I don’t know what they are. I’m guessing “procedural”? It was nicely performed, but as whitetho caught, the comment is ‘two faced’. I would have been impressed if I hadn’t seen the method used before (I thought maybe it had been on the original run of this show, but I guess not?). When he lifts the wine glass to hanky-cover it, he spins the glass 180 without you noticing. The 1-10 cards he puts in the glass have the cards he ultimately reveals on the reverse). When he puts the pack of cards in the wine glass, the back of that pack (with the changed faces) is what he ultimately reveals at the end of the trick. Things I noticed; after opening the fresh pack of cards (which itself could easily be staged, but presuming it’s not) he turns his back to the audience and walks to the table, allowing a deck switch or for him to pull out the rigged cards he needs. Not necessarily, but certainly an opportunity. After Penn and Teller “shuffle” the diamonds, he obviously has to get the cards back into his preset order; I suspect his “we don’t need the rest of the deck anymore” during this time may be the moment when he has the opportunity to swap the mixed diamonds for his preset bundle. For the 4D being flipped, it’s pretty clearly a force where the audience says “stop” - he’s already moving pretty slowly at that point to ensure he lands on the right card (in fact, he actually stops on and gestures towards the card next to the 4D to me, before grabbing the 4D anyway. The sneaky twist is that the 4D is the 4th card from the back, so the first card you see after the reveal is 5C, the back of that card is the 10C you saw originally. The 4C he reveals is the same one you originally saw in the 4th position (now 4th from back) and is the only card that actually had the normal card back (which we now see). @Tripolar: he can’t switch the suits of the 4s for this reason - the 4C we see is the original face before the glass is rotated. Penn opens saying he and Teller are very “sympathetic” to that trick. An odd phrase that I wasn’t sure if it was code or what was meant. The only thought on the “procedural” comment might be to suggest he followed a procedure to get the diamonds back into his intended order, but it could just as easily have had no meaning behind it. The reference to Law and Order does imply to me that he wanted to work in the “procedural” word. One reference I found to the word “procedural” in magic refers to the type of card trick where you tell someone a procedure of how many cards to deal and how to deal them and the procedure itself results in the trick (i.e. the procedure unsuspectingly re-orders a chosen card to the top without any slight of hand). I don’t see this meaning anything I relation to this trick. Unrelated note: He totally sounds like Howie Mandel in his cadence and accent. > [@](#): > > **Jeff McBride** : He has two bowls. He fills one with water, sloshes it about, makes it disappear and reappear while moving it around from bowl to bowl. > > I don’t think there’s much mystery to this one. It was a good act, and I liked that it was different from the usual, but I was surprised that they gave him a trophy. I feel like they gave it to him more because they haven’t seen the act before, anywhere, rather than that they don’t know what he’s doing. P&T have given “respect” trophies before. This was clearly one; but there may have been some elements of the trick they missed or couldn’t fully explain. The obvious implication is that when the bowls seem empty, they simply cannot be. I’m curious if the dings are part of the soundtrack, because I wouldn’t have thought the full bowls would make that much of a ring. The bottle used to fill the bowls makes pretty clear there’s a good amount of water there. He sloshes the bowls a lot, but less water falls than it appears to. We do see the inside of the bowls a few times and they look pretty empty, but the shape of the bowls must be such that more water remains than our brains want to assume from the angle of the pours. His drinking is presumably miming while preserving all the water in the bowl. Amazing mimework and control of the amounts of water and the pours; but to me the most impressive move was the 2nd drink where he basically puts the bowl on his face and it’s past vertical; yet there’s enough water left to continue the trick (I would guess this is the moment that Teller doesn’t know how its done). I mean; clearly not much (just enough for the quick splashes of both bowls and then to dump the remainder out on his first rotation of the bowl-balls). But still impressive. This is definitely a trick that is most impressive the first viewing when you DON’T know what to expect; on second watching, you see the misdirection and where he’s “storing” the water. A very skilled performance, but not quite as incomprehensible on second watch. > [@](#): > > **Kevin Li** : Real-time photo manipulation. > > His act felt pretty unpolished and his “hipness” was a bit over-the-top. Not bad for a 1 minute act, but he’s going to need to develop more personality to hold a longer show. Strange that Teller seemed on the verge of tears at the end of it. I didn’t think there was much to it, even from a presentation standpoint. Maybe there was more that was edited out? Unpolished at 19yo is understandable. He will improve. I didn’t enjoy this act at all. The story did nothing for me (perhaps I’m too far removed from the age group). The concept of having a whole deck of photos felt so hollow when we only made use of three cards. Why did I need 49 unseen cards? To imply these three were randomly selected? His performance is too scripted to buy that. I was unclear about something. With the first photo, the party, was there any trick there; or was it just an intro to the concept? Because they cut to Teller already looking amazed and I really didn’t quite understand Teller’s awe and emotional reaction to the trick. I dunno. Did that come off as weird to anyone else? The best part of the trick was the levitating card at the end. The effect was very mysterious and not obvious how it was being done. The final reveal with the obviously prepared photo just held in front of the blank card that still had the fold in was just underwhelming to me… The outro interview with Alyson was pretty awkward and also awkwardly scripted… > [@](#): > > **Steve Marshall** : Dice stacking. > > I assume that he’s just really doing what he’s doing. Impressive but not necessarily magic? Main take-away: Why is his mouth on the side of his face? Nice coat. And a nice homage to cups and balls to add the classic magic twist to the end of a trick that isn’t quote magic but more of a mysterious skill. I mean; I guess my question is, was the dice stacking supposed to come off as magic? He was explaining that it’s a skill and it is just that - so was it supposed to ‘fool’ us? It just came off as a demonstration of skill more than magic, other than the ending. Someone here said “It’s just something that takes a lot of practice” - that’s pretty true of most magic… the difference to me is not practice; but that dice stacking isn’t an illusion - he told us what he was doing and he physically did it. There’s no mystery. I’m curious why Teller was so strongly against it, though. > [@](#): > > **Penn & Teller** : They pull a rabbit out of a Constance. > > I wonder if they’re out of acts to show on TV in entirety or simply don’t want to show any more on TV, because they need to keep some for their stage show? Cute bit, though. As with lots of P&T, the best part of this trick is the joke framing device with the audience member. I would say I’m impressed by the trick, as it just looks so clean, but I do understand that the genie tube itself is a gimmicked prop that basically does the whole trick, and I believe it is simply a matter of the tube appearing to be a thin hollow tube, but it actually tapers such that there is a hidden compartment between the outer wall of the tube and the inner wall of the tube that is open to the back side. Side comment: The topic of them all wearing the same outfits every episode comes up at least twice a season. It’s extremely common on shows like this where segments are going to be edited into various episodes. Dragon’s Den (and I believe the US version, Shark Tank) always wear the same clothes for entire season. Suits are not as distinctive as dresses, so people only ever complain about the women, which is dumb double standard. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2017, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/penn-and-teller-fool-us-season-four/791198/243 "2017-09-19T04:57:34Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > ETA: They haven’t been consistent in what the criteria are for fooling them though. I was trying to go beyond that to wondering if they had actually changed their criteria. It might be that they decided that it was too easy for crappy magicians to throw in some fake moves to throw them off the track, so they’re going for a more traditional standard of “Are you **actually good** and did you slip something by me?” ---
**Author:** ![TheHYPO](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a698b9/32.png) [@TheHYPO](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheHYPO)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2017, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/penn-and-teller-fool-us-season-four/791198/244 "2017-09-22T05:26:18Z")
And for episode 9! > [@numeroussyrup](#): > > Liberty Larson: I like the banter and it is definitely inspired by P&T. As for the trick, it’s quite simple and she drops the piece of paper into her lap early on. Based on Penn’s suggestion, it sounds like she has someone under the table helping her out. Simply take the card, insert it into the ice, put it in the bag. Sounds about right… A little clumsy on the slights. Looked just a bit too deliberate in the various moves including the whole silk v. glass situation at the end. > [@](#): > > Jorge Blass: lots of things going on here. The chalkboard thing was easy to predict because it looked so flimsy and he moved them around in a strange way so I knew something was going to be behind it. The card from regular to green I dunno, but it looks like he has an interesting grip on the edge of the table at that moment so I suspect there is some gimmick in the table. The smoke hides something… maybe a switch in the table? the 7 of hearts is forced but honestly I have no idea how he gets her card to be under the frog. The switch to the jack of diamonds is easy to spot and the kissing thing is clear misdirection and you can see that the cards look really weird after that as they are concealing the frog. how the unfolding reveals the 7 of hearts I don’t know. I watched again to see if he does a switch of the paper frog but I can’t see anything. Maybe it’s a super gimmicked card where unfolding it leads to the given card? Sometimes the simplest things are the foolers just because, as Penn says, they weren’t expecting i, so they just weren’t looking. I’m still unsure how the Castle blackboard is relevant to the trick… why is it even there. Why does he draw a prince anyway? Is there a need for some delay there? I have no idea how the Jack becomes green - that’s a wonderful hands-off illusion. The 7 is obviously a force. In a couple parts of the trick, he does a move that clearly looks like he is NOT taking the top card… it’s just a matter of where the card comes from. I wonder if it is a “strip” deck where the 7 is a bit wider then the rest of the cards and he is able to strip it out no matter what, while making it look like the top card is being pulled. One thing I didn’t see was whether he swaps the green card for the green 7 when he folds the frog or at some later point, swapping the frog for another frog. It’s similarly suspicious how he pulls off the card “on top” of the pile under the frog. It just doesn’t seem like the top card. He doesn’t seem to have anything palmed to load there; but it can’t have already been in that pile because what if she decided to move the frog? He has to have outs. I think he MIGHT have swapped paper frogs right after he reveals the 7H the frog was sitting on when he moves it across the table. It’s really hard to tell. He makes a quick move though, while at the same time also manipulating the 7 into the Jack. Not sure if he makes both moves at once (on further viewing, I’m not as sure that’s the right moment for swapping the paper frog). Right before that move, you can see him thumb the deck as if glancing to make sure he’s got the Jack ready to swap. As she goes to kiss the frog, you can see him pocket the original deck and I suspect what he pulls out is a substitute deck with maybe half the deck all glued together and hollowed out with the frog inside, sitting atop the Jack so that when she goes to cut, that’s the first card that can be cut to, and it also unveils the frog. The frog wasn’t loaded; it was always in the deck; it was just a deck swap. To me that was the easiest parts to figure out. Whatever it’s worth, a really great performer with a lovely composed routine combining many nice effects. > [@](#): > > Paul Gertner: the cups and balls. I like his version although there is nothing really to bust since if you’ve seen P&Ts version you know the basics and his is just a vast improvement. The coke can is compressible and has very little liquid in it. Watch him pour it out and you’ll see. Otherwise, magnificent sleight of hand and more to showcase skill and not meant to fool. Forgetting the magic, he’s got a wonderfully natural patter and I really appreciate that as much as the magic. The Coke can was obviously ‘compressible’ and, as Penn said - contained a small amount of liquid (he used a very small glass and the can barely filled it. It would look more believable if he stopped pouring a little earlier because ‘the glass was getting full’ rather than because the can was empty). I mean, the cups and balls isn’t THAT hard to see where the loads are. Certainly Penn’s audio comment, it’s clear that when he palms with his right hand (I think it’s mostly the right), he’s using the palmed ball (I think) to create that metal-on-metal sound on the outside of the cup, rather than inside the cup, as is implied. And Penn’s right that it’s beautifully done. I may be cynical in suggesting that his palming in his right hand is somewhat obvious from the way he holds his hand and grips things with just his thumb and forefinger… but his load of the final big ball was super fast and beautifully mysterious. > [@](#): > > Sergio Starman: A fantastic presentation and an example of what I love about magic. It’s not magic for magic’s sake, but to tell a story that uses magic to enhance it. My favourite routine of the night. It is easy to see most of the sleight of hand moves and I’m wondering if the ring following off his finger was a mistake. It’s a half ring and you can sort of see that when it drops. I can at times see where he loads the ring under the glass, but what I can’t see is how he’s palming it upon supposedly putting it in his pocket (unless he really does that and picks up a duplicate ring from under the table or something where I don’t notice it). His lightning quick swap of the glass or ditch of the liquid under the table was beautiful. And although there was an obvious cover of the glass at the end, loading a liquid (or what seems like a liquid) like that is a beautiful effect. I also didn’t notice at all the ring getting on his thumb at all. Phenomenal slights. His loading the paper under the upside down glass was noticeable on re-watch, but otherwise… The whole presentation was beautiful and unexpected. You never know what’s going to happen next. Also a great acting performance at the faux frustration. Great routine. > [@](#): > > P&T: this a P&T trick I only saw for the first time on Fallon a few weeks ago. There are clips of it on some documentary about P&T and I think it was there opener for a while. There was a thorough discussion of this one the other week re: the Fallon appearance. Bottom line was Teller is always in the Penn suit and an assistant in the Teller suit. Penn banters from offstage doing his best to say things that will lead you to naturally think he is obviously inside the Penn suit. I assume the assistant remains flat on the floor in the Teller suit, though in the Fallon performance, the Teller suit looked pretty flat… The card force was nothing worth discussion; it’s not the point. Pretty good episode overall, I’d say ---
**Author:** ![TheHYPO](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a698b9/32.png) [@TheHYPO](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheHYPO)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2017, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/penn-and-teller-fool-us-season-four/791198/245 "2017-09-22T06:05:24Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > The fact that they said, “We didn’t see you _load the frog_”, would seem to strongly imply that they know how he accomplished the magic. To wit: He loaded the frog. > > They didn’t see it, but they know (and detailed in their description) exactly how he did it. That seems distant from, “We do not know how you performed this trick, and you fooled us.” I respectfully, but strongly disagree. The entire premise of the show is whether they can determine HOW the trick is done… not WHAT was done. They did not “detail it in their description”. If they watch a trick of cutting a woman in half, it is insufficient to say “We know you didn’t really cut her in half, she must be hidden within that rig” is not enough. They have to be able to tell HOW she was hidden. Similarly, it’s not enough for them to say “obviously you loaded a frog into the deck”. We all know the frog didn’t teleport or grow inside the deck. But if they have no idea how the frog got there (I believe it was a deck switch), then they don’t know HOW he did the trick. Further, if there was a deck switch, that means there really wasn’t a ‘load’ of the frog, so arguably (if I’m right) they weren’t even correct. I don’t think they were at all saying they are “not fooled” if they can see every move coming. I think the point was that “because we can usually predict what you’re going to do, we’re watching for it - so we are able to watch and see the moves that tell us how you did it… because we didn’t expect the frog to show up, we were not watching for it, and therefore we missed the move and don’t know exactly how you did it.” ---
**Author:** ![TheHYPO](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a698b9/32.png) [@TheHYPO](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheHYPO)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2017, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/penn-and-teller-fool-us-season-four/791198/246 "2017-09-22T06:11:30Z")
Just a bit too late to edit. I also want to add: The one thing is that in the past they have missed moves and occasionally taken their best guess. In this case, and in a few other recent cases, it appears they have just thrown in the towel without even trying for a best guess ---
**Author:** ![KellyCriterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b3f665/32.png) [@KellyCriterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KellyCriterion)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2017, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/penn-and-teller-fool-us-season-four/791198/247 "2017-09-22T06:55:01Z")
The ultimate “fooling” of Penn and Teller would be to perform a trick where they not only don’t correctly guess how it was done, but where they also can’t even explain how it _ **could** _ be done. Sure, you can theoretically fool P&T by performing a trick where the method used is obviously one of a small number of possible methods, but from one viewing, can’t be exactly sure which method, then hope P&T choose a method you didn’t use. Good on you, you “fooled” them, but come on. It’s the aforementioned that would be the ultimate fooling. ---
**Author:** ![numeroussyrup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/edb3f5/32.png) [@numeroussyrup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/numeroussyrup)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2017, 10:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/penn-and-teller-fool-us-season-four/791198/248 "2017-09-22T10:00:12Z")
Just a quick report before I got to work on 2 of the acts. Sean-Paul and wife: monkey thing. How did they train the monkey to do that? I assume that there is some signal to the monkey that we as humans can’t see. Regardless, it sounds like a pain in the ass to do. The trick is simple. The number is chosen ahead of time - note the rubber band where the number is when getting the card from Alyson - and the wife just swaps the numbers for a prearranged one. Eric Mead: what. the. fuck. I loved his thing before about what will fool them and what won’t. He also revealed his methods too and I was initially baffled at first. But on second watch, I think I’ve figured out at least one bit: the coins in the cylinder. The coins in the cylinder he reveals at the end are fake and have a hollow bottom. When he picks up the cylinder the coins at the beginning, the fake coins are already there and he keeps them palmed in his hand while P&T inspect it. In the hollow part of the coins is a cork. So when he shows that the cylinder is “hollow” he is simply dropping a piece of cork onto the fake coins and dropping the other one out the bottom. How he vanishes the coins… I am not completely sure yet but it’s damn good sleight of hand. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2017, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/penn-and-teller-fool-us-season-four/791198/249 "2017-09-22T11:03:38Z")
> [@numeroussyrup](#): > > Eric Mead: what. the. fuck. I loved his thing before about what will fool them and what won’t. He also revealed his methods too and I was initially baffled at first. But on second watch, I think I’ve figured out at least one bit: the coins in the cylinder. The coins in the cylinder he reveals at the end are fake and have a hollow bottom. When he picks up the cylinder the coins at the beginning, the fake coins are already there and he keeps them palmed in his hand while P&T inspect it. In the hollow part of the coins is a cork. So when he shows that the cylinder is “hollow” he is simply dropping a piece of cork onto the fake coins and dropping the other one out the bottom. How he vanishes the coins… I am not completely sure yet but it’s damn good sleight of hand. I’ll have to re-read your hypothesis again and rewatch the video at some point, but for the moment I just love how he effectively started out by making a speech, “I’m about to bend you guys over and have my way with you. And not only that, you’re going to be happy all the way through it and thank me after.” If he didn’t beat them after that opening, that’d have been hell of funny. But I think it was pretty clear that he was going to fool them. He had to know them well enough to come up with the speech, and so also know them well enough to know what would fool them. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2017, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/penn-and-teller-fool-us-season-four/791198/250 "2017-09-22T12:27:16Z")
> [@KellyCriterion](#): > > The ultimate “fooling” of Penn and Teller would be to perform a trick where they not only don’t correctly guess how it was done, but where they also can’t even explain how it _ **could** _ be done. Who’s come closest? I think they have been most impressed with: Kostya Kimalat - They do know now how he did it, but they did _not_ know or even have proper guesses at the time. Matthieu Bich - They made a guess, were wrong massively, and gave him a standing ovation. I don’t know their thoughts once they learned the truth. Shawn Farquhar - Not his second appearance. His first with the sealed deck. Ricky Jay had a trick like this, but Farquhar’s was better by all accounts. He has not, I think, revealed it and I’m not even sure if Teller or Penn have figured it out. ---
**Author:** ![whitetho](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whitetho/32/1059_2.png) [@whitetho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whitetho)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2017, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/penn-and-teller-fool-us-season-four/791198/251 "2017-09-22T12:47:38Z")
**Programming note:** The last three shows of the season are being shown on an accelerated schedule. Below are the times (Eastern) for these programs: S04E10 (repeat): Friday, 9/22, 9:00 PM S04E11: Monday, 9/25, 9:00 PM S04E12: Thursday, 9/28, 8:00 PM S04E13: Monday 10/2, 9:00 PM (season finale) One thing I noticed about the most recent episode is how emotionally invested Teller seems to be in the proceedings. There were a number of reaction shots where he seemed to be enthralled with what appeared to be fairly routine events. ---
**Author:** ![StarvingButStrong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/starvingbutstrong/32/335_2.png) [@StarvingButStrong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StarvingButStrong)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2017, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/penn-and-teller-fool-us-season-four/791198/252 "2017-09-22T13:49:28Z")
About the card changing color – couldn’t it be a simple chemical change? Obviously there are known chemicals that change color on exposure to other chemicals; that’s the entire basis of the litmus test and those home pregnancy tests, for example. There’s a clear glass bowl waiting on the table. Looks empty, but it’s probably full of some gaseous chemical(s) that are roughly the same density as air, so it doesn’t all escape during the few seconds he lifts the bowl and sets it back down on top of the card. The card was precoated with something or other. After all, he knows which card he’s going to use, so it only has to be the one card. Even if the coating changed the texture or thickness of the card a bit, it wouldn’t matter, because the card is taken off the bottom of the deck and before any shuffling or manipulations happens. So he sets this card down on the table and quickly puts the bowl of clear gas on top of it, and almost immediately white ‘smoke’ begins to form _right on top_ of the card. As in, it comes from a reaction to the card, it doesn’t appear from the table where the card isn’t, or fill the bowl from the top or uniformly all over. It seems obvious to me that a chemical reaction is occurring that A) causes the chemical on the card to change from clear/white to green and B) produces white gaseous fog. If that’s how it was done, it would be sort of poetic, since it’s axiomatic that magic is all “smoke and mirrors.” This time it actually WAS the smoke. ---
**Author:** ![numeroussyrup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/edb3f5/32.png) [@numeroussyrup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/numeroussyrup)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2017, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/penn-and-teller-fool-us-season-four/791198/253 "2017-09-22T21:29:54Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > I think, revealed it and I’m not even sure if Teller or Penn have figured it out. Penn has said that most of the magicians immediately tell P&T how it was done because it’s such a huge honour and most are so excited to show them what fooled them. > [@Sage Rat](#): > > I’ll have to re-read your hypothesis again and rewatch the video at some point, but for the moment I just love how he effectively started out by making a speech, “I’m about to bend you guys over and have my way with you. And not only that, you’re going to be happy all the way through it and thank me after.” > > If he didn’t beat them after that opening, that’d have been hell of funny. But I think it was pretty clear that he was going to fool them. He had to know them well enough to come up with the speech, and so also know them well enough to know what would fool them. I was wondering when someone would show up and do this. Like explain exactly how the trick is done and still fool them. It reminds me of the red ball trick that Teller does. Penn says it is done with a string and a ball, which it is. But it is god damn amazing despite knowing how it is done in principle. ---
**Author:** ![TheHYPO](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a698b9/32.png) [@TheHYPO](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheHYPO)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2017, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/penn-and-teller-fool-us-season-four/791198/254 "2017-09-24T06:31:00Z")
Ep 10: **Sean-Paul and Juliana** Monkeys are very smart and very trainable. They understand a lot more than we might expect. Particularly in exchange for treats. Without even having heard P&T say a word, this was already a pretty simple to explain trick - because we never see the original three numbers, just a total, none of the three people in the audience can verify whether there numbers were used. I assume Julianna just gives Penn a prepared set of three numbers to add. I assume Penn was talking about the elastic on the card that was covering the spot where the number was (pre-)typed… why else would it be there? Great presentation of a really underwhelming trick. Noticed that Sean-Paul had to cut the monkey off quickly after it typed 4 keys, or it would have given away the bit. **Jason Andrews** So Penn checks out one bottle and we therefore are supposed to believe that everything else we see are real glass bottles… The way he’s so quick to control everything and take things back from Penn just adds suspicion. Not natural enough. The paper bag implies (to me) that the broken bottle isn’t the same as what Penn inspected, but even if that one was real, there’s 11 others that could just be rubber (or gimicked in any other way) for him to walk through… not enough inspection. If they were all real, Penn would have been invited to inspect the whole rig. Nielsen is pretty obviously the codeword. **Eric Mead** Just that intro speech that has nothing to do with the actual trick is what separates guys like Rick from 90% (callback intended) of the performers around… so natural. So perfectly smooth and effortless. No sense of focusing on what he’s doing - as if he’s done it a million times. The perfect amount of slightly arrogant confidence. Beautiful routine. I think the hollow coinstack vs. cork is a good answer to what’s under the cylinder (and makes it easy for him to ‘offset’ the cylinder on the coin stack at the end. As for the table coins - great great slight. I certainly know that coin magicians are known to use hollow coin shells (does he show us both sides?) so that what looks like 3 coins on the table are really 3 coins and one shell nested on one of the others - making one seem to have vanished. not positive it this is one of his methods, but it could well be. **Reza** The spray paint thing is a nice urban/modern touch, but I always assume something like that is intended to stall for time (this was before Penn said the same thing right off the bat). My best guess before hearing P&T is what is seeming to become more common on the show: someone under the table rigging up a deck and that person swaps the deck into his (unusually placed) thigh pocket when he goes to put the spray paint down… That makes the “14” pretty simple, as well as the other two cards ending up side-by-side. The only question is how he controls where Alyson inserts the card. I frankly was impressed by this, though I did notice him fan the deck to check where those two cards were before the move. It’s an uncut shot from Alyson picking where to push the card in, and him separating out the two cards and I don’t see anything that could be funny business there… the first card he flips over KIND of looks like a different shade of white than the Ace, but I assume that’s just lighting. Waterfall forces are known, but the magician obviously controls that. Having the volunteer throw the card into the deck makes a pretty good sense of uncontrolled random location. Penn obviously latches on the second person with his patter. He mentions the word “watch” twice but I’m not sure if that’s code - I didn’t catch anything else to specifically explain how Alyson’s card gets between P&Ts. I’d be interested to read thoughts on that. **P&T** I know I’ve seen them do this before, with an audience, but I can’t remember where. Not like this is intended to fool anyone, but especially with Penn’s animated speaking pattern, it’s always suspicious when one arm is completely stiff in a fist… On the discussion about what it really means to fool P&T, this episode ironically had Eric Mead’s twist on it, but I agree with Kelly’s point as to the pure essence of the show being to find tricks they can’t even come up with an answer for… unfortunately that would account for a striking minority of tricks and the show would get very boring. I do think the right answer has to be somewhere in between that, and the way the show has gotten lately. I wouldn’t even have a huge issue if they got an “either you did it this way, or that way” option and if one of them was correct, they’d be unfooled. As you say, if there’s more than one way to do something and they know both, it’s silly for them to lose because they picked the wrong one. ---
**Author:** ![TheHYPO](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a698b9/32.png) [@TheHYPO](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheHYPO)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2017, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/penn-and-teller-fool-us-season-four/791198/255 "2017-09-24T06:34:22Z")
> [@StarvingButStrong](#): > > About the card changing color – couldn’t it be a simple chemical change? Obviously there are known chemicals that change color on exposure to other chemicals; that’s the entire basis of the litmus test and those home pregnancy tests, for example. > > There’s a clear glass bowl waiting on the table. Looks empty, but it’s probably full of some gaseous chemical(s) that are roughly the same density as air, so it doesn’t all escape during the few seconds he lifts the bowl and sets it back down on top of the card. > > The card was precoated with something or other. After all, he knows which card he’s going to use, so it only has to be the one card. Even if the coating changed the texture or thickness of the card a bit, it wouldn’t matter, because the card is taken off the bottom of the deck and before any shuffling or manipulations happens. > > So he sets this card down on the table and quickly puts the bowl of clear gas on top of it, and almost immediately white ‘smoke’ begins to form _right on top_ of the card. As in, it comes from a reaction to the card, it doesn’t appear from the table where the card isn’t, or fill the bowl from the top or uniformly all over. > > It seems obvious to me that a chemical reaction is occurring that A) causes the chemical on the card to change from clear/white to green and B) produces white gaseous fog. > > If that’s how it was done, it would be sort of poetic, since it’s axiomatic that magic is all “smoke and mirrors.” This time it actually WAS the smoke. It could be a chemical thing, but that seems unlikely to me. The final card was very bold and solid in colour and I would think that you can’t necessarily rely on a reaction like that to have such uniform results (you might get a few spots that didn’t quite change as much - especially on the back that is touching the table). I’d also have to check and see- was the only colour change to green? Was the rest of the colouring on the card the same as it was before? The green cards were so striking that I felt the entire card had been redesigned (in terms of colours) to suit the green theme. I’m pretty sure the white gas came from a hole in the table, not from the card itself. If anything, the white gas would have been the CAUSE of any chemical reaction, not the product of it, imo). ---
**Author:** ![TheHYPO](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a698b9/32.png) [@TheHYPO](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheHYPO)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2017, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/penn-and-teller-fool-us-season-four/791198/256 "2017-09-24T08:07:54Z")
Interestingly, going back to season 1, Shawn Farquhar’s bit, Penn says that they had all sorts of production meetings and decided that if P&T noticed a move they weren’t supposed to see, that’s all it would take to negate them being fooled. Certainly the criteria has come a long way… I think that trick itself may well have resulted in reexamining the criteria for fooling, as Penn clearly said, notwithstanding a deck switch, they had no idea how the trick was done. Later on the same episode, Penn flat out explains a trick by Chris Dugdale - Penn has a bowl of numbers and picks one at random which “selects” a random audience member with a matching number. Penn flat out says “I don’t think anyone in the room has any of these numbers”, and starts calling out numbers to prove that no one in the audience has any of those numbers - something he would never do these days - the code words have totally taken over. Again, something I found interesting. Although I do have to say it was a pretty lame trick - it relied on a random audience member being selected and the magician predicting what random country that audience member had on a card … at the end of the trick, the random audience member reveals himself to be the magician… it’s a great reveal, but also a fundamental flaw that reveals that the “random” audience member was never random. As Penn explicitly points out, it’s trivial at that point to predict what was on that person’s card, since you pre-selected who that person would be. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2017, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/penn-and-teller-fool-us-season-four/791198/257 "2017-09-24T12:06:33Z")
> [@TheHYPO](#): > > Later on the same episode, Penn flat out explains a trick by Chris Dugdale - Penn has a bowl of numbers and picks one at random which “selects” a random audience member with a matching number. Penn flat out says “I don’t think anyone in the room has any of these numbers”, and starts calling out numbers to prove that no one in the audience has any of those numbers - something he would never do these days - the code words have totally taken over. It still varies pretty widely. In the newest episode, he wasn’t very subtle in his explanation of Reza’s act. He didn’t out-and-out say, “You have a person hidden in that table-cube on the stage.” It was pretty clear from his words, though. (I’d like to think that it would have been clear to everyone in the audience - though I’ll grant that it’s possible that any sort of verbal obfuscation might already take out 80% of a random selection of the general population. I don’t really know.) ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2017, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/penn-and-teller-fool-us-season-four/791198/258 "2017-09-24T12:28:06Z")
> [@TheHYPO](#): > > **Reza** > > […] The only question is how he controls where Alyson inserts the card. I frankly was impressed by this, though I did notice him fan the deck to check where those two cards were before the move. It’s an uncut shot from Alyson picking where to push the card in, and him separating out the two cards and I don’t see anything that could be funny business there… Hypothesis: [spoiler]The top 14 cards in the specially-crafted deck are random cards, ending in the A♥. The remainder of the deck is alternating copies of 8♥ and 6♦ cards. After giving her the Ace, he ditches the other 13 cards. Everything she does after that is going to work out just fine, so long as you don’t look at all the face down cards. Inside the box, with the person, there must be 20ish copies of each card. There’s probably also a set of 15 ‘random’ cards that are used for the topping and empty boxes marked 13-16. As each card is called, if it exists in the ‘random’ set and isn’t the middle card, then it’s removed. If it’s the middle card, it’s moved to the end of the ‘random’ deck. If the middle card doesn’t exist in the ‘random’ deck, then one is grabbed from the sets of 20 and added in. When the bordering cards are selected, the two sets of 20 are taken an given a perfect shuffle. The ‘random’ deck is added on top, and it’s all put in a box with the correct number based on how many cards ended up in the ‘random’ deck.[/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2017, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/penn-and-teller-fool-us-season-four/791198/259 "2017-09-24T13:50:36Z")
> [@TheHYPO](#): > > **Jason Andrews** > > So Penn checks out one bottle and we therefore are supposed to believe that everything else we see are real glass bottles… The way he’s so quick to control everything and take things back from Penn just adds suspicion. Not natural enough. The paper bag implies (to me) that the broken bottle isn’t the same as what Penn inspected, but even if that one was real, there’s 11 others that could just be rubber (or gimicked in any other way) for him to walk through… If you replay frame-by-frame the bit where Andrews walks through the rig, the green bottle to the right of his neck appears to bend and deform as he squeezes past it. So I believe you’re right that at least some of the bottles are made of some soft material. ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2017, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/penn-and-teller-fool-us-season-four/791198/260 "2017-09-26T05:15:16Z")
Jason Andrews: You can see very clearly when he walks through that the bottles bend when he touches them. You don’t even need to slow mo it to see, I saw it immediately. They’re just rubber. And the glass walking- lame. That kinda stuff is always done at freak show type performances. There’s no magic skill to that. Reza: On first watching, it’s a pretty great trick and I couldn’t see how he got Alison to push in her card exactly in the right place. But then if you watch in slow motion when he drops the cards, they just alternate 6 of diamonds and 8 of hearts. No matter where her card gets placed it will be between those two. But that was really well done. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/penn-and-teller-fool-us-season-four/791198.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/penn-and-teller-fool-us-season-four/791198.md?page=14)