Perhaps he keeps taking money out of the the envelopes the entire time? He was very specific saying he didn’t put anything in them. And he did do a nice fake away where he almost ran away with the envelope.
(And assume you later saw that JKilez’s post has the entire routine.)
EDIT
Not a bad guess.
NETA: I realize I likely misunderstood KellyCriterion’s intention. He probably wanted to show it a second time, to see if it was easier to catch.
Thanks for the edit. My guess before I edited was pretty stupid.
Don’t worry, I’ll take it to the grave.
Except in the instance where someone is willing to trade it for the secret of Archer’s trick!
I watched the full routine again (link), this time hawking Archer’s every move. A couple of things stood out.
That’s all I got.
Watch that Youtube video starting at 5:00. There’s something funny about the way he hands the envelope to the man in the audience. He’s holding them with one behind the other and hands him the one in the back. As he goes to pull it out from behind, he appears to first slide it a little further behind, and he glances down almost as if he’s checking his move.
His statement “I can honestly say that I do not slide anything into anything” seems overly precise to me and ignores part of Penn’s proposed solution.
Here’s what I think. He had an extra orange envelope, probably flap-less, that had the real money in it. He kept it hidden behind the others then, when he had one left and turned it over, he was pulling the money from the extra envelope which was aligned on the back of the real one (which of course had a zero dollar in it like the rest).
Is the whole show available online somewhere? We saw them in person a few weeks ago, and it was a delightful show.
Yes, Google:
watch penn teller fool us
Hit the first link. From that page, I chose the first link in green. Up until it started playing, the whole thing looked like a ploy to get me to click on some ads. But nope, the show loaded, and played.
The same as the title of the thread.
Who’s on first?
I really thought you were going to reveal how he did it. Damn you magicians and your loyalty!
On Archer’s trick :
[spoiler]Why assume there’s only £100 in the trick? It’s entirely possible that every envelope has money in it. One thing I notice is that it really seems like he slips something in or out of each one before he gives it away. I believe him when he says he doesn’t slip anything in. Taking something out wouldn’t be too tough to do and there’s no need to guide anyone to a response.
The tricky part, of course, is that there’s 20 bills to palm using this method. Keeping them clipped together probably works (also to separate them from the $0 bill) but I admit he’d have to be pretty good to pull all of that off. Plus, that’s an awful lot of money to stash just for a prop. But considering that it could fool these top magicians, an outrageous explanation like that may be the way to do it.
[/spoiler]
ianzin, you could probably kill my explanation with an answer to one question, which I’m actually curious about - are the envelopes sealed in his trick? It didn’t look like they were, but I would have expected them to be in a trick like that.
panamajack,
I think my explanation in post #27 is more feasible.
It certainly didn’t look to me like the envelopes were sealed.
I had an idea, but it violates his statement that nothing is slipped into an envelope. I wondered if it was significant that he used 5 20-pound notes rather than a single 100-pound note. And there are 5 envelopes. So what if each envelope started with a single note, and he kept pulling them from the chosen envelopes and combining them into the final one?
i think a 6th envelope complicates things. it’d be pretty easy to spot an extra envelope (especially for P&T?), especially given the way he was fanning the original 5 in the beginning. he couldn’t have taped the extra envelope(s) on because penn and teller examined the envelope afterwards.
it’s certainly an INNOVATIVE trick. good for the guy. he’s doing it his way, and not copying other people, which is what penn and teller wanted to see in the first place.
While I’m not saying you’re not on to something, I interpret the hurried move as a way of merely getting rid of something that would prevent him from shaking hands with the host. Haven’t you had that happen to you? Your shaking hand has something in it and someone sticks out their hand before you are ready to respond?
Of course, that may be all my part of the routine. I’m just saying that I didn’t find it suspicious (and I’m a very suspicious person). I’ll have to check out that video again, and I realize that it is possible that, even if I slow it down to single frames, because we never see 100% of Archer’s hands & body due to the video edit, there may be some vital evidence not evident or visible, whether due to an intentional edit or accidental.
In the link in post #21 where only the reveal is shown, he pulls out (3) 20 pound notes to make 60 pounds. Since we don’t see the initial part of that version, I’d say that if he had 3 envelopes to start instead of 5, maybe you’ve hit on the method.
Otherwise, it’s just inflation to go from 60 to 100 pounds and not important at all.
Penn and Teller examined one of the envelopes he gave to the audience. Obviously the extra envelope wouldn’t have been on that one. He kept the extra envelope hidden behind the last one; the one he was left with. At least that’s my theory. I explained it in the spoiler in post #27.