it’s well documented that teller is by far the better magician, though penn is the better showman… and juggler?
Exactly what I figured. Teller is the magic expert(and one of the finest in the world). Penn knows magic plenty, but without Teller there to tell him how it worked, Penn would be hopeless on some of these tricks.
This.
Occam is mildy useful for trying to determine whats going on when the thing going on isnt actively trying to fool you (like mother nature) or is analyzed after the fact (like solving a murder perhaps).
But when you have one group trying to deceive another and perhaps both groups trying to decieve you (well three if you include advertisers) then I would go so far as to say not only is Occams of not much use, it might actually be harmful as a guide.
My guess would be the extra blank envelope with the money that can be shuffled behind the remaining envelopes as the trick progresses. Very easy to do.
I think P&T may have been gracious in not throwing out a bunch of guesses that might have included the actual method, because they didn’t know exactly how it was done. They mentioned sliding the cash in, because that’s a common method used in envelope based prognostication tricks.
And Penn readily admits that Teller is the superior magician.
That they were being gracious is exactly my take. When the first guess wasn’t exactly on the mark they didn’t want to appear to be sitting there throwing out random guesses until they got it right.
This was true especially with Archer. He gave a half-denial to their guess by saying that he didn’t slide anything into anything. That pretty much confirmed that the other part of their guess was likely correct - that there was an extra envelope. At that point they were stuck with either saying they were stumped or appearing to be guessing by playing a game of 20 questions.
The problem with that is that it makes the whole thing come down to a matter of luck as to whether or not they got your exact method on the first guess, but they were between a rock and a hard place.
John Archer posted the following over at the magic cafe forums:
So there was a lot more discussion about the mechanics of the trick that was cut, but they still couldn’t figure out the right method.
i think that’s the thing right there - they’re guessing. with the other acts, they knew EXACTLY what was going on. No guessing necessary. The fact that P&T had to guess meant they didn’t know, and when they didn’t know, they’re really no better than the rest of us on this forum offering 6th envelope theories, and the like.
wasn’t that what P&T set out for? to be amazed and stumped like the rest of us? sure they have theories, but everyone who doesn’t believe that it was straight up magic has theories. whether or not those theories are right or not is moot because there was DOUBT in P&T’s mind. The fact that they checked the envelope meant they were stumped and needed clues as to what was going on.
they didn’t have to check the chicken/goose act, they didn’t have to check the cards from the slight-of-hand guy, they didn’t check the shrinking apparatus - because they knew what was going on. with this, they were stumped, and when they were stumped, they (correctly and graciously) allowed Archer to go to vegas.
yeah? no conspiracy theories?
You have to consider that just because P&T didn’t know the exact mechanism of this particular trick doesn’t mean they couldn’t figure out how to do the trick themselves. There’s probably many ways to do it, so they picked the mostly likely one and were wrong.
The same is true for the closeup magician. They thought he was doing false shuffles, but he wasn’t. But if you could achieve the same result with false shuffles, that’s a perfectly good guess. In this case, it appears the guy was shuffle tracking. Or at least that’s what he claims. There could easily be another trick involved, and the magician says he tracks the cards because A) it sounds more impressive and B) it keeps people from looking elsewhere and spotting the real trick. In any event, it was great. And it represents the best thing about magic - always keeping the audience off guard and guessing.
A slight hijack I suppose.
Is there any trick done by a magician where the others pretty much all go “man, we have no damn idea how he does that?”
Not exactly a direct answer, but I always recall this (quoting from wikipedia):
This article and the external links from the wiki can give you an idea of the respect Slydini was given by other magicians, and his incredible skill at close-up sleight of hand and misdirection.
if P&T were blind guessing? they would probably eventually stumble onto the answer. however, it’s not blind. for the shuffler, they were actively watching his hands. they watched the other closeup guy as well and knew CONFIDENTLY what he was doing. the a-ha moment came probably halfway through the trick. with the envelope trick, there was no a-ha moment. they were checking envelopes, fumbling with questions, etc.
that’s the difference between having an inkling and flat out KNOWING.
while i’m sure p&t could very well figure out the envelope trick themselves, or even come up with better methods EVENUTALLY, it’s not the same as “i’ve seen this before.”
a halfbaked analogy would be… the new magicians being mathematicians and writing out proofs. there’s a difference between able to follow a proof and having seen the proof before and knowing what the next step is before it’s even written. P&T were asking “do you use some sort of… substitution? did you change the coordinate system?” rather than “oh yeah. i’ve seen this before. it’s the BLAH BLAH BLAH proof.”
Yeah, I get the point. If they’re blind guessing then he’s fooled them.
If there is a sixth envelope, how does he keep them together perfectly at the end, which is in close-up? I watched him count out the money and put the envelope away and if there was another envelope, it was in alignment even when he shook it.
It’s fun to guess about this stuff. Congrats to the magician.
Exactly. This is Penn and Teller, the act that invented a new method of the Cups and Balls, which is probably the oldest trick in the book and roughly equal to inventing an entirely new sex act.
Maybe it only works 20% of the time.
Did they? First I’ve heard of it. I’ve seen them show how the trick works by performing with clear cups. I didn’t see anhy new methods.
I would suppose it is similar to a 2 or 3 lift with playing cards, lots of practise makes it an excellent illusion.
you can palm a playing card. you can’t palm an envelope. plus, as i said earlier, he fans out the envelopes at multiple times throughout the act, which would be darn near impossible to keep the envelopes in check. if he DOES manage to somehow keep the 6th envelope perfectly aligned throughout the entire act, then that is one of the more impressive slight of hand feats ever.
I have to admit, my first thought was that he could probably get the odds well over 50% with no trickery whatsoever:
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Somebody will always pick “Sex” right off the bat. (This is virtually guaranteed anyway, but you can make it even more of a sure thing by calling on youngish men. Which Archer does, in the first round, and gets the expected result.)
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Someone will probably also go for “Nothing” early in the act, as this is the other obvious joke (and the whole comedy routine tends to get people into the frame of mind where they want to play along and make the obvious jokes).
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The other three envelopes are trickier, but by this point he’s probably got a fairly good read on the people in the front row, and he’s got an extended bit of patter before each person picks – which gives him a chance to study their reactions and, if necessary, engage in a bit of non-obvious manipulation. If he’s really, really good at reading body language, he probably knows which envelope each person is leaning towards before they state their choice, and can choose either to let them pick at once, or to muddy the waters a bit more by engaging in the extended fake-out routine he does with the last person.
I don’t think this IS how he does it, because I doubt he’d be going on TV with this trick if the odds weren’t 100%, but I bet he could have an impressively high success rate with a completely honest version.
Except one of the videos that someone linked to has Archer with “SEX” as the last envelope.