My guess on this one is that she has both decks memorized (at least to a depth of 31 cards), and after asking Allison to pick a number, she was able to force Penn to choose the card that was that many down in the other deck.
What hit me first was that Scircoli insisted on ‘helping’ the volunteer put on the mask, and you saw him apparently adjusting something behind the volunteer’s right ear. It was a simple shell mask with an elastic string, there could be no legitimate need for help, so I assumed at that point he was sticking some sort of speaker to that bone right behind the flap of the ear. And from then on, the volunteer became a willing stooge and followed the orders someone radioed into the speaker.
IOW, Penn was right on with his bone ‘conduction’ hint. I didn’t see anything else that needed explaining – all he did was point dramatically at the volunteers body and physically move the mannequin. I guess there must have been.
At least, would the judge let a magician get away with saying ‘there were two more tricks’ if there weren’t?
I’m a little surprised that they’d allow a “willing stooge” trick given their disdain for stooges. But I don’t see any other way that it could be done.
The rat trap guy either did actually memorize the layout, or could see through the blindfold somehow (my guess is the latter was “the trick” if there was one). IIRC he didn’t have a bystander inspect the blindfold, which is usually done in blindfold tricks.
I think that they might have banned thumpers and similar devices, since it’s too easy to hide one randomly.
I don’t think the music is the key, though obviously it could be. I think that she may have been the one to mention the Piddingtons in her first act and Penn mentioned the name in the crowd, so I expect that she followed their technique.
Since I happen to actually know that technique, rather than merely speculating openly on the topic, I’ll leave that there.
Am I the only person reading this thread who listens to the Penn’s Sunday School podcast? That seems really odd to me considering people posting here appear to be fans of Penn & Teller.
I mention this because each season there is a fair amount of discussion about each episode of P&TFU and how the magicians do what they do. Penn & gang don’t give things away but there is enough discussion to make it clear to me most of the people in this thread are way off base on a number of the tricks performed so far this season.
Does he talk about them when they’re filmed or when they’re aired?
On the puppet guy: I was thinking how it could be done - not how it was. It would take an expert to make it work.
First, put in something so the guy can hear messages. Either with the earplug, or maybe the earplug was a red herring/diversion. Maybe making comments during the show so he thinks the magician is talking the whole time.
While demonstrating the touching/raising hands thing place two or more items on his back that will simulate touching. They would be controlled remotely. (trick number 1)
While seating him then take of the items (need to at some point). The chair is a “magic touching chair” (trick number 2)
Then say through the earpiece (the guy thinks the magician is saying this to everybody) something about adding a little to the trick. Instead of just raising your hand, hold up the number of times you are touched. If you are touched twice on the right side, hold up two fingers on the right hand. If touched four times on the left side hold up four fingers on the left side. Him holding up three fingers meant he was touched three times. (trick 3)
After they have aired he goes back and reviews who was on that week and shares some of the thought process he and Teller went through. He doesn’t give away things explictly but there are more hints as to what is going on. Often when talking about tricks that may appear straightforward and simple he will indicate that no, it wasn’t at all.
I’ve been watching Chris Ramsay’s channel (mostly for his puzzle content) and seen him try to do some spontaneous cardistry, usually failing to do anything. I get the sense that a lot of YouTube cardistry is the same as this:
Which is to say editing + sufficient skill and planning to allow one to succeed once before dying of boredom. Visually impressive, when viewed in a video, but less impressive if you were sitting in the same room.As-is, we still see her flub a few moves but nothing that she can’t return from. I’d vote that it was pretty damn amazing to have done so well, live, in front of her heroes.
[spoiler]I don’t know what the technical name is of the move where you slide your finger down the side of a deck, to allow someone to pick a card from it, so I’ll just call it a “scan” for the purposes of this spoiler.
If you step through the video on YouTube, you can see a line down the side of the deck as she scans, like she has slipped a finger into the bottom of the deck at that position or inserted something at that point. When Penn calls “stop” that divide ends up being the place at which the stops, perfectly. She must be slow-rolling and skips forward to the punchline when he calls stop. (He’s been kind enough to call stop within a reasonable amount of time, like a common sucker, rather than being a prick magician trying to screw her up.)
Basically, she has memorized the order of the deck (both decks start in the same order). Once Allison calls the number, she uses her memory to recall what’s at position 24 in the deck, originally. She then finds that card in the deck and moves it to maybe 3/4ths the way through the deck, does the false scan, and she’s completely set from that point forward.
My guess would be that she was supposed to show the card twice, but her perfect shuffles and cardistry weren’t quite perfect and the other 6 of hearts didn’t end up in the right place (probably one or two cards away from the 24th slot).
All of which is to say, she forced Penn to pick the card at the 24th spot in Teller’s deck.[/spoiler]
In general, the key components of magic (ignoring presentation) are:
- Misdirection.
- Coming up with a way to cheat that’s hard to envision.
- Practicing the same move over and over again to be able to do something that people would think is physically impossible.
Watching some magicians talk about their personal lives, they basically all say that they’re morons for spending so much wasted time in their life practicing moves, instead of going out and making friends. They’ve all spent months and years doing things like practicing shuffling two decks together so that the cards perfectly alternate from the two halves in a riffle shuffle. Most people would spend their times doing things that are more productive.
It looks like Helen really makes her living by organizing and officiating weddings:
No mention in the reviews at all of her even doing any magic at all.
My guess would be that, functionally, she’s serving as a stand-in for her dad to prove himself. Possibly she tried her hand at professional magic and came to the realization that she didn’t have the right stuff for it. I assume that she’s come to grips with that, long ago, and is fine to not even really try. Why bother being cringey if you can just do the trick straight-forward and win?
Personally, I actually don’t mind the straightforward approach, though minus P&T’s Q&A with her, I’ll admit that it wouldn’t be that impressive for the trick to have been run in that way.
But I do think that “Was there a person in the cabinet?” and “Was there ever a person in the cabinet?” both rule out the idea that she had any outside aid. Sticking your arm in to hand her something or fiddle around with something would pretty clearly be being “in the cabinet”. The behind-the-scenes judges wouldn’t let her say “no” if they knew that someone was doing something for her, inside the cabinet. There was none of that.
I don’t know how the trick is done, but I do note that we never see the stand that she used, just the handcuff bar.
[spoiler]I expect that it was deconstructed/demolished in some way. Just cause you call something steel doesn’t mean that it’s steel. And just because something is steel doesn’t mean that it looks as robust as it actually is from all incidences of attack. If I’d been Teller, I would have tried to use the handcuff bar as a lever and see how much torque the loop can take.
From there, I expect that there was a key inside the stand somewhere. Presumably, taking the cap off the end and reaching down and in to grab it was viewed as impossible to accomplish while still connected to the rod, or else they would have asked that. They probably assume that there is such a key and that it’s not worth asking the question, it’s just not the ultimate solution to the question.[/spoiler]
I think that the first and third trick were just sleight of hand. I don’t know that I would have passed him.
[spoiler]
First: The box has a shelf inside of it about 1/3rd up from the floor, hinged on one side. This can be swiveled up and down and probably has a spring that can cause it to fold back and up into the side wall on its own.
Trick 1: Dump the sponge and the rock. The rock goes on the floor and the sponge goes on the shelf. Just before the reveal, steal the sponge and slide it up your sleeve, and release the latch holding the shelf down.
Trick 2: Create a box with a rotating lid. On the underside of the lid, build a preserved cactus into the top and glue dirt and stuff around it to look like a live plant. Slide this under the shelf. On the shelf, set out an ultra-compressible teddy bear. Swap the bear for a comb, midway. Bear gets compressed and put under your jacket or something, comb goes in the pocket. Unlatch the shelf and the box lid, the shelf flips up, the lid flips over, and bob’s your uncle. (Possibly/probably the shelf isn’t even used at all, the underside of the lid just serves as the false floor.)
Trick 3: There’s a secondary shelf that comes out from the opposite wall as the normal one which has some fake grass built into it. The grapes get slid into the base of the table after he’s done with them and he sneaks the glass in after flipping up the shelf.[/spoiler]
I don’t think it’s too fooling. Just the fact that two of the items were squishy and that the cactus was as tall as its base makes it pretty clear what’s going on.
Actually, watching the segment again, Penn says that she used a method that even the people watching the show on TV would be able to use, so I guess it probably is the music / sound effects.
Re: Episode 6: The tactile trick. There may be some obviousity as to the fact that the magician is clearly doing some hand work behind the back of the box, but that should not be enough to say out loud to consider P&T fooled. What is he doing? Where are the props going or coming from?
Someone suggested maybe a shelf pops out when the front i in place. There’s no space for a shelf with any items to be hidden that we can see, but more importantly, if the sponge was on a high shelf, Allison would have noticed the box was super shallow all of a sudden and that is a risk the volunteer will say something.
The cactus was far too big to allow for something to it on top. And there is no obvious room for grapes in the wine glass - they’ve have to be tiny grapes and Allison would still have felt the glass if it were originally in there.
As for the lego trick, an index seems the most logical, and a gap to slip the card in, but there’s still no hard evidence of it that we can observe other than the logic of “somehow he MUST have got the card in there.” - the alarm could have been circumvented a few ways, but it got me thinking about those plastic pull-tab strips you can insert between the battery and the contact when something is newly bought, and he could easily have pulled such a slip out after rigging the box. IF he needed to get the lid open to plant the card.
Someone asked what the Koran Medallion is - it was a trick by Koran where he would ask three audience members to name a digit, write down the resulting 3-digit number and pull out a medallion and tell the person to “read the number inscribed on the back”.
I couldn’t find 100% confirmation, but my understanding is that while writing down the 3-digit number on a little pad so he could “record” the number, he would also write it down on a little slip that fit on the back of the medallion.
The wordplay is, to the best of my understanding, that in asking the volunteer to read what was “inscribed” on the back, you picture an “engraving” carved into metal, but “inscribed” can also mean handwritten, which is what was on the back (the audience doesn’t see).
These guys came up with a way to avoid the wordsmanship by actually producing an insert that appears engraved that they could outright show the audience. It’s clearly the reason he has to write a reward amount that he doesn’t even seem to ask Allison to come up with (unless that banter was cut). It’s an opportunity to “write” the engraved plaque.
The gallows guy, I note that Penn mentioned that “Penn and Teller” didn’t do the trick but “pen and notepad” had a big role - I’m not sure why - did Allison’s pad have something to do with it? Also, VERY surprised that the bag of envelopes was handled so amateurish - no verification that the bag has unique numbers - no inspection by P&T - no showing the audience what she pulled, etc.
- The items are not on the shelf when it is folded up.
- Her ability to examine and think about the depth of the box is an assumption on your part. She mostly stands next to it, she’s busy interacting with the magician and hosting a show, and her forearm never goes further than halfway in.
7/15 Episode
There were a few odd edits during the Wedding Ring trick (watch how his hands move when he says “Make sure that it’s your ring”), but I guess we have to trust that P&T wouldn’t cut out anything that would “help” a magician. Any ideas how he did it?
Having her move the ladder a few inches to the “center of the stage” was strange - I wonder what role that action played in the trick.
As a matter of fact, Allison DOES reach all the way in - on the first reach when the box is empty, her finger tips are basically to the bottom of the box and she has more forearm room to reach if she wanted.
That said, I will grant you that when reaching in on the sponge, she does NOT seem to be reaching in nearly as far. So perhaps there is a shelf or at least something on top of the rock.
It does seem to me though that it would be very risky for the magician to do this trick repeatedly and necessarily rely on the belief that no volunteer will notice the height difference.
If there IS a shelf, it doesn’t seem automated with the front shield, because he removes the front shield on that first reach-in while her arm is still inside. It’s far from a clear shot, but the overhead shot doesn’t SEEM to show anything other than the front over in a channel. No mechanisms near the channel are obvious. He does wait for her to remove her arm before placing the screen after the initial demonstration. But he doesn’t seem to fiddle with anything obvious or do anything suspicious that would seem like operating a shelf.
In the moment after Allison feels the sponge, he hovers his left hand behind the bottom of the box. He doesn’t step near the base to operating anything by foot.
There are two metal prongs on the table visible when he picks the box up - which could just be for alignment to keep the thing facing forward or otherwise from moving, but could possibly be functional in some way.
I just noticed something - it appears they may have refilmed this or used a shot from rehearsal because when discussing the teddy bear, from the front and magician-side angle, she seems to reach fairly shallow and with her elbow at a right angle whereas from allison-side camera, she has almost her full forearm in the box up to the elbow.
Similarly, when she reaches for the grapes it does look a bit shallow, but then from allison-side, she is again reaching very deeply - am I being misled by the angle? I don’t think so. It’s not a take from another part of the trick because in both instances there is a direct reference (something about the bear is spoken, and in this case, the hypnogrape wheel is visible).
Very odd; but he’s clearly working some quick hand-work behind the box every time there’s a switch - there are some very deliberate moves around the brush to cactus switch.
Upon review, from the main two angles, the depth of her arm could suggest she isn’t reaching down very far. It just seems like the trick then relies on the audience member being naive or not saying anything, because I would certainly expect that I’d notice having to reach all the way to my elbow and then barely having to reach in at all the next time.
I think it’s simpler than that. They use the first two tricks to illustrate how many possible ways there are to communicate info, but that last time, it’s a simple force. It’s brilliant because the audience is looking for some glimpse of a tell, and missing the fact that Penn knew the third card before they even began.
There was plenty of opportunity for Teller to do a deck swap between the second and third trick, and it’s telling that they had the volunteer point to and pull one card out of the face-down deck before looking at it, rather than a more natural “take any card”. A clear sign of a force to me.
On rewind, we could clearly see him reach down and push the button on the cactus stand to make the cactus plant appear (we thought it popped up, but the rotating idea is even better).