The cards aren’t white on both sides, one side is already colored. The color looks paler under the colored light (just an illusion I believe) so it looks about the same as a white card palely colored bythe colored light. So he’s flipping a card over to the colored side once it’s under the colored light, the pale color makes it look a white card slightly colored by the light, and when he slides it out from under the light the full deep color is revealed. It’s skilled card manipulation aided by the colored light.
That makes a lot more sense, but what about the transparent ones?
Heh, if that’s true, that’s pretty clever.
My wife and I rolled the trick back and watched it frame by frame. It has no card in it when he jumps over his back. Has no card in it when he lands and starts juggling it. I thought we’d see him swap out the mouse traps, but we didn’t. He lowered it down as part of his normal juggling motion and it came up at one point with the card in it.
:shrugs:
Common trick, just sleight of hand, tossing out the transparent cards while the other deck goes ‘up his sleeve’ so to speak. I recall Shin Lim doing this same thing in one of his appearances here or on AGT. P&T were quite impressed that he did all this with gloves on and with tweezers, but as they said, it’s traditional card manipulation.
Just got to watch the color changing cards in slo-mo. He’s not flipping the cards over under the light, he’s just dealing from the bottom of the deck (might not be the bottom, but it’s not the top card). He’s really good at that move.
At the beginning of the trick, the three boxes are in a pile. The topmost box (Box 1) has a red diamond on the top side. The middle box (Box 2) has a green diamond on the top side. The bottom box (Box 3) has a red diamond on the top side. Box 1 is a completely ordinary box and is empty. Box 2 and Box 3 are gimmicked in such a way that they can be opened to either of two compartments. Box 2 contains in one compartment a deck of cards and a five of clubs with one of the corners ripped off; the second compartment is empty. Box 3 contains a deck of cards and a five of clubs in one compartment, and in the other compartment a book containing a pre-ripped page wedged between two other pages.
Stone removes Box 1 from the pile and designates it as “my box”. He demonstrates that it is empty, and it is indeed empty. He puts it back on top of the pile, upside-down on top of Box 2, and then picks up the entire pile.
He then pretends to put “my box” back on the table, but he actually puts the bottom box (Box 3) on the table. The audience doesn’t notice this because Box 3 also has a red diamond.
He then picks up Box 1 from the top of the pile, which now has a blue diamond. There are a few different methods he could have used to change the colour from red to blue. The simplest explanation is that the red diamond is a card loosely attached to the box and covering a blue diamond. When he turns his back to replace Box 1 on the pile, he removes the red diamond with his fingers and hides it on the table or on his person. Alternatively, it could be that the red diamond is a magnetic strip (green on the other side) that jumps between Box 1 and Box 2 when they are pressed together, or that the red diamond is made of some material that changes from red to blue when heated or cooled by contact with Box 2. However, I think sleight of hand is the most likely explanation, since you can see that the red diamond is not flush with the surface of the box, and before he turns his back he is careful to place his fingers over it.
He shows the blue box (still Box 1) to the volunteers and demonstrates that it is empty, which of course it still is. He then gives Box 1 to Alyson.
Box 2 has a green diamond. Stone opens it to the empty compartment but crucially, he does not completely remove the drawer as proof that the box is empty, because it is not. He takes a deck of cards and demonstrates that some of them near one end of the deck are unique. He then has Adrian select a card from the other end of the deck, which are all fives of clubs and gimmicked such that the corners tear off in exactly the same way. The card and deck are placed in the empty compartment of Box 2, which Adrian holds behind his back.
Alyson selects a page from a book from which (unbeknownst to her) one of the pages has already been ripped. The page number is forced by Stone. Again, there are a few ways this could have been done. For example, he could have stopped riffling at a page that has a duplicate page number as the pre-ripped page, or he could have palmed a scrap of paper with a page number (the same as that of the pre-ripped page) that he holds in front of the page he shows Alyson. The book is then placed into Box 1 and returned to Alyson.
Stone takes Box 3 (“my box”) from the table and opens it, revealing the deck of cards and the five of clubs. He rips the corner of the five of clubs and puts the card back in the box, retaining the corner. He then opens Box 3 again, this time to the compartment containing the book. He flips to the prearranged page number and pretends to rip a page out of the book; in reality he is simply dislodging the pre-ripped page. He retains the page and replaces the book in Box 3. He then opens the box a final time and shows that it is (apparently) empty. Since he does not completely remove the drawer, I assume he activated a hinge at its rear that allowed the contents to slide back into the box, behind the drawer.
Stone takes Box 2 from Adrian and opens it to the compartment containing the deck of cards and the pre-ripped five of clubs. He takes the corner he had ripped from the card in Box 3 and demonstrates that it matches the card from Box 2. Stone takes Box 1 from Alyson and has her turn to page 260, which was pre-ripped. He takes the pre-ripped page he removed from Box 3 and demonstrates that it matches the book from Box 1.
All in all, a very impressive trick – the only anomaly I noticed on first viewing was that he places the red box on the top of the pile but removed it from the bottom of the pile a few seconds later. The rest of the trick took a couple more viewings to figure out. The only thing I’m not completely sure of is how the trick boxes work mechanically (i.e., how he controls which contents are shown when he opens the drawers), but I assume that these are fairly standard magic props.
Holy shit, that’s a very thorough analysis. Thanks for that!
Thanks, but on rereading it just now I’ve just spotted a small error:
Ignore the part in this sentence about the cards being gimmicked. The particular card Adrian selects from the deck doesn’t get torn, so there’s no need for it to be gimmicked. The only card that gets torn is from Box 3, so that’s the only one that needs to be gimmicked.
Two words, “bone phone.” They just busted the white-masked “puppet master” for the same gimmick…
Raffaele Scircoli, Ep 4
The guy from the audience had his eyes covered. He was following instructions, but not a pre-arranged stooge.
I’m kind of unclear on what they were hoping to accomplish since P&T say they did it just as they said they did. Were they hoping their ploy would trick P&T into saying “you must have done it another way?” Or does it involve some crazy memory thing that they were hoping P&T would be so impressed by that they’d award a trophy due to sheer impressiveness?
Based on what P&T say, there is, in fact, no electronics or secret assistants - so she is not using a thumper or anything to transmit information electronically. The guy doesn’t say a word to her during most of the numbers segment so unless the brief thing he said communicated a 12-digit number (which seems virtually impossible), it doesn’t seem to be via codeword. Could he be making tiny sounds like footsteps and signalling that? Perhaps - but she also knew the name of Teller’s friend which I don’t think he wrote. Usually this stuff is done with pre-screening or eavesdropping pre-show. I imagine they wouldn’t have allowed that with Teller.
Clearly there are secret chambers in “his” box - there’s really no other way to explain the book/card appearance and vanish. There are also clearly forces on the card and the book page.
He clearly puts his red box on top after inspection, diamond side-down, then leaves the BOTTOM one on the table with a red diamond on it. When he picks the other two up, the red diamond has become blue (perhaps a magnetic diamond that he sneaks away while his back is turned). So neither of the boxes the others have is gimicked, but his clearly is. I assume this is the dirty work Penn speaks of.
Elephant in the room and plainly obvious (I don’t know why magicians do this so blatantly) is they inspect two of the boxes and not the third. Notably, the one that is re-inspected by Allyson is the same original red box. So the green one is gimmicked to - presumably the second copy of the pre-torn card is in an alternate chamber. The card therefore must have been a force. Since the book is pre-torn, Allyson’s box doesn’t need a secret chamber.
Other notes, When Allyson picks a page, he puts his hands on the paper pretty oddly - is he covering the fact that she chose the first page of Chapter 14 because that won’t match the scrap so she won’t notice? I’m not sure. I assume Allyson’s page is pre-torn in her book, and he has another untorn page in the gimmicked book pre-printed as the same page number so he can do the initial force (or maybe even every page has the same number on it). He also seems to show her the page number on the left side of a page, but finds the page number on the right side of a page. The page he rips is not the first page of chapter 14.
I’m honestly not sure what was “so complex” about this routine that P&T couldn’t encode it - box swap, card and page force, pre-torn items… secret compartments… they’ve had routines with more - they often don’t even encode one or two obvious points as long as it’s clear that they are on to the magician from the box swap - perhaps the mechanics of the secret compartments was addressed?
Edit: I see that psychonaut has done an analysis of this one in detail. The main thing I disagree with on him is what they already caught in a subsequent reply. When the volunteer opens the box, the 5C is already torn. I think it’s more a case of a second deck and 5C are already hidden in a secret compartment in that box. We’d see a pre-tear on the very closeup shot of the volunteer’s card. He never proofed the audience member’s box was ungimicked, which psychonaut notices, but doesn’t then trace towards a reason - the reason is certainly because it contains the torn card. Otherwise, he would have proofed that box two, pretending to prove all three.
That seems to be the suggestion - that there’s another device, but I don’t see a swap anywhere.
I was wondering about UV light or heat (colour changing toys for example), but there’s a lot of precision here and I’m not sure if this routine could be achieved that way, but indeed on rewatching, he is in fact bottom-dealing as noted by another user here.
For the x-ray one, the cards do a 180-tumble on the way down, so I assume he had only one or a couple of white cards on top that are now on the bottom. He puts his left hand just below the table before collecting the deck just before that part of the trick and then puts his right hand into his coat (ditching all the white cards?). A minor part of the trick, but they actually show on overhead when he snatches the black felt and starts to yank it behind the table.
To self-edit, what Penn says about the light doing some magic, the “weak blue” card he does isn’t a bottom deal. It’s clearly a white card - and returns to white. I suspect that one really is a colour change card via either heat or UV or IR light from the lamp. The blue it achieves is a paler and more like a colour-change coating.
The rainbow deck is all pre-coloured. The light just makes it “look” like it’s changing - though other than the initial yellow card, I think it’s pretty obvious that the rest of the deck isn’t changing, it’s just being tinted by the light. From the head-on angle that initial yellow card always looks yellow.
Season 6, Episode 10 (August 26, 2019)
Wolfgang Moser: Magic teapot. This is a take on a really old trick (“Think-a-Drink”). The teapot has multiple compartments and there is some sort of switch that swaps the spigot from water to orange juice (which was clearly a force). Then he takes the top off to dispense the coffee (was he using mentalism to suggest the teapot was getting “warmer”?). I’m curious why when he’s pouring the red wine, white wine and beer, it seems to come out as clear liquid before hitting the glass.
Johnny Magic: Guided meditation. Okay, so obviously all the answers were communicated to her somehow, even though she claims they weren’t. I’m not sure what the Sam Harris reference is; maybe some sort of subliminal messaging or hypnotic suggestion?
Pere Rafart: Crazy cards. What a purely fun act with great showmanship. I was impressed by the whole thing, especially all the moves at the beginning with the closed deck. I’m a little disappointed by the result; Penn mentioned there were upwards of 50-75 effects within the whole thing; could they really guess all of them? Since the guy claimed he invented all his own tricks, I figured this would be an instant fooler.
Giacomo Bertini: Close-up coin magic. The whole act was very impressive and hypnotizing to watch. I’ve seen Teller perform so many coin tricks that I knew this would never fool him (especially at such a strategic vantage point). No foolers tonight, what a letdown.
Penn & Teller: Featuring Moxie Crimefighter. Maybe the most amusing part of this to me was watching how unimpressed she was of her world famous magic dad.
“No man’s a hero to his valet.”
Batman is…!
Johnny Magic: Could it be that the SOUNDS of pigs, rain, a train, a piano were communicated to her (via the chair, etc.), rather than the WORDS, allowing her to answer honestly that nobody “told” her those answers?
How does the trick where the guy can/can’t lift Penn’s daughter at the end work?
He is quite big/strong appearing, and presumably is not a stooge - I don’t think there’s anything fancy (like electromagnets) involved, just a trick of taking away his leverage somehow by holding herself away from him?
The old you-can’t-lift-me is a classic ancient leverage trick. For the first lift, Moxie positions herself close to the volunteer with her forearms on top of his, making her easy to lift. Because her body is close to his arms, there is a small rotational moment required to get her off the ground. For the second lift, she steps back, places her forearms under his, and leans backwards, vastly increasing the leverage required to lift her.
Even though acts like this one are usually very low in entertainment value - and this one was no exception - I have no freaking idea how it was done. Any guesses?
Hidden compartments are only part of the mechanism. You’ll note that during the course of the entire act, he pours out more liquid than the teapot can possibly contain. This is because there are actually two teapots, the second pre-loaded with the cocktail and the coffee. He switches one teapot for the other when picking up the cocktail book. Note how his right hand holds a tray with a glass of water on it, with the teapot dangling below. He puts the tray down on the table, allowing him to drop the teapot he is holding behind the table and simultaneously pick up its replacement.
The production of wine and beer can be explained with a combination of hidden compartments and glasses pre-treated with chemicals that dye the liquid from the teapot on contact.
No, not exactly. For the second part of the act, he uses a teapot with upper and lower compartments. The lower compartment is filled with cold cocktail, and the only inlet/outlet is the teapot’s spout. The upper compartment is filled with hot coffee, and the only inlet/outlet is the hole at the top of the teapot. He first pours all the cocktail out of the spout, keeping the lid on top of the teapot to avoid spilling any coffee. Then he places the teapot flat on the volunteer’s hand and suggests that it is getting warmer. The bottom of the teapot probably is getting a little warmer, since there is no longer any cold liquid in the bottom compartment. But this warmth might not really be perceptible; when the magician really wants the volunteer to admit that the teapot is warm, he asks her to place her hand on the upper wall of the teapot—that is, on the wall of the compartment containing the hot coffee. He then removes the lid and pours out the coffee.