Couple of interesting ones on the 9/3 episode, even though there were no FU trophies.
Tyler Twombly, sticky notes: at first I was thinking that they weren’t real sticky notes and maybe the pad was some sort of digital device. But after watching the whole act and listening to Penn’s comments I’m thinking he was writing on a real pad, but one that had multiple layers that he then palmed and removed… since he was cagey about keeping the pad close to him when he first drew Teller’s letter (which was going to move) but then made a very audible draw when he drew the arrow (which doesn’t).
Anastasia Synn, “illusionist”: At first I was convinced she was wearing fake layers of ‘skin’, with the edges hidden by her clothes/accessories. But then after the trick was over she started showing inflammation around the chest hole and bleeding as well. So either she went above-and-beyond with the fakery, or she really is putting stuff into her body, albeit pre-prepared cavities. Which isn’t really magic, just gross.
No, he doesn’t. Whenever he stops the turntable, he gropes for the cookie but always yanks it the very moment he comes into contact with it, without any hesitation whatsoever. If there is a magnet in play, then most likely he is not testing for it at the time he takes the cookie.
As others have pointed out, the trick would be simpler and less prone to (correctable) error if he could distinguish the cookies visibly. This way he can be sure that when he stops the table, a non-razor cookie will always be in front of him.
First, I’m not saying I know how the trick was done, my point was that it could be done with a magnet. And that magnet could be used in other ways than just detecting the razor blade by touch.
Second, your idea of fumbling and yanking are the impression the trick is supposed to give. But when you consider he may have practiced this trick thousands of times, probably using video to check his performance, then he has plenty of opportunity to work this by feel.
The big problem with your contention that it was done visually is that Penn called him out on the blindfold but he still fooled them. And they called him out on sleight of hand also. So there is still something else to this trick.
For what it’s worth, I didn’t see the dot on my first viewing — which means that if, like Penn, I’d called him out on the blindfold, then I’d still have been fooled since I still wouldn’t have been able to explain how the guy did it.
But I did see the dot on rewatch; and while I’ll grant that it’s easy to miss (because I missed it, and because I’m figuring Penn missed it too), I’m curious as to whether you can see it on a rewatch likewise.
And as for the remark about sleight-of-hand, yeah, Penn asks the guy — but while the guy wavers for a bit, eventually he says no, which is why he’s fooled them. And I’m just guessing, here, but: remember when the guy asks Alyson if she wants to keep her cookie instead of switching? Imagine this: he thinks she’ll keep her cookie; maybe folks usually keep it, since they’ve been doing whatever he says and there’s a rhythm to his agree-with-me patter and he’s got showmanship or whatever.
But say that, if they decide to switch, he’s a sleight-of-hand guy who’ll fake the handoff. As it happens, she stands pat and the guy shrugs; but when Penn asks if the guy did any sleight of hand, the guy hems and haws a bit — but, well, the guy didn’t actually do any sleight of hand, did he? So his answer is hesitant but true.
Not really, but that’s mostly because the rules for fooling aren’t clear. The guy does equivocate about sleight of hand but that tells me that it wasn’t the key effect, and I pointed out before he may rely in sleight of hand if he needs an out like when he gives Alyson a chance to switch.
Your explanation could be correct, I don’t know how he did it, neither did P&T. But if you can fool them with this kind of act based on peeking through a blindfold then there are a lot potential foolers out there. I think there’s some other element involved here though.
If there’s no dot, then I’m just a rambling weirdo who mistakenly convinced himself he saw what he wanted to. But if there is a dot, and we all missed it but we can see it when we look for it on the replay, then (a) there’s no need for an extra element and (b) potential foolers have the same hurdle this guy bypassed: he produced the near-lookalikes next to someone who couldn’t see, and during the trick he shuffled them around and made sure they got destroyed.
Yes, I see a tiny blurry whitish spot near the center of the cookie. Other cookies have similar spots other places. But in the end Penn says it was sleight of hand, so I suppose that could be the explanation that counts and it was wrong. I don’t understand why he would make that a guess after saying all blindfolds are fake. Since Alyson didn’t switch there was no clear need for sleight of hand.
With respect, I think you’re missing the main point I was trying to make. If he really is discerning the cookies by touch, then it doesn’t matter whether it takes him a second or a microsecond to do this, because if he detects a razor cookie he’s going to spoil the trick, or at least significantly complicate it, by passing over it or swapping it. The only way to do the trick elegantly is to ensure that the razor cookie is always the last one he touches, and the only way of ensuring that is to make sure the razor cookie is never in front of him when the turntable stops.
I never contended that it was done visually; I said only that this would be a simpler and cleaner way of doing the trick than by feeling with his hands. Putting a visible mark on the cookie and peeking through the blindfold is only one possible way of making sure that he always stops the turntable in the right place.
Recall that he is not wearing the blindfold when he mixes up the cookies at the beginning of the trick. This gives him the chance to place the razor cookie in a specially chosen spot on the turntable. The turntable might contain some signalling device that secretly warns him when that spot is directly in front of him. In this way he can avoid stopping the turntable at the wrong time. And there is no need to mark the razor cookie, neither visually nor tactilely. (To emphasize this, he could have even had a volunteer choose a cookie at random from the box to hold the razor, and also had a volunteer test his blindfold. Perhaps he didn’t because it would have disrupted the comic timing of the act, or because he was hoping to mislead Penn & Teller into making a wrong guess.)
By way of illustration, consider the following simple mechanical signalling device: the spindle of the turntable extends below the table, where a flap is attached to it. If, at the start of the trick, the flap is touching his knee, and he puts the razor cookie at the spot on the turntable that is directly above the flap, then when he spins the turntable the flap will strike his knee whenever the razor cookie is in front of him, and he knows it is safe to stop the turntable just a moment afterwards.
Of course, we know that he doesn’t use this mechanical method on the show because we can see that there’s nothing below the table. But the same general principle could be applied to, say, an acoustic or radio signalling device. Maybe the turntable is rigged to squeak (imperceptibly to the audience but loud enough for him to hear) once per rotation. Or maybe it contains an electronic sensor that is triggered once per rotation, sending a signal to a speaker in his ear or a buzzer in his pocket.
I suppose the same technique could be used for making a thin cable come out of your chest, though not everyone has loose enough skin there to pull this off. (A woman of Synn’s size and girth probably does. This is probably what Penn was getting at when he said that she could do the trick but that he and Teller could not.) Place one end of the cable vertically against your chest, leaving the rest stuffed down your clothes. Fold the skin of your chest over the exposed part of the cable and glue it in place. Then you can grab the top end of the cable and pull. Ensure the cable is lubricated to ensure it comes out smoothly and painlessly. If desired, coat the very end of it with fake blood to stain your chest and make it look like there is a wound.
The effect is slightly different in that you see the needle poking at and stretching the skin but not piercing through as seen with the traditional method.
Why do it for real? I’ve no idea. Magicians trying to impress magicians maybe? Perhaps because the older method was revealed on that Magic’s Secrets Revealed series.
Here’s David Blaine doing it up close from a few years ago
Possibly of interest to those in this thread: there’s a new magic series on Netflix called Magic for Humans with Justin Willman. I found it to be very enjoyable. Every episode he does a bunch of tricks loosely based around a theme. He’s affable and fun and much less serious than David Blaine, but not wacky or zany like P&T.
It’s always impossible to know how much camera trickery and editing is involved in these kinds of shows (he says no camera tricks), but if you believe there are no lame camera/editing nonsense involved, he pulls off some really delightful stuff. He’s particularly good at predictions and constructing methods so choices look completely random. Check it out!
I don’t believe it for a second. The one clip I saw purports to show Willman, with the help of an audience of stooges, fooling unwitting volunteers into thinking that they are invisible. It’s painfully obvious that the volunteers are in on the trick. (Just how likely is it that only a single mark at a time wandered into his trap? And did the marks not notice a camera and sound crew following them around while they were supposedly invisible?) I’m also not convinced that no editing trickery is involved in the disappearance of the stooge.
Yes, that was one of the worst tricks, IMO. There’s a similar one about pulling “government implants” out of people’s arms that is also pretty lame. But there are many others that are quite good, in my humble opinion.
psychonaut, we’re close to the same place. There are number of ways he could identify the cookie, possibly visually depending in the rules, and with numerous possible ways to rig the turntable, possibly with a magnet. He could have done it by feel and everything worked out, and there’s at least potential sleight of hand involved.
After so many episodes, P&T are at the bottom of the barrel with the tricks they’re performing…all the “non-foolers” this week were certainly more interesting/entertaining to me.
Regarding the cookie/razor blade trick from a couple episodes ago (I’m behind), I was specifically watching for any sleight-of-hand with the Oreos, and I couldn’t see any. No, that doesn’t prove there wasn’t any, but I don’t think so.
One possibility I thought of when Penn mentioned fake blindfolds, is that he could see through the blindfold and that it was rigged with a colored film that allowed him to see some sort of invisible-ink dye on the danger cookie. I am by no means sure this is the case, but it’s a possible explanation.
In any case, the producers would have had to be damn sure he couldn’t accidentally put a razor blade in Alison’s mouth!
I think the needle through the arm may have been done with a layer of fake skin attached to her arm (?), and the wire through the chest may have done with a piercing or the like that allowed the wire to pass up from her bra area actually under her skin for a couple of inches and out (?)
After Anastasia’s act, Penn said something to the effect of, “Part of it was fake and part of it was real.” I’m certain the “fake” part was the needle through the arm. As others have pointed out, this technique has been around forever; it’s a very convincing illusion that is surprisingly simple to pull off. As for the “real” part, I wouldn’t put it past someone like her to actually get the necessary piercings, or even have a tube implanted in her sternum. Gross-out geek acts generally don’t impress me, and this was no exception.
The coin guy was very good, and I quite enjoyed the Twilight Zone presentation. But - and maybe I’m starting to get jaded by this show - it felt like something we’ve seen a hundred times before. Same goes for the Siri guy’s card trick, and his execution was nowhere near as smooth.
The post-it note trick was my favorite of the episode. I noticed that we never actually saw him draw any of the moving elements, so my first guess is that they were cutouts made from the adhesive part of a post-it, which would make them sticky enough to stay in place, but not so much so that he couldn’t slide them with his thumb. Could he have indexed all 26 letters, ready to produce whichever one Teller chose? I dunno. Nice trick, though.
