And she specifically asked Teller to give it back to her when done drawing.
Actually, until he added the waves, I thought he was going for a lit candle.
Heh. He should have drawn a circle with 8 lines/legs/branches coming off it. Then whichever answer she went for, he could have said she was wrong. 
Mentalism acts are tedious. It’s just a question of which device or code.
Yeah, I was not only extremely unimpressed by the trick, I was surprised they actually gave her a Fool Us trophy. Penn said she had a compatriot in the audience giving her info, I figured it would probably be a thumper spelling out the object in Morse code or the like, but they seemed really hung up on not knowing 100% exactly what the method was (since they couldn’t search her) which seems to me the worst way to ‘fool’ them.
Teller should’ve drawn the two faces/wine glass illusion.
Guy with the blocks that levitate: I’ve looked at this multiple times; what someone said they thought was the edge of some glass, I think is actually a camera/light “flare.” But I don’t have a solid solution as to how 3 of the blocks levitate. They might be held up by multiple strands of that string (sorry, not a magician, don’t know what it’s actually called). Because when he hits the 3 blocks and they fall to the table, you will notice the string of lights jiggle slightly. But they jiggle BEFORE any of the blocks actually hit the table. It’s very small, very subtle, but take a look in slo-mo. So that makes me think they’re attached to that string of lights in some way.
As to how the blocks can stick to each other on their edges, it could be some kind of sticking substance, but I believe he’s custom made those particular blocks with magnets positioned inside, at just the right places. The two he shows P&T are the normal ones.
Mentalist girl who hears pictures: As another mentioned above, that marker she has is a large one. I use markers like that in my line of work; the jumbo kind are refillable. You pop the cap off, pull out the tip, and refill the ink. The entirety of them is filled with felt or a felt-like material, that hold the ink. It’s really simple to pull out the felt material, and put in some kind of electronic device, that can receive signals/morse code and/or vibrate. So… that would be my theory of how she receives the info from someone in the audience or in the wings of the stage. If it vibrates, though, it’d have to be pretty quiet, since Teller was standing so close to her. But if it isn’t that, then a thumper as another suggested above.
Damien James and the emojis, puppets: My first thought was that there was an accomplice hiding in the unnecessarily large box under the Teller puppet. He could have easily put the stack of emoji paddles away under there, with the selected one on top of the stack, and then later the accomplice hands him the cloth with the appropriate image.
On reviewing it again, I see there is a long edit after the time he takes the selected paddle from Alison. The camera cuts to the audience and when it goes back to him he’s standing there empty handed. So there’s no telling what he did with the paddles, but they are not visible so putting them away under the box seems likely.
From there, I’m guessing the explosion under the cloth includes not just a red spray but also some type of solution that makes the umbrella image appear. It seems not as clear at first but then a moment later it is more sharply defined, as if the image took time to fully appear.
I was surprised they put their bet on the paddle selection being forced.
saw this show for the 1st time. They always just say “we know how you did it” without explaining how they know? I guess that’s to not give away the trick?
They don’t directly explain it. Typically they explain how they know in coded language, so if you know magic you can figure out how the trick is done. When they keep mentioning an odd word or a specific name, they’re saying ‘you used the technique called X’ or ‘you’re using X’s trick’. They actually have a judge offscreen who knows exactly how the trick is done and will abjudicate whether their guess counts or not, but they rarely have to use him.
I think you have it. He had a cloth with every image that he could pull out and the image was on it in “invisible ink” revealed by the spray.
It’s an original trick which is the easiest way to fool them. They know about almost every magic trick performed, published, or sold already so when it’s something new they just have to guess if they don’t catch a move.
Kelvin Chow was fantastic! Incredible technique. I’m pretty sure he’s holding multiple cards in the changes and it requires more manipulation than just flipping them over, I think he is flipping cards behind the exposed card and completely masked from view.
Kelvin Chow was absolutely phenomenal. The dude with the animals and multiple outs was very, very obvious. I had it figured out before he even went for the envelope.
But when he actually went for the envelope, I literally thought, oh, so he’s the guy they put on so folks at home can say Hey, At Least I Figured Out One.
Yeah, as mentioned they will use coded language - they want to get across the idea that they know, but not give everything away for the general audience - the magicians usually know whether they are doing something standard that is unlikely to fool them or something truly unique.
For example, in this week’s episode Penn dropped in the word “force” when talking to Damien James, implying the outcome was predetermined because he “forced” the umbrella emoji on Alison (a very common technique in card tricks, etc., where it looks like the person makes a random choice but actually a preselected card has been “forced” on them by the magician.)
He picked up on the code and said no, Alison actually had a free choice, and he could have made any image appear on the cloth - so he fooled them.
To add on, in the patter for the ventriloquy trick, he mentioned PuppetPenn having a mole shaped like the three of clubs. When P&T do a card force, they force that card (see the trick at the end about the gravestone). He primed them for a force, but did something else.
My favorite routine of the season.
I was sad they knew how he did it.
How did he do any of that?
Could someone help me out a little with this?
Obviously, the duck - and only the duck - was in the box the entire time. The performer’s job is to narrow down the list in a way that leaves only the duck remaining? And he got lucky when Allison chose the duck?
I’m having a hard time imagining how he could believably steer her toward the duck.
mmm
If he’d steered her to it, wouldn’t he have had her reach in to reveal it?
Instead, he reached in. That was the whole trick, right there; everything else, with the word game and the talk about how it was in there “the entire time”, was all just a set of irrelevancies to distract from the monent he does the trick.
The changes from white to face card we’re the most impressive. He is holding at least two cards when it looks like one and he is moving the front card behind the back while his hand oscillates. One technique sort of rolls the front card over the back so the card doesn’t stick out much as it’s switched. And now as I write this I realize that also turns the card over so he doesn’t have to flip it over behind the new front card to change to another image.
The point of the trick is to make you think he did that - but as Penn pointed out, if he had selected “turkey”, you can be sure the paper he produced would have said “turkey.”
I don’t know exactly how he did it - but notice he doesn’t pull the guess directly from the envelope in the box, rather he appears to pull a second envelope from the envelope, and opens it - surely there’s a reason why?
There are several reasons he does that. First, it’s easier to slide a nice stiff little envelope into the big envelope than a little floppy piece of paper. That’s how he gets the right answer in there. And the little envelope can be very well sealed up so it looks like it’s impossible to slide the piece of paper into that little envelope during the trick while the big envelope needs an open flap to do the insertion that might be noticed*. And then it’s just more distraction on the path to the reveal to make it all seem more magical.
*There are a number of ways to have that flap seal up after the insertion but the second envelope still directs focus away from the first one,
OK, so when exactly does he do the trick? There are only ten seconds from the time Alyson makes her selection to the time he pulls the envelope out of the box. He doesn’t appear to have anything concealed in his hands at this point, and he doesn’t obviously use them in a way that suggests he is inserting anything into the box or the envelope. Alyson is the one who opens the box; the magician is only holding the bottom and back of the box. The envelope is in the box when it is opened, because Alyson confirms this. Even after the magician takes the envelope out of the box there is nothing I can see that suggests he is stuffing the envelope.
The only thing I can think of is that the box contains eight different envelopes, one with each possible guess, separated by false bottoms. The magician controls which layer is exposed when the box is opened by activating some mechanism on the bottom and/or back of the box.
Part of what is throwing me off about the duck trick is Penn’s dialogue about magicians knowing ‘outs’. This is what clued the performer in to knowing P&T knew how the trick was done.
To me, ‘outs’ means that if the trick is not going as hoped for, the performer seamlessly switches to Plan B; it appears to the audience that Plan B was Plan A all along, and no one is the wiser.
In other words, you don’t say at the onset, “I’m going to do a trick and this is what the end effect will be”. The end effect may be Plan A, or it may have to be one of the outs.
Still stumped about the duck.
mmm