As Penn also says, sometimes a trick is even more impressive when you know how it’s done…but you still can’t see the move.
How *does *Mac King pull fish out the air?
You just hide whatever it is behind your hand or between your fingers or similar. And then you practice making a move that covers that up.
That I do not know. He had to have forced the cards, making it where they had to choose those cards, but I don’t know how he did it. I can’t think of anything that would not leave some people getting the same card.
My guess is that there are only three different cards in the entire deck. The three volunteers don’t really have time to study the deck, so they quickly make their picks and toss the cards away. They never learn what cards the other volunteers picked,; they all could have picked the same card and they only sit down when they hear their own card named. The magician then ‘guesses’ the only three cards in the deck.
Yes. He has to do a deck swap right after the guy checks the deck, but that’s easy enough to do.
And the rubber bands make it difficult to examine the deck closely.
Someone did the same trick on America’s Got Talent. 5 cards, same trick. The trick is called “the tossed out deck”, tossing to the crowd is the justification for the rubber bands, but you nailed the reason.
Tonight, a new set of fools. I mean foolers.
Bill Cook did a trick with an invisible change [del]purse[/del] bag. He handed an audience member an invisible deck of cards, had her select one, fold it, place it in the bag, then he pulled out a real card, the one she selected.
I anticipated there would be the real reveal, I spotted the cover for the card already palmed. He was beautiful on reaching into the pocket to select the card. That was during the joke about asking her her weight. Totally covered on that. That was misdirect so he had time to palm. But smooth performance. As far as getting lucky, I assume he’s saying the card was easy to get to in his index.
I had to go look up “invisible deck”.
Wes Barker was entertaining. I know about tearing a phone book. The first round with the phone book allowed him to prep the sword in his case when he sits it down. I thought about a force, and about an index. He didn’t use a force or an index, and 2 stabs at it and they pronounced themselves fooled. But it’s really simple, so simple I had to study for a while to get it.
The only person that looks at the page number on the sword is Wes. Even Jonathan is too far away to see it, and Wes quickly drops it right after the reveal, before Jonathan thinks to look over and try to look at the page himself.
Smooth delivery is what made it fool them.
Matthew Holtzclaw, I’m assuming the Hindu string trick was the torn and restored thread. Both tricks rely on prestaging. The first has a full wad in the bottom of the spool and an extra length of thread to unwind and break. Then deft handling of the two wads, one in he left hand for the restore, one in the right when he palms it at the end. The second is placing thread in the eye ahead of time, and wadding up the one he puts in his mouth. And a lot of misdirection about the nose.
David Regal, I assume he palms in five 2 of hearts for the reveal. I’m not sure how he does the five card show, but I do notice the five cards are fanned in his hand, not spread, during that reveal. I guess it’s a cover gimmick that collapses and gets palmed as he’s spreading the 2’s. Yes, it’s in his hands as Penn is doling out to the audience, makes it possible for him to prep that bit.
And of course Penn and Teller doing the Cups and Balls, which I’ve seen. It’s not about the fooling, it’s about the reveal. And blindingly fast.
How is the phonebook tearing done? Just simple physics or is there a trick?
I saw this is a magic book decades ago when I was in Junior High. It partly has to do with baking the book to reduce the water content and make it drier, and also only tear a small starting section and then using momentum to tear the rest. That’s why it had to be torn from the short edge; it’d be difficult to tear from the spine.
I think P&T’s visible cups and ball trick is the first one I saw them perform, probably on an early episode of David Letterman. It’s still a pleasure to watch after all these years. Do they still do this in their stage act?
I assume he had the book well prepped in as many ways as possible to start the tear in order not to mess up the act. That’s the hardest part, getting it started. How hard the spine is depends on the type of binding, it’s usually pretty cheap for phone books. The pages can’t shift much when you tear that way so with an unprepped book it can be the best way to get a start. Of course that won’t work for his trick! (I used to do that kind of stuff, long ago I had a Hulk-like physique).
Anyway, it was a wonderful act, I’m glad he fooled P&T, and it’s a tribute to him that he did it by distracting with them entertainment. They guessed the peek, but were looking for the way to get the right page. I was stuck on that also. Great call Irishman.
Fun fact: you could guess how the phone-book trick was done from the two page numbers he “read” off the page he’d skewered. He acted like they were on opposite sides of the page, but for most books the even number on a single page is higher than the odd, while he had a higher odd number, so he was actually using two facing page numbers. This was because he’d “peeked” at the pages Ross had told him to stop at, but he didn’t have any way of knowing whether Ross chose the page on the left or right.
I also missed that he never showed anyone the skewered page though. I figured he just had a second phone-book and pulled the correct page out of it while he was messing around with the sword. On the one hand, that seems like a less impressive trick. On the other hand, its impressive his performance was distracting enough that even P&T missed what in retrospect seems like an obvious point.
Tearing the phone book in half is a simple party trick. You hand the phone book to a strong looking dude, who fails at tearing it, because most people assume you need to twist your hands in opposite directions (exactly the way Jonathan tries, btw), which just strengthens the book if the pages are flat. Then, you take it and easily tear it in half, impressing all the ladies.
Anybody of nearly any strength level can do it if they know the secret. You just grab it by the top edge and make a V (with the point away from you) as you start the tear. You can pretty clearly see Wes put the V in the book both times he tears it. Smashing it against your leg dramatically is just show; once the tear is started it comes apart very easily. It’s not difficult to get a straight tear and there is no prep needed.
Fun fact: I remember them showing the trick on Beakman’s World back in the 90s.
Here’s a video showing how easily it’s done and how straight the tear is.
Page 1 is typically a right side of crease, two is the back side. But most people won’t catch that. I didn’t.
That makes sense.
It is a lot less impressive if the audience had any time to reflect our ask to check the page, but it’s beautiful how smoothly he pulled it off.
I also noticed that the page Jonathan selected was all yellow, but the skewered page was yellow rim with white interior. Like a yellow page with ads with white backing. I think that helps - you see enough of the color you got a glimpse, and if he rushes the selection and the reveal, it helps protect for either a yellow or white choice. Of course, he could have one of each ready, and just happened to use one with a lot of white.
Yes, it’s simple physics. The V means you slightly spread the pages, so you’re only tearing through a few at a time.
When he opened the page for Jonathan, he marked the pages such that he could easily open the book up to that same page. He either ripped, creased, indented or folded the page to get it back. Then as he explains how to rip the book to Jonathan, he says not to open the book and rip out sheets. While he demonstrates this, he flips through pages and gets to his marked page.
Apologies for this side track, but it doesn’t seem worth a thread of its own and I thought the people here would know:
America’s Got Talent, the fourth judges cut, aired yesterday.
They put through one magician, a mentalist act with an utterly obvious gimmick. He asked questions of the judges, wrote down the ‘message’ he received mentally on a pad of paper, had the judge reveal what he was thinking of, then acted crestfallen, crumpled the paper and discarded it. Repeat several times. Then he did a trick with naming the word on the top line of a randomly chosen dictionary page, and then he revealed as a big surprise that a couple of the crumpled up pages actually held the correct answers to the first two questions.
The only astounding thing was that the judges pretended to find this amazing, when clearly all he’d done was write down the answer to Question One after it had been revealed while he was pretending to be writing the answer to Question Two and so forth.
Anyway, that’s not what I’m curious about.
The final act they showed was a ‘Regurgitator’ who did such things as swallow a cherry tomato and a razor blade and then ralph 'em back up neatly sliced in half (and not even slightly squished.) And swallow quarters that had alphabet letters written on them and then produced the letters in the right order to spell a requested word.
The thing is, there was nothing at all about the act that couldn’t have easily been done by ordinary sleight of hand. Okay, that a magician couldn’t do with sleight of hand. Hell, I who have never so much as played with one of those ‘magic trick’ kid’s boxes could stick four quarters into my mouth, talk for a few minutes, and then produce them in the desired order. Just tuck each between my teeth and gum and remember which went on the top left or bottom right and so forth, what could be simpler?
And yet the entire panel reacted as if it were the most amazing thing they’d ever seen. Really??? Were they honestly fooled? Somehow didn’t realize they were watching a magician act? Or were they playing along? What??
The magic act was lame. Especially compared to the acts on Fool Us. Heidi apparently thinks the guy is actually swallowing stuff. He does actually get the stuff in his mouth, but notice that to hear the clink he holds the mike by his mouth and not his stomach. He’s been around for a long time, I saw him on Letterman a hundred years ago, and he’s still doing the same act. I’m surprised that he made it through.
There’s an America’s Got Talent thread. We discuss things like this.
It was five quarters, but yes, that’s what he did. Though he’s swallowed larger things, like a light bulb or a bic lighter - things you couldn’t hide in your mouth and be able to talk.
I don’t believe he actually swallowed the razor blade. I think it’s possible he does swallow and return things.
Why would the quarter sound be audible at his belly, through the skin? He’s suggesting it travels up his esophagus through air. More plausible, though not fully convincing IMO.
With respect to the judges, yes, I think they are truly fooled by the magicians. I don’t think they’re acting at all. I think they are naive and uninformed enough about the mechanics and standard tricks that they don’t see through the wadded up paper trick. A think a fair slice of the audience was impressed by that trick as well. That’s one reason I was intrigued by Neil Patrick Harris being on the panel - as an amateur magician himself, he’s got an informed position to work from.