I feel bad for the second guy. He was clearly flustered by the presence of Simon Pegg and thrown off his game. (Penn was still being mean when he said the most amazing part about the trick was the fact that Pegg was on stage.)
The Queen of Hearts was cool.
Regarding Jen Kramer
And it doesn’t make a difference that Jonathan shuffled his cards he only needs to know what the choices are and pick one. She’ll know the location of whatever card he picks in her ‘switched in’ half.
We know it’s a switch because she takes back the cards from Jonathan ostensibly just to shuffle them before giving them back to him. There’s no “natural” reason for this - why not just hand him her half and get Jonathan to shuffle? If she really did have her original cards (and his are already shuffled) it wouldn’t matter if he shuffled them both together. The only reason she needs to take back the cards is to put in the switched half and false shuffle.
Just echoing what others have already said about the face-up face-down cards guy. That was basically the ‘perfect’ trick. Smooth as pure Italian silk. Even though I think I conceptually understand how he did it (after watching a few replays), the fact that he could be that smooth at it is absolutely mind blowing.
The escalating reactions from Penn & Teller as the trick approaches its inevitable conclusion makes another thing very clear - THIS is the kind of “fool us” trick the show was designed for. No “fake move” BS. No “over complicate a simple trick and hope P&T think we did it the simple way” BS.
The spirit of the show is supposed to be about putting genuine wonder and amazement on the faces of P&T. You did it, sir. Well done.
Yes, after watching in extreme slow motion, you can tell (barely) that his hand under the deck is doing slightly more than is required to fan through the deck. He’s got to be manipulating the cards but the affect is so seamless and smooth that it boggles the mind. I nominate it for the most impressive trick of the season.
Seconded
Is it just me or was the watch guy awful? Seemed like a whole trick based around a prop watch. I mean no doubt everyone uses special gear and props but a watch that doesn’t change time when you pull the stem out? ooooh.
If we saw the hands move while Simon was turning the stem then it would have been a completely different and completely compelling trick.
Certainly one of the worst, maybe the very worst act they’ve ever had on. On a par with “Guess how many fingers I’m holding up behind my back”.
The card rising guy was pretty clumsy in his act, but perhaps nervous and off his game due to a torn Achilles tendon. That video of it happening made both my legs hurt. I used to have a rising card deck, and lots of other props. They must have been magical because they’ve all disappeared.
Yeah, the first trick was the only good one. The rest were pretty standard stuff.
Maybe I missed something, but I don’t understand how Penn (and JKilez) knew how it was going to end. All I could see was that he was doing a card trick.
In any case it was good. Really good.
I have somewhat of an idea how it, or something like it, could be done. Some to the deck handling points to it, but then some seems to rule it out.
My idea is that half of the deck is double-faced, and maybe the double-faced cards (or the regular) are short. This double-faced idea fits with a lot of what we saw.
We saw the deck spread out with everything face up, but we never saw it spread with everything face down.
Teller was given half of the deck to shuffle as he pleased. The other half was simply spread on the table face up and washed around. That half could be double-faced.
Before having them choose the cards he could have stripped out the short (double-faced) cards and put them on the bottom. If you watch when they choose the cards, he only fans out the top part of the deck for them to choose from.
He would then somehow have to get all of the regular cards facing the same direction and their cards upside down. That way, if you spread the deck face down you see backs and fronts mixed up but if you flip it over you see all fronts, except their chosen cards.
There are several problems with this theory. Even though the early handling points to it, the “kids shuffle” where he dumps them randomly on the table and cards are flipped around would risk revealing it. Also, Teller examined them at the end.
I’m wondering if he switched decks somehow.
I only watched once through, but during the first trick you can see Teller is giddy that he’s already being fooled, and I think you can actually hear an audible giggle from him. For me, that was the best part of the trick. I love knowing these guys can feel the same way about a trick as I feel about EVERY trick.
P&T would have picked up double faced cards. He can do that trick with an ordinary deck of cards. As soon as he shuffled the face up and face down cards together I figured they’d end up all facing the same way in the end because that’s the point of mixing them up in the first place. Doesn’t mean I knew how he would play it out.
I thought that the confetti trick was equally unimpressive. Gee, you keep going into your coat to get your wand, I wonder what that’s about. Plus, couldn’t the hat itself hold a large amount?
That was just for the entertainment value of the act. More mime than magic. Still better than P&T’s final act.
There’s something funny going on with shuffling the two halves differently, unless that’s just a red herring to confuse P&T.
Here’s a video by Kostya Kimlat (the actual guy who did the first card trick). It’s an ad for a DVD tutorial for something called the Roadrunner Cull.
Here's an actual tutorial for the Roadrunner Cull in which it is used to separate out backwards cards. If this is what he did (and it almost certainly is) then he is extremely good at it and managed to pull it off under the noses of P&T.Yes. Good find. He did do some of that when before he had Penn put his card back in. But I think he finished with that stripper like move at the end. I’m sure he faced Penn to do most of the manipulation on purpose.
To me this is the best type of magic, even if you know exactly how it’s done, when it’s done so seamlessly, without the least giveway, it is still astounding.
You mean he faced “big dumb” Penn to do the manipulations.
Not in those words, but yeah.
In case you missed it, that was a quote from the show. Penn referred to himself as “the big dumb guy”.
Well yeah, but I’m not going to call him that. He’s not dumb, and he is bigger than me. He’s probably even a better juggler than I am.
I thought it was interesting that he said that 2/3 of the contestants fool him. I have heard it said that Teller is the magician and Penn is his big loud misdirection.