Penn & Teller: Fool Us, US run on CW

Cafe Society
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The costume was Victorian, a stylistic choice for flair not actually contributing to this trick, except for the monetary tie in that wasn’t particularly useful. It’s basically he’s a neoVictorian or steampunk or whatever look. Not necessary, merely creating his unique character of his act.

This week: four more contestants.

  1. Blake Vogt - This guy proves they don’t declare people foolers just because the skill level is impressive or P&T can’t duplicate it. Something was definitely off in the linking rings, which was quickly evident - flat, not round. The trick itself was tearing a dollar bill to make two halves as two rings, and then doing linking ring trick. Now it is clear that he really does tear one ring and do pass throughs, and I saw a few places of his handling. It would be a lot easier to see from where Penn and Teller are sitting, as some of the moves the camera panned back to do a wide shot. It also didn’t help him that he’s shown Penn and Teller a lot of tricks. But the real trick is not the ring handling, but rather the reassembly of the rings in the linked form in such a way that the tear is undetectable even under close inspection. I don’t know what adhesive he uses or how he gets it so cleanly aligned - practice, of course. But not fooled.

  2. Joshua Jay - This trick starts out interesting - the idea of doing a magic trick for a blind person. Except his trick wouldn’t work if the blind person is the audience, because the can’t confirm the cards or see the trick. Anyway, this trick seems impressive, except I saw a video not long ago (that I am sure I posted somewhere on this board, but can’t find now) where a guy gives a lengthy story as part of a lecture to high school students. His story in part talks about how he ran into a blind man who asked him to show him a trick. Anyway, he figured a way to do a trick to make the blind man part of the trick rather than the butt of the joke, but it works with the same method used here. For that story, it was interesting and beautiful, but here the method just feels cheap. Are you ready? It’s “instant stooge”.

I tried to follow the flow, connecting the dialogue to the comments to see how the volunteer would read the remarks, and it’s rather extra simple. When he says to Todd something about a code to tell the audience what the cards are, he taps the guy’s hands 4 times in an uneven pattern, but clearly 4 times. Then he has the guy count out the number (4), then he assigns a number to each suit and has the guy count out cards to the correct suit (4). Then he just digs through the deck to his one planted 4 of diamonds, and the rest are blanks. Simple set up.

What surprises me is why Penn and Teller thought there was a deck switch. There was no need. Nobody ever sees any of the cards until he does the reveal. Todd picked the card in his head, not seeing anything. The blind person story was just a gimmick to allow the counting of cards rather than looking in the deck.

Anyway, knowing how it’s done, I don’t care for this trick. I guess they just misremembered something and that’s why they needed a deck switch. So he fooled them, but the trick shouldn’t have fooled them. They correctly pegged to the signalling and how it communicated the forced card.

  1. Levent - No way doing classic tricks gets past these two. Entertaining banter with the knot/not story. As Penn states, he does the same looking trick several different ways, which makes it harder to bust if you expect it to be repeating the samething.

The first is a simple variation on the three rope trick whereby he swaps tied silks for the three he shows are separate in the last quick move, thus having three untied for the second. He then ties those with a loop knot that he then separates as he is setting them down.

Then he takes the knotted ones, sets them down as pulls the slip knots so Jonathan can immediately show them separately.

The tricky one to me is how he gets the second chair to have the three way knot.

The bottle and the bunny come from his pockets, you can tell early there’s something there, so the surprise is only in the timing of the reveal, not that something magically appears.

  1. Ben Seidman - well-rehearsed talk. I saw him palm something up to his wrist for the watch pull, so fake watch that goes into the envelope and out the bottom. I think that’s why the envelope is the size it is, even though it’s a bit too small for actually holding that watch convincingly - a bigger envelope makes the holding trickier. The wallet gets swapped as he’s putting it into his belt, it goes into the coat and a loaded dupe goes into his belt. The ring goes into and through the envelope, and then he palms it onto his finger while he’s throwing the envelope parts. His watch is on his arm the whole time, up the sleeve where it won’t be seen until he reveals it. Funny, but not clean.

Given his jacket, I was wondering if he was going to do a costume reveal, but no, he didn’t go there. I’m thinking card inside the back of the jacket, or quick change. No, it’s just cover for the manipulations.

Penn and Teller’s routine is beautiful. Great story, great flow with the cards. Of course the 3 of clubs is a force, probably a short card on the riffle. He palmed in the two Aces on top of the deck when he gets it back from the audience guy.

Ace of Diamonds is electromagnetism, which Teller uses a magnet to hold the Ace of Hearts to secure the stack of cards to his hand (ring).

Ace of Hearts is gravity, and gravity drops the cards.

The Ace of Spades is the Strong interaction via the String interaction. Nice.

That leaves Ace of Clubs as Weak force, using his lips to suck? Or something on the back to grip in his teeth?

Not sure on the count downs. Is it just masking the deck with the way he holds the cards and shows the sixth card each time?

Palms in deck from pocket when turns to the side, not well masked.

How does he pop the 3 up when he pops the balloon? I suppose he could palm out the device when we see the audience clapping.

Then he palms a deck off the back of the chair for the final fountain.

522

Crap, he did a great job with the misdirect. He does the juggle and pause and the question is to distract enough you lose track which bill was the original. Worked on me.

No, there weren’t four different ideas. He was using four as a code word. The guy tapped the volunteer’s hand 4 times, then has him count down to the number of the card (4), then count down to the number representing the suit (4).

That one is tricky. He did a lot of touching of the guy’s arm and whatnot to mask the touches when he says the magic words about “code” that is the clue to the volunteer to pay attention for a code. Then he taps 4 times, so the guy knows 4 is the code.

So deal down the number (4). Now assign a number to each suit, and deal down the number for the suit (4). Now he could either use the same number and hope you don’t catch it was 4 both times, or he could try another touch cueing and hope that isn’t too obvious.

What fooled them is they for some reason decided there had to be a deck swap, and guessed when and how that occurred, but he didn’t do a deck swap, so he won.

Sometimes it can be hard to follow action and words simultaneously, especially when you’re trying to think to study the action for finesse.

523

Damn, I didn’t pick up on that at all. Those forces always seem so risky. Makes sense, though. In my mind, the final card wasn’t necessarily predetermined. I thought maybe he just counted out the silence in his head (when the guys picks the diamond suit, the fourth card down, there’s a REALLY long pause which could easily have been guessed). But your idea is much simpler. :smiley:

524

After all the quality illusions we’ve seen all season, I just can’t believe P&T or the producers would allow an instant stooge act. I think there are ways this could have been done legitimately.

As Penn said, the deck was never shuffled or handled to start. So say he had a “slick” or otherwise texturally marked card on top AND bottom to start. The volunteer counts cards down to come up with the number the value of the card and puts the deck on top. Then counts cards down again to come up with the suit and puts the cards on top. After both of these moves, the number of cards from the bottom of the deck to the first slick card would give the magician the suit, and number of cards from that slick card to the next would give the value.

You can clearly see the magician discard the top two thirds of the deck and fan through the bottom ones, I think that’s what he was doing to figure out the card selected. The tricky part is how he then gets that freely-selected four of diamonds into the deck (which I assume was all blanks the entire time). Some kind of indexed system of cards on his person somewhere? I didn’t see him reach into his coat at any point, so that part is what I believe to be what ultimately tricked them.

525

Did anyone else think of a card for the Joshua Jay trick? Mine was the 3 of diamonds so that was either a coincidence or I subconsciously picked up on some of the clues, almost.

526

The one I found strange was when Penn explained the guy’s trick as being done with sleight of hand. Well, yeah, but so are most magic tricks. That shouldn’t count as a sufficient explanation to avoid being fooled.

527

I only got a quick look at the acts, have to re-watch to pick up more details.

I don’t see see the need for an instant stooge for the blind trick, there are other means of picking up his counts and then inserting the chosen card into the deck. Don’t know why they thought a deck switch was used since we never see the card faces until the end.

Dollar bill guy was good. They knew what he did though because he had shown them before, still great praise at the end. Obviously he used a prepared bill, not the one from the audience. I’d like to find out what he does, though I have a feeling my fat fingers couldn’t fool anyone.

Knot guy I’ve seen before. Good routine but you can’t fool P&T with classic acts.

Envelope guy was funny, entertaining, but nothing impressive. His ring restore was very obvious, and of course he just needs a second watch on his arm and a trick wallet or duplicate. He was a bit clumsy with the wallet. Good sound effect device up his sleeve.

The average quality of the acts was pretty high this time. I’m curious if they needed some time to book the better acts on the show. Since it’s been renewed the next season could be much better.

528

I don’t think that would work. He was counting from the top of the deck, then put the deck on the pile, then doing that again for the suit. So there would only be one marker card you could count to… no way to distinguish between 4 of clubs and 5 of spades.

But all he needed was a “thumper” (a piece of terminology I learned from this thread) with a confederate offstage, or some way to see through/around the blindfolding),which doesn’t seem very difficult, and a pre-indexed deck of cards to pull the chosen card out of while his back is turned, and he’s good to go. The initial deck is blank all the time.

I did find it suspicious that he didn’t specify what to do for an ace or a face card, which argues for the instant-stooge theory.
The dollar bill trick was pretty amazing, although I agree that it was clearly his bill from the beginning, which was a bit clumsy. But linking them well enough to fool close inspection from P&T is pretty amazing. I thought that was the best trick of the evening.

529

I have been wondering if there is some way to use touch to detect the selected card, but aside from telling the total based on a special bottom card I’m not sure how that would be done. A peek or offstage help seems more likely. It’s a small blindfold, but quite thick. Maybe there’s an LED and receiver in it that he can use for the signaling if it’s not a more common thumper device. But we didn’t see the selection process for the audience member, maybe he was instant stooged at some point.

530

Just so I know…what is the difference between an instant stooge and a plant?

One is on purpose (plant) and one is a volunteer that is forced (instant stooge)?

If that’s the case, then why aren’t we assuming that the guy who the blindfold guy brought up just isn’t a plant that knows to say 4 of diamonds?

531

No, I’m pretty sure it would, although I’m going from memory without the video in front of me. Say he had two texture-marked cards at the beginning of the trick, “T” on top and “B” on bottom. Say the volunteer picks “5”, he counts five cards down one by one and puts the deck on top. So now, you have “T” at the bottom, 4 blank cards, then “B” above them.

Repeat the process for suit, say 3 for Clubs. He deals 3 cards one by one from the top. Now at the end of both segments, from the bottom of the deck going up, you have 3 blank cards, then the “T” card, then 4 blank cards, then the “B” card. If you can feel the number of cards counting up from the bottom of the deck to both the “B” and “T” marker cards, you can figure out the selection. The key is that he does both sequences separately, and both times he deals from the TOP of the deck one by one and replaces the deck.

Just in case this is NOT the way the trick was done, I hope one of the real magicians here will use this idea and popularize it as the “Tightlips” method (although I’m sure I’m not the first to think of this). :wink:

532

You have it correctly, the instant stooge is forced, persuaded, or manipulated to do something necessary to make the trick work. We assume that P&T wouldn’t allow the magician to pick a plant out of the audience. There was suspicion in the previous season that an instant stooge was used by having him read the desired words from a piece of paper instead of giving an answer based on what he observed.

533

You’re right, there’s a difference between deal-4-and-put-the-deck-on-them followed by deal-4-and-put-the-deck-on-them vs deal-5-and-put-the-deck-on-them and then deal-3-and-put-the-deck-on-them.

534

I played along at home and I picked the 4 of diamonds. So, I don’t know if it was just dumb luck or I legitimately got picked up on something.

535

Well, like I said, I saw that youtube I can’t find about a guy who claimed to do a magic trick for a blind man. The key in his point was to try to show the blind man what magic feels like, so instant stooge incorporated him into the trick so he could amaze his wife. So as soon as he said the girl was blind, that’s where my thoughts went.

I tried googling to see if this is the same guy, but couldn’t find the reference. All I can find is a blind magician.

No, the two slick cards would be back to back. The top card is placed right under the bottom one.

That would be a substitution of some kind, and perhaps why they thought he did some move. Still don’t know why they thought deck swap and not index and insert.

But I’m confident it is instant stooge. Look at how much he touches Todd all over the arms. Listen to what he says when he’s handing over the cards. Right as he is explaining how to tell us the chosen card, he says the word “code” (or is it signal? ) and taps the guys hands 4 times. It is distinct. Match that with the selected card being the 4 and the suit being given the number 4.

As for the producer’s allowing it, why not? Yeah, it’s cheap IMO, but it’s a legitimate technique, and given some of the clumsy or amateur other acts, they clearly aren’t filtering on that basis.

Because all he did were classic moves out of introductory books, he didn’t do anything innovative or creative in the tricks. You can’t fool an expert by beginner moves.

I suspect soaked the bill in some pressure or possibly heat sensitive adhesive. The skill is aligning the “tear”. I’m not sure how he could pre-cut the bill since they handled it to sign it.

Yeah, I’d love to really know and not be guessing.

Sound effect?

The point of instant stooge is it doesn’t use any pre coordination, it is all done real time. You basically rely on the volunteer going along, either to be in on it or just to not ruin the show.

For example, the incident I keep citing, the magician is talking to students, and as part of inspiring and motivating them about the value of communicating and understanding the other person, he talks about going around to restaurants and doing magic tricks. One time he ran into a blind man, and didn’t have any tricks for a blind person.

As many people point out, it’s not hard to trick a blind person. “Follow the queen, where is the queen, keep your eye on the queen.”

So he thinks, how can I get him to feel magic? By making him part of it. So he sits down across from him and tells him he will use telepathy to allow the blind man to tell the cards. He will deal a card, and the blind man will say if it’s red or black. And to the amazement of the man’s wife, he could do it.

The trick was as he was explaining “red or black”, he put his feet on top of the man’s, and pushed down left for black and right for red. As he said the words, he demonstrated the code, and asked if the man understood.

He didn’t need a private conversation, he did it in plain sight. The arrangement was the physical contact in synch with his explanation and confirmation the man understood. That’s a bit of “dual reality” for you. The wife saw a straightforward question about “decide if it’s red or black”, but the man had the layer of “I will press on your foot to signal you”.

And that’s exactly what I saw here. “Here is how you will signal (tap tap tap tap) your card to the audience.” (Here is my signal to you.)

And both items were 4, and Penn kept emphasizing 4 reasons. They got it.

If he’s given a free selection, then why is “4” so important to P&T?

The only mystery is why they thought there was a deck swap.

536

After he drops the watch and the ring into the envelope he shakes it so you hear them clinking. They were never in the envelope, he has a device up his sleeve to make that noise.

The lowest form of instant stooging is go out into the audience to pick out a person and on the way back to the stage convince them to play along. I seriously doubt anything like that is going on in this case.

537

Take another look at my post #531, it would work. He’s counting the cards down one by one into a new pile and then putting the rest of the deck on top. I think the clear distinction he makes between doing it that way as opposed to putting each card directly under the bottom of the deck lends credence to this being the likely method.

538

That should work. He says he finds the card by feel, but they could just be marked. They have an elaborate pattern on the back, and he’s doing it right under his face where he could easily do a nose peek.

The real mystery here is the deck switch guess by P&T. Was that just a mistake and Teller wrote deck switch but he meant a card insert? Did they forget that he never showed the card faces?

539

I think Joey Tightlips got it right as well. The top and bottom cards are markers. The only mystery is exactly when and how he pulls the correct card out of his index so that it appears at the end.

That made no sense to me either. Since the deck was never shown, there would be no need for a switch. Either he misspoke, or they really were completely off-base on this trick.

540

This episode was my favorite of this season. I liked all the acts!