Penn & Teller: Fool Us, US run on CW

Cafe Society
41

Jolley did the trick as I said. He didn’t “suggest” anything – he **instructed **“take about a third” and he *would *have intervened if Penn had taken too many or too few. Also, Penn isn’t going to be a dick about it and not follow the given instructions.

There are some audacious card forces that are widespread in usage that require a hell of a lot more “cooperation” from the subject than getting them to cut between 10 and 28 cards.

The method you propose (actually, you didn’t propose anything because it contains a “and then a miracle happens” step) is horribly more difficult than mine, what makes you think that magicians overly complicate things?

Did you misread my post? I don’t see why that point needed to be stressed.

One last thing, if you think P&T would miss a bottom dealer I think you haven’t quite clocked at how proficient they collectively are at card manipulations.

No, no, one really last thing, have you tried the trick according to the method I posted? I am not a professional but since I saw this trick I have performed it (according to the method above) hundreds of times with never an error.

42

What’s the difference between “suggest” and “instruct” in this case? I’m just saying as a veteran magician, Jolley knows he can’t always depend on the audience volunteer to cut the way he “instructed.” The volunteer might suck at math or think he meant “leave about a third.” Like I said, maybe Jolley gathers the cards a different way if the volunteer doesn’t cut the way he wanted.

Which step is the miracle? I explained each step the way I thought it could plausibly happen. I think Jolley used the jokers to mark where P&T’s cards were, and that’s a simple technique. I agree magicians will prefer to keep things uncomplicated, but they practice their complicated methods enough to a point where it’s no longer complicated. No normal person can do a card conceal in plain sight, but a magician will practice the technique for years until it becomes second hand.

And yes, some magicians like Chung Ling Soo will “overly complicate things.” He was an American who maintained a continuous masquerade as a Chinese man, never speaking onstage and using an interpreter when speaking with journalists. He even made an everyday practice of walking with a goldfish bowl between his legs so he could magically summon it on stage.

It wasn’t directed at you. I said that to reinforce the point I was trying to make.

I don’t think they missed the bottom deal. They’re careful not to totally expose the trick when they do the reveal, because they don’t want to put the contestant out of business. I’m pretty sure they recognized some of his tricks. Just not all of them, and that’s why they said they were fooled.

No, I don’t have the talent for sleight of hand. I’m not saying my guess is right. I’m just doing what everybody else in this thread is doing: speculating. This is also the first time you mentioned that you performed the trick “hundreds of times.” You said you wrote all the details down as you witnessed the trick. You wouldn’t need to have done that if you’ve already performed it “hundreds of times.”

43

Thank you. I thought there might be math at work. Seeing the Jokers in the spread, I wondered if that played a role. Nice to see my intuition was on track.

[spoiler]I was playing around with cards to try to track how it works. The easy one is the 43 position card. The first nine cards down to the Right Joker (Penn’s Joker) get moved to the bottom of the deck, with the Left Card (Teller’s Card) sitting on top of them. That’s the 43rd position (52 - 9 = 43). So when he’s collecting the cards, he places Teller’s card on top of the original top 9 cards. Later when he pulls the Jokers, he moves that stack to the bottom of the deck, setting up 43.

The other is more complicated, because you’re moving stacks around. The original bottom third of the deck is now in the middle of the deck, after Penn’s card. The top 18 cards are made up of a combination of the leftover cards from the top third after the Right Joker up to the card Penn selected, with the rest of the cards from Penn’s card to the Left Joker stacked on top. Correct? [/spoiler]

That’s not suggestion, it’s instruction. “About a third” gives a lot of leeway. There are ~17 cards in the first third of the deck. (52 = 17 + 17 + 18). That places the first Joker ~9 cards before and the second Joker ~9 cards after the cut zone. As long as the pick is over 10 cards (top 9 plus Joker) and less than 28 cards (second Joker), he’s in the zone. Similarly, the second joker is easily in the second set picked. It is ~9 cards down, and the target cut zone is around 18 cards deep. He’s got another 9 card buffer to pick from.

44

“The power of suggestion” is a phrase usually meant as a form of mental gaming, putting something in their mind so they will think of it or unwittingly get them to do something. Deliberate instruction is different than surreptitiously getting you to do something.

As pointed out, “about a third” gives a lot of leeway for the selector to pick free and still be in the zone. If the selector tries to pick only three cards, then the magician can say “Oh come on, that’s not a third” or whatever and get the pick into the right zone.

The trick would be how to get the jokers into those slots. Plus, he has to force the two cards into their respective positions in the deck for the 18/43 payoff.

Something that works mathematically with a couple of simple cuts and stacks of the cards is a hell of a lot simpler than trying to work in a bottom deal in front of skilled magicians who know what a bottom deal looks like.

Wait, the goldfish bowl thing was from “The Prestige”. You have a cite that was an actual gimmick of Chung Ling Soo? That wiki page doesn’t state so.

In a previous episode, Penn explicitly stated that they had long conversations and negotiations with the producers to establish what constituted “fooling” them. One of the explicit comments was that if they saw a move they were not supposed to see, that means they were not fooled. So if P&T spotted a bottom deal, that would constitute busting him, even if they missed something else.

What he said is that he watched the trick, sat down and worked it out, and now has practiced doing the trick hundreds of times to demonstrate it always works. Not that he performed the trick prior to watching the show.

45

Yeah but, there’s speculation and then there’s speculation. I don’t like argument from authority in the least, but I have been actively interested in illusion (and particularly card tricks) for over a quarter of a century.

Before I saw Jolley perform this trick I had NEVER performed it, because I didn’t know it.

Seeing him on Penn&Teller I realised that the jokers could be used to fix the positions of two “freely” selected cards. I got a pen and a piece of paper so I could make notes of what exactly would be required. (I didn’t write a detailed thesis, just some lines of simple algebra.)

Then I performed it for the very first time (SO and daughter being my first victims). Since then it’s been a go-to trick for me, easy, nearly impossible to mess up, practically impossible to see through.

46

Thanks for the diagram. That really helps it make sense much more easily than word salad.

If I might try, you divide the deck into 5 sections: Top 9 cards, cards from 1st Joker to Penn’s cut, cards from Penn’s cut to 2nd Joker, cards from 2nd Joker to Teller’s cut, card’s from Teller’s cut to bottom of deck.

The process of collecting the cuts and collecting the deck from spreading on the table to remove the jokers gives you a reordering of those stacks as thus:

Take the top 9 cards and move them to the bottom of the deck. Take the 18 cards originally between the Jokers (i.e. surrounding Penn’s cut) and swap the stacks so Penn’s card is on bottom, take the 25 cards originally below the 2nd Joker (i.e. surrounding Teller’s cut) and swap the two stacks so Teller’s cut is on bottom, and slap the original top 9 cards underneath. Simple and elegant and works unless the selectors deliberately deviate from instructions.

One minor note, it helps to have your Jokers worn to the same flexibility as the rest of the deck, and inverted. I play a lot of solitaire, so I’m used to card decks in a variety of states. I do a standard riffle shuffle followed by bridge shuffle, but after a while, the cards take on a slight curve concave on the face side. If your Jokers do not share that feature, they will tend to separate the deck, so when someone goes for the deck selection, they will find the jokers more easily than any other break point. That will ruin the trick.

On another note, apparently Penn and Teller have another TV show on SyFy running next Tuesday night. Probably worth a different thread, but wanted people to be aware.

47

Good idea, that’s a better way to view it, fuck algebra!

48

Oops! In case it is not obvious:

KEY:
Lozenge = first cut-card (Penn’s card)
Star = second cut-card (Teller’s card)

49

I think this is the act Penn referred to on Sunday School, when he said it was the one act that, even once they knew how it was done, didn’t completely understand it and didn’t have the skills to duplicate it. That leads me to believe it is not a trick p&t have used.

50

M. Bich invented the deck, won Magic Invention of the Year 2006 for it.

51

This week’s episode: Solid Goldfish

First Act: Piff the Magic Dragon

That’s right, Piff the Magic Dragon. (“You might know my older brother… Steve.”) And his chihuahua Mr. Piffles, both in cheesy dragon pajama outfits.

Piff obviously has a comedy magic act. He comes out, makes a couple jokes, deploys the legs on his suitcase to make a stand for Mr. Piffles. Does a sneeze and shoots sparks.

He selects a lovely assistant from the audience, Stacey. Then he presents a deck of cards, deals them into her hands one at a time and has her select one, the Jack of spades, and write her name at the top.

Then he shows his prediction and reveals the 9 of hearts. Oops, Stacey guessed wrong. Har har.

So to fix it, he folds the card into quarters, then sequentially wipes each quarter to swap it from the Jack of spades to the 9 of hearts, to end up with the 9 of hearts and her name at the top.

Antics ensue.

Penn says “We think the Jack of spades was over the top of the 9 of Hearts.” “I can say you’re close.” So Teller draws something, and Piff agrees they got it. I assume it’s some sort of decal.

In fact, if you look closely at her name, the tail of the y trails over the Jack artwork. When the card face has changed, the tail is missing.

Comment: he didn’t use Mr. Piffles. So he holds Mr. Piffles up and blows on the end of the dragon outfit and squeezes Mr. Piffles’ legs, and bagpipes sound.

Second Act: Damien O’Brien

Damien has Jonathan select an assistant from the audience, then has each of them sit at the end of the table with him in the middle. There are two decks, a red one and a blue one. He also has an envelope on the table with a prediction, which he stabs with a knife, to prevent him from tampering with it.

He has the assistant pick a deck, the red one nearest her is what she selects. He fans them to show they are all different, then turns them and starts spreading them one at a time and has her pick a card, any card. She picks one, they put it face down without looking at it.

Then he turns to Jonathan and the blue deck. He pulls out the deck and fans them on the table to show they are all different, then puts them back in the box. Then he has Jonathan pick a number, 7. Free choice 7. Then he pulls the deck out of the box again, and face up, he has Jonathan count off the top cards down to the seventh one, the 9 of Spades.

He then has the other assistant reveal her card, which is also the 9 of Spades. Then he grabs the envelope and tears it off the knife to show the prediction card was also the 9 of Spades. Ta da!

Penn says it is beautiful and why close up magic is so much more interesting. He says the stab of the card is legit, that card is there from the beginning. He praises how smoothly Damien handles Julia (the assistant). He asks, “There are other ways that Jonathan thing could have gone, and things went very well for you.” Yeah. So it was two tremendous card forces, and doing one of them face up was really astonishing.

Jonathan whines he doesn’t know what happened, so Penn elaborates that there’s this wonderful thing called “multiple outs”, in that if he did the trick five times, it would probably go slightly differently each time, and that Jonathan was the perfect patsy. Damien agrees they nailed him.

[spoiler]On the first force, one of those card demos I looked up previously showed how to direct the person to select the card you intend by how you fan the cards and timing the press to put their hand on the correct card. If that’s how he did it, it was very subtle and very smooth. I think that’s what Penn means by handling her.

On the second force, I went back and paused when he spreads the cards on the table, and found he has four 9 of spades cards in the deck, one every 12th card. Then I looked at which cards were revealed during the count down, and confirmed when he is removing the cards from the deck, there is a slight bobble where he leaves a couple in the box, pulls them out, and stacks them on top. He then has Jonathan count down from the top. In other words, he finessed 3 cards from the bottom of the deck to the top of the deck by the stuck in the box routine, and one of his 9 of spades is 4 down (i.e. the 48th card from the other end), so that is how he gets his force card to the 7th slot. If he had to move to other locations, say the 23rd spot, he’d have had to juggle the cards coming out of the deck somewhat differently to stack the correct number to one of his 9 of spades, and hope he doesn’t overlap any.

And that would have been a real pisser, because I was thinking the 37th card. If he had tried to deal 37 cards face up, he’d have been hammered on the multiple 9’s. He’d have had to do it face down. Wouldn’t have ruined the trick, but taken out one of the pretty elements of the trick that Penn liked so much. [/spoiler]

Didn’t fool P&T. But nicely done.

Act 3, David Masters

David goes for a big stage show escape from a box trick. He starts with a box hanging from the roof and sitting on a platform on stage, two assistants in robes and masks, and calls up Penn and Teller to assist. His assistants reveal a set of spikes and place them on the floor. His assistants open the box, he climbs in, and they attach shackles to his wrists. The shackles have chains that run out the sides of the boxes for P&T to hold and control. The assistants close the box and latch it, pull the chains to show they are connected. Then the straps lift the box into the air.

As the box rises into the air, assistant 1 rolls the platform off the stage to the back, and then returns. P&T dutifully hold the chains. The assistants then move the spike platform under the box and set the spikes on fire. The box is lowered to just above the spikes, then lowered onto the spikes, then raised again. The assistants quickly extinguish the fire, open the box sides, and drop the front to reveal the box is empty and the shackles are hanging free. And poof, Assistant 1 removes the mask and hood to reveal he is David, the magician.

(And Penn sidles over and pushes down the trapdoor flap on the bottom of the box that got stuck open. Shhh, you didn’t see that.)

Penn begins by pointing out they live in Las Vegas, so they know when someone puts a mask on, or has someone on stage put a mask on, or a motorcycle helmet, or a full chicken suit, then at some point there’s going to be a switch. Teller goes up to whisper and confer with David, while Penn jammers with Jonathan. Penn comments that he’s good enough for Vegas, not necessarily on their dime. David agrees they got him.

My observations: whenever you see a box that gets closed up so you can’t see what’s going on inside, someone is disappearing or appearing. Whenever you see an escape act where something is wheeled off the stage, that is how the magician leaves the stage to set up for his return.

Also, for this particular trick

[spoiler]The shackles appear to be non-round and wide enough to slip his hands directly out of. Also, I spotted a string when he’s showing the shackles. I think he secured the shackles to each other with the string so when the assistants pull the chains back and forth, they are connected, and P&T feel some resistance from each other. Later when the box lowers onto the fire, the string burns and frees the shackles.

Observation: If there’s not supposed to be a trapdoor for the magician to exit, and the magician is supposed to be inside the box, how does the box get lowered onto the spikes? Doesn’t make sense if you think about it.

Observation: when the box lowers onto the flaming spikes, then raises, Penn’s shackle actually drops out the bottom of the box and is in full view as they put out the flames. This is a fairly big oops, because it shows the shackles aren’t connected anymore.

Observation: the flap on the bottom got stuck slightly raised, which was also not good. Penn actually reached over and pushed it down while David was bowing to the crowd. Not good. [/spoiler]

I think it was a pretty standard escape trick with a couple of hardware misfires. If you don’t know how these escapes are done, it was probably impressive enough, but knowing what to look for, I was calling it along with P&T, including “that’s the magician in the robes”.

Act 4, Soma

Soma walks out on stage with glasses and a newspaper, followed by his briefcase rolling on the floor on its own. Soma takes off his glasses and throws them into the air, and they are confetti. He then starts tearing his newspaper in half, then in half again, then in half again, till he has two stacks of pieces. And he drops a couple pieces. Oops. He leans way over, and reverses and pulls the pieces off the floor and suddenly has restored the newspaper. He folds it up and puts it in the briefcase.

Then his cell phone rings. He produces it from air, it’s his wife. Another cell phone rings, he answers it. Another phone rings, he pulls out a corded handset from his coat, puts it back. The then proceeds to have the two cell phones get put away and disappear and reappear numerous times, directions, places (into his coat, under his ear, behind his knee). Finally he pulls his glasses out of his pocket, opens one of the phones to be a newspaper, and then walks off followed by his briefcase.

All to music and sound effects.

Penn says it was a delightful act. He says we all know the lean shoes act from the Wizard of Oz, and Michael Jackson’s use in one of his videos, and this was better. (Google it if you’re interested. I did.) They do the torn and restored newspaper in their act, lots of sleight of hand productions and vanishes, so they could follow the movements. He says that although they knew how everything was done, they didn’t see how anything was done. I assume he means things weren’t seen until they were supposed to be there. Great praise in the skill, but no fooling.

Final Act: Penn and Teller and “Solid Goldfish”. Or that should be, Teller and “Solid Goldfish”.

Penn picks an audience member to assist Teller, then goes and has a seat. This is all Teller, no talking.

Teller puts the lady in a chair, puts a cloth in her lap, hands her a small empty goldfish bowl. Someone else wheels out a huge tank of water.

Teller begins to dip his hands into the water, scoop out a bit, reach over, and drop large dollar coins into the goldfish bowl. Over and over, by the pile. Pulls a few out of strange places from the lady and drops them into the bowl.

Then he pours a bunch of them into his palms, reaches to the water tank, dumps them in, and nothing, they fall to the bottom. So he gets the rest from the goldfish bowl, has the lady blow on them, dumps them into the tank, and poof they all turn into goldfish, and he has a bunch of fish in his tank.

Then he pulls some fish from the tank and turns them back into coins and gives them to the lady with the goldfish bowl.

Beautiful sleight of hand. I think the trick is a mirror in the tank, so the fish are behind the partition and the coins are stacked there, too. He palms coins from the tank to drop into the goldfish bowl. When he dumps them back to make the fish appear, he drops his arms deep into the bowl and stirs the water. When doing so, he is scooping fish over the wall.

Still, he’s really good with coins coming out of nowhere and getting dropped into the bowl.

52

Here he is talking about pulling coins from nowhere.

53

This is almost exactly a version of an act that Houdini used to do regularly.

Read here if you want an explanation of how Houdini did it. Teller may have used a variation because he took a bite of an apple, but the descriptions seem basically identical.

54

An excellent tutorial on the use of repetition in magic.

55

What’s so amazing about that demonstration is that Teller not only effortlessly hides objects inside seemingly normal gestures, he does it multiple times and somehow keeps track of what he’s doing. The hand is indeed quicker than the eye.

56

The interesting part of this show is that the contestants are trying to fool P&T, but some of the best acts aren’t fooling them at all. Piff is an example of great entertainer, not doing anything undetectable, especially to masters of the art, but still incredibly entertaining. IMHO the best magic uses the simplest techniques combined with great showmanship. Soma was a good example of this, well known classic illusion, but done as well I’ve ever seen it. The best Fool Us acts have been online already, but I completely enjoy watching them again.

57

Mainly true, though I think that Shawn Farquar is one of the best and he does fool them. Well, they do see his deck swap, but even they admit he still fooled them on the main trick.

I think the envelope guy fooled them as well and he was a great performer.

58

I have seen that before, but it was worth rewatching.

Thanks for that. Yes, that appears identical with the addition of the apple for showmanship. Teller even repeatedly sipped water from the glass.

Mahaloth, I think the point was that the acts don’t have to fool Penn and Teller to entertain Penn and Teller (and us).

59

Is the host some sort of magician or stand-up comedian or something, popular in Britain?

60

Jonathan Woss? Magician? No. Popular? He is bwoadly tolewated.