Penn & Teller: Fool Us, US run on CW

Cafe Society
601

Yes, the real flag had a border. The “flag” he uses for the vanish, therefore, has a border.

That flag is not flash paper. The flash paper is held in front. That flag goes up Teller’s sleeve, which unfortunately we see from the camera angle, which was chosen to see them and the flag simultaneously. They use a fake flag so it will collapse when it goes up the sleeve. I doubt they had serious concerns about being seen to burn a flag. That’s the whole point of this trick, to play with the message of the symbolism.

602

Bump. Just a reminder to everyone that there’s a new episode tonight.

603

Nothing about the new episode? I rely on the doper magic experts to get me through the show!!

Whats special about the magnifying glass and the pen? Why paperback books?

Didn’t P and T just call out the Lax guy but give him the prize anyway?

604

New episode.

Joel Meyers and Spidey. Spidey? :dubious::rolleyes: Overall, it was amusing. This trick seems overly complicated. What’s the point of the envelope? It could be to cover a swap, but I don’t think so, I think it’s just a set piece that intrudes on the trick. The first part could be done with a fake book with all pages the same. The repeat with the set of books makes it more interesting.

Penn’s comment about the pen tells me what I was thinking, the pen is rigged to transmit what it writes, so that’s how they get the page number. That doesn’t completely explain the trick. The notebook has an index of some kind, so he can ID the book (she says before he opens the pad), the page number (from the pen), and the corresponding entry from the dictionary. Thus he can put the code on the page.

One question: was Penn’s comment on the magnifying glass just misdirect so he can mention the pen as well?

363-1-1 Just to comment, that small dictionary I think has two or three columns of entries per page, thus the mention of column.

Rick Lax. Good “memory” trick. Being able to recite the poem through at lightning speed while doing the handling is impressive. Lots of practice for that. He had good timing on the delivery at the end as well. I think Penn’s on the right track, he rang in a cooler that had the two colors physically identifiable, rather than relying on memory at all. However, they took a couple of the cards and didn’t ID the method, so that’s pretty good. Even seeing the move for the deck swap, they determined themselves fooled. They might could have tried to bluff that, but they didn’t. Also, great handling of the cards at the end.

Marcus Eddie. Nothing particularly tricky here. The key is just “juggling” of the key on the chain and the one not. The wrist wrap involves gripping a loop in his hand and locking that loop, then having another open wrap on his wrist. It’s all in the wrapping. The big trick with the chain, it’s telling that he’s wearing a long jacket and vest. When he takes small loops in each hand, then reaches up under his vest, he hooks the chain and pulls a duplicate short chain for the step over. So when he steps over the chain, he’s actually wrapping it around his waist. Good masking with his arms. He tucks the small piece into the back of his vest/jacket, thus Penn’s comment about patting his back.

Bruce Gold. Fairly funny, but no fooling. As Penn comments, it’s all in the plastic bag to force the card pick. It has an inner layer to separate two pouches. The front side has a variety of cards so you can see their faces, the second side has several 2 of Diamonds where we only see the backs. Boom.

I wondered about the camera. I thought he might be doing some picture developing trick with the toaster, but that turned out to not be involved.

Penn & Teller: Where there’s smoke, there’s magic. Seen this routine before, but it’s beautifully done. Teller’s handling is smooth, and there’s just enough other elements thrown in from the trick that Penn is explaining to keep it interesting.

605

Didn’t Penn say something about the books, how this couldn’t have been done 20 years ago? Did they have specialty publisher “print” special versions of the book, such that the third word at the top of each page is “voyage”?

In their Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends Penn & Teller had a smaller trick book. The first word on each page was some sort of circular image, such as a ball, the sun, an apple. The magician would then draw the image on a piece of paper and it would match whatever page the participant would pick (as long as they drew a circle with some lines). Does anyone else remember this book? Or I remembering it wrong?

606

I was also assuming it was a trick pen, which would likely be a newish invention. Rigged books is another possibility, that would be much less satisfying, and there would be some risk that the audience member would notice.
I thought this was an overall very entertaining episode. Even when the tricks weren’t fully baffling they were fun, and satisfying.

607

Penn mentions the Gutenberg Press (to which the magician on the left starts nodding his head knowingly), the pen and the magnifying glass pretty prevalently. Is seems like all three are key in deciphering the trick. When looking up the search terms “Gutenberg magic,” up comes a link for a something called the “Magic Catalog for Project Gutenberg” which is an ebook that “is available for use on the Kindle for searches, browsing, and direct downloading of [public domain] books.” Am I looking too far into this? I think the mention that this trick couldn’t have been done until the last “10-15 years” also signifies some kind of connection to the digital/electronic era. Maybe some connection between the magnifying glass and this?

608

I tried to see if Robinson Crusoe was in the public domain and the first search result came from the Gutenberg project. Although the page number in the physical book and the ebook wouldn’t necessary correspond, but you could easily search for a word using the ebook. That could possibly be a way to guess the right answer. Still don’t know what the connection would be to what Penn refers to as the “paper book” (dictionary) and the magnifying glass, though. I sound like a fucking conspiracy theorist.

Maybe it’s just a damn rigged book.

609

(I wish there was a way to edit your posts after 5 minutes. I’m still making my way through the episode and referring to Irishman’s post for insight.)

I’m very confused by Penn’s comments. Was the deck a cooler? (I thought the move where he put his hand in his pocket was really obvious – or a misdirect?) Were the cards doctored or not? (I’m guessing not, since Teller is still examining them until the end.) Any idea how the trick was really done then?

610

No, I think that was a reference to the pen that transmits information. He got the page number when the guy wrote it down, so then he used his index in the notebook to know what the page number was. His index has a key word and a code for each page 1 to 200 out of each book, so he just has to pick the right section based on the book she picks, pick the word and location and write the code number on the paper.

The best guess is he swapped the deck and the cards had some physical identifier - either sight or feel. But it had to be something subtle that he created because it wasn’t directly obvious, because as you say, Teller was examining the cards, and I assume they swiped a red and a black.

I don’t believe for an instant he kept track of the order through all that juggling. Of course, if he has an eidetic memory, it’s just plausible. But he did a lot of swapping the deck bits around on his five stack juggle.

611

He looked REALLY serious when Penn was making his accusations and almost surprised when realizing he “fooled” them. I feel like they were on the right track, but they just gave it to him.

612

I really liked Rick Lax’s trick. For the first part with the 12 cards, I think that he really memorized the colors. There are some memorization techniques that make it easy. The second part was the main part of the trick. I have a guess how he did it.

First of all, he says that the number of cards is 21, but they are actually 22 (you can count them later in the video when he reveals them). The other thing is that he doesn’t show us the original order of the cards, so he probably arranged them in a specific order while he was manipulating the cards. My guess is that they are arranged as red-black-red-black-… with alternating colors. Then he asks Teller to say in how many piles (from 3 to 5) to split them up. The number of piles doesn’t matter as long as he makes sure that every pile has an even number of cards. That’s why the 22 is important. This way every pile will start with a red card and end with a black card. So, he can mix the order of the piles and he can put them in any order and the alternating order of the colors will stay. Then he asks Penn and Teller for two numbers and moves these numbers of cards to the bottom. Still, the alternating order remains. Finally, he has to separate the cards. The tricky part is to do it in a way that doesn’t make it obvious that the order is alternating. That’s why he deals the cards in a strange way and not in a linear order.

The move he did in the beginning when he put the box in his pocket was probably to make them believe that there was a deck switch. That made the trick less impressive, but it helped to fool Penn and Teller, because it made them think that his deck was doctored in some way, and lead them to the wrong path.

613

That’s a really good guess. I noticed how intently he was riffling through the cards when he was pulling out his initial smaller test, and I was thinking maybe he was stacking the rest of the deck to be all reds then all blacks. But I couldn’t figure out where he would go from there. Your suggestion makes much more sense.

614

Crap, mike1d, I think you’ve got it, with a slight twist.

I think he did do a real deck swap. That’s because if he started with a well-shuffled deck, there’s no easy way to get to the red/black alternation. But if he swapped the deck, he pulls a sequenced deck, does one cut shuffle that maybe makes a few line up wrong, then when he does the first order trick, he pulls out the ones that disrupt that order for his memorization trick. Maybe he even does memorize it. I did, but I could pause. If he can pick up the order quickly, it’s plausible.

I went back to look, and it does appear he’s stacking the sequence. The camera work keeps it from being checkable. There are a couple of overhead shots, but a lot of jumps to front view. Maybe Teller or Penn watching could have spotted it, but I guess they didn’t.

And I think you’re spot on with the deal at the end of the trick. All the fancy card work is to hide the cards are just alternating. That’s why he has to drop two and once and flip his hands over each other and stuff. It’s all distraction.

So when they saw the deck swap, he was worried, but when they were looking for a physical tell, he was using simple ordering tricks. Nice!

615

Sorry to bring up an old episode, but I don’t think this is right. Stuff like that is very unproven at best and doesn’t work at all at worst, and would mean the trick failed quite often. I don’t think he’d risk the entire appearance on it, his whole professional reputation is at stake really.

I don’t know all the details, but I believe I have a generally good idea of how he did it.

  1. Start with a deck of blank cards. As noted, nobody inspects them.In fact nobody inspects anything he has at all. Not even the ‘jokers’ on the table.

2: Thumper to indicate the cards dealt out by the volunteer. It could be basically anything with minature technology, I mean if they sell RFID markers then with a bit of creativity you could get anything made.

3: Index to select the correct card. If any mental ‘force’ is used at all it’s here, to guide the man to an easier card but still not bank the entire trick and appearance on it. I think he is selecting the correct card as Todd counts it out.
Notice his suit is quite bulky and yet also seems tailored. Particularly the inner arms and back/shoulders, he isn’t a muscular guy.

4: Swap in the card at the end. This is the move that Penn referred to, which Jay acknowledged as happening. If it was ‘instant stooge by way of mentalism’, he would need no move at the end, just a way to locate his one and only printed card.
He splits the deck up and similar for no real reason, just so it’s not still on the bottom of the deck where he placed it.

It seems P&T got caught up on the deck switch that didn’t happen but were probably onto it with the other things, so when he very specifically said he didn’t do a deck switch to make them wrong he didn’t say “No that whole thing is way off”.

Also the ‘oh’ when the Audience claps to tell him Todd is finished just seems so fake. But this could be me :slight_smile:

616

And yet we have proof someone else did it. One of the UK shows we got a glimpse of the card he had one of the audience participants reading, and it had a block for the audience member to fill in information.

A thumper with RFID tags could probably be devised, but that’s a lot of options.

He is a fairly muscular guy, but you are correct that his suit has additional padding in the shoulders. But men’s suits are tailored that way, look at Jonathan Ross’s. Could he have an index and a thumper in his suit coat? Sure. He could also be doing a center peek with that blindfold, but I don’t think that has any role.

I disagree. Jay did not acknowledge a move at the end. Penn said a move, and Jonathan interrupts and has him specify more and Teller walk up.

Also, Penn was adamant about the number 4. He didn’t say anything about a thumper, and he has before. He didn’t say anything about an index, and he has before. Instead, he stressed “Four” and held up his hand with 4 fingers.

Yes, but that doesn’t mean that what was on the notepad resembles what you wrote. Now he did emphasize “deck swap” versus a more generic comment of “using an index and slipping in a card”, but if Teller didn’t write that, he wouldn’t have to deny it. He denied the deck swap, which P&T for some reason thought had to be there, but notice Penn said how smooth that move was they didn’t even see it. They didn’t see a move, they just assumed it had to be there. They had a false assumption somewhere.

I think we got it right with the comments from Joey Tightlips. If the top and bottom cards of his initial deck are different texture, he can determine the card counts by feel. He thumbs through and drops half the deck as uninteresting, then parts the second half at the first roughed card, drops the top part, and then takes the last section and counts slowly, feeling the cards. Poof, confirms it is 4/4. Then he reassembles the deck right back into the same order - I watched, there isn’t any reordering. Then he slides to his preset card, the 4 of Diamonds, pulls it out, and drops it. Possibly it is the initial bottom card, or the card right above it.

Maybe he had an index and was prepped for a swap if the instant stooge didn’t work. But I don’t think he used either of those, I think he got what he wanted. 4/4

617

First, hello to all. I have lurked here for awhile. I think I found this board during the original series run, and decided I should make an account finally.

Yes… Spider, sun, volcano… Maybe some others. The volcano was looking down on it, spider and sun were obvious. Very clever. And the book was filled with stories by Penn and Teller and you could read them all (skip the first line of each page). We knew so little about them back before the Internet, and one of the stories in the book seems so much like Penn - fallout shelter loaded with band instruments and stuff. I still have all their books from back then.

I am intrigued by the pen and magnifying glass… That’s a gimmick I am unaware of. That’s my favorite part of this show. Magic may still make great use of the classics, but technology advances and enhances it.

618

I have limited time, but here is a link to one trick from last year that used the instant stooge. I have used Gdrive to share it with you all, but am not sure if the link will work. I can post from Imgur later if it does not.

Fill in the Blank Card from last season

619

As far as I can tell, I can’t see how the magnifying glass is significant. They used a dictionary with tiny print. Now maybe they picked that dictionary to drive a need for the glass, but I can’t see where it factors in. It sounds to me like a misdirect by Penn when he mentions the pen, which is the significant item.

620

Did anyone see that “Mat Franco’s Got Magic” special on NBC the other night? I have plenty of questions, and even more half-baked theories. (And yes, P&T make an appearance.)