And the Yabba dabba do? Notice his pronunciation? It was Yowba douba do. Emphasis on “daub”.
“Doub” is a product sold for marking cards.
Good show! Makes perfect sense. My only question: What other trick did the coin magician employ besides sleight of hand and the “turtle” at the end? Didn’t Penn correctly identify the main method behind the most compelling part of the trick? The guy won on another technicality.
I’m interested about the “Daub” thing. Maybe that explains Rick Lax’s card/memory trick that fooled P&T last week.
I’m dying to hear some opinions on the Paul Vigil trick. I don’t have the slightest clue how he could’ve pulled that off. There was no force so he could not have known the number ahead of time. There was no way that I can imagine that he could’ve gotten the card pinned onto his back during the trick. Only Penn handled the pinned card. Unless he had 888 cards (possible numbers between 111 and 999) or other reveals planted somewhere, I’m at a total loss.
(as an aside I hate the fact that P&T read the book and knew the trick because I so love their reactions when they are truly impressed by a trick that fools them).
Had to watch this episode On Demand, so no detailed recap.
The first act, I noticed the angle shot showing that the bars weren’t in the same plane. It still looked like they were fairly close together, but if the plane can separate, i.e. the frame moves some bars back and some forward more, then that could allow enough room to go through.
I spotted the bowling ball switch, but thought that was part of the technique of going through the bars. Thanks, ZipperJJ. Oh, and I really didn’t like their banter about having an actual window from Alcatraz, or real borrowed handcuffs. That stuff is just silly. Don’t insult my intelligence like that.
The turtle was a shell coin, which he used at the end. I was thinking he had a split coin, a type of shell coin that looks like two coins but then snaps together to be one coin. I think that gimmicked coin was activated to open by magnet in his giant ring on his forefinger. Nobody but a magician wears a single giant ring on their forefinger. I don’t know the proper magic term for that kind of gimmick, or if the technicality was too tight. I think P&T were on the right track, but assumed one gimmick instead of two.
So the first part where he has the guy hold the coins flat in his palms, that was the split coin. He opened it, placed it flat, then the guy shakes his hands and it snaps closed and stays closed until opened by the ring. Thus, inspectable.
The last trick with the woman he uses the magnetic shell, which is why she has to hold the coins by their edges.
I have seen a recorded version of Teller’s trick before, but this was nice. A guess: a type of heat reactive wax that is timed in different rates, so Teller’s moves are timed in synch with the melting wax.
My guess would be a thread. I watched his non-knife hand closely and he kept it at a specific angle and height when each of the flower parts fell.
Agreed! To hear Penn say this is one of the greatest tricks in all of magic tells you there’s got to be something really great going on here. I obviously don’t have a clue either, but two things struck me as odd during the routine which may be hints. First, why did he need to write down the predictions? It wouldn’t be hard for him or the audience to remember three one digit numbers. And second, the numbers on the card looked very faint, almost scribbled on there. Certainly not the crisp handwriting of a Sharpie written in advance.
My wild stab is that there must have been some kind of wire or device in his coat that allowed him to move the pinned card around just enough to write the numbers manually. Perhaps there’s some kind of pencil point or ink nub on the coat just under the card? I would guess he used the time when he wrote the numbers on the notepad to actually inscribe the numbers on the business card. Even if this wild guess is right, it would still be a heck of a feat of engineering.
That’s quite possible. I watched it again and he does seem kinda stiff in his movements, the way I’d imagine if he was trying not to disturb some apparatus up his arm. In fact I’m totally buying that for the moment.
I hadn’t thought it through that far, but I was suspicious of his writing down the numbers. First, he takes way too long to simply be writing a single number. (Check for yourself: it takes way less than a second to write a single digit, and he’s scratching away for at least five times that long.) And second, he never does anything with the pad after that – doesn’t use it as part of the reveal or show it to the audience to remind them, nothing. So I could totally see that as an excuse for him to make maneuvers that some device transfers or replicates to another device that writes on the card.
My guess is that he has a very cleverly engineered device on his back the whole time which has a spring-loaded open safety pin rigged in such a way that it can snap shut, and he has a string-ish device of some sort that can whisk the card from his pocket up through his jacket to his back. Something along those lines. Very very clever, whatever it is. A pencil that is rigged to some kind of hand-motion-copying device that is writing on the card as it’s hanging on his back is certainly also possible.
I actually didn’t think whatever was going on with the bars in the first trick was obvious at all. Yes, they were staggered diagonally, and one camera angle from the side made that kind of obvious, but I don’t think that was supposed to be a secret, it would be clearly visible to the audience, and certainly to Jonathan Ross. My guess is that the bits of bar sticking up above the frame were not actually connected to the bars that were inspected by the audience, but it’s not immediately obvious how that could be given that they pulled the bars out and then put them back in.
The decks in the paper shredder was the least impressive of the tricks, particularly given that there’s no reason to think the other 51 decks weren’t easily identifiable by touch.
I took a screen capture and the numbers on the card match his writing movements. He scribbled the 2 twice, the 4 once and the 1 a few times. If he had pre-written the numbers backstage as he had claimed, they would have been neater handwriting. It looks like something someone would write into a small handheld notepad while standing. I speculate an electrical gimmick. The card was attached to his back with a safety pin. He had a notepad that transmitted his writing via a wire through his sleeve to his back. The transfer to the card could have been heat sensitive ink. Whatever his notepad was attached to on his back “displayed” the numbers in a heated font that then transferred the numbers to the card. Kind of like thermal receipt paper. The safety pin holes are very close to the numbers, which means it was tightly pressed to his jacket. Also, the numbers are suspiciously faint compared to the crossed out line beneath it.
I was thinking “Isn’t the one he’s looking for the only deck with a broken seal? Even I could feel that blindfolded.”
I thought of that, and it looked like they were all opened decks in the closest up view we got. So hopefully it’s not that.
Yes, let’s hope. That trick could have been made much better by allowing Jonathan to pick one of the 51 decks out of the pile and do a quick comparison to confirm it was more or less the same as the one with the card. We’d know there was still some distinguishing characteristic, but at least that would make it trickier.
caligulathegod, I’m in agreement with you, he has some sort of printing arrangment to print on the treated paper on his back. It was immediately obvious to me the writing was faint blue, not dark like a sharpie. And I also noticed the note pad wasn’t used for reminding him of the number or showing the audience for comparison. A pencil nub device is plausible, but I’m doubtful that it would repeat so consistently for the duplicate overwrites. Yes, the 2 smears at the top and the bottom, but if he really did overwrite the 1, it should vary more, don’t you think? And the 2 is still in the same location. How to constrain it to write three numbers, evenly spaced, moving over for each number but not moving during the overwrites?
The card decks, I did think of that, and it would have been better to demonstrate the other decks were also opened. I was thinking maybe a thumper on the one deck, but since he’s using daub on the card face, he probably used it on the box as well. I don’t know how that stuff works, but just a guess, if it puts something, say, gritty in whatever is mixed, he could then feel his way to victory. If the ink has it in it, that would justify having Jonathan Ross sign the card, then he just feels for the ink. He could apply some to the box prior to the trick, it isn’t wrapped in plastic, just the seal intact.
I assumed he just wrote the numbers side by side, just like you see it, although it does look like he gives them a once-over before he puts the notepad in his pocket. Not sure what that’s about. Also, if you zoom in on the picture, it’s a bit more clear that the 1 is multiply scribbled. The only number that is “smooth” is the 4. The trick would have worked if he had just pressed hard and written each number once neatly. I have no idea why he double scribbled the 2 and the 1. The biggest clue is that the notepad was a completely superfluous element. He never showed it and put it in his pocket when Penn came up.
The book is out of stock, but it was $200.
I took my 8 year old to a “free” magic class at a local shop. (Same shop I mentioned seeing Jon Armstrong a few weeks back).
Anyway, one of the things he showed them was a little stick with 6 colors on one side, and all one color on the other side; and he showed them how to always end up on the one color, while having your random person picking a number 1-6. So, when you do the “switch” it adds to the effect because they “chose” the color.
So- when they pulled out 6 books- and then counted down 4… well, its got to be the same force just with books and a stage show instead of a cheap little colored stick. That book was always going to be the one chosen.
I’m always on the lookout for forces like that… you’ll notice that people will these days frequently say “ok, I’m going to count starting from this side”, or specify whether the chosen item will be the one chosen to use vs one chosen to throw out, etc., which obviates issues of that sort.
Interview with Teller in Vanity Fair about the show.
Cool trick. Penn looked seriously frustrated at having been fooled.
This trick is so easy to explain and I am no magician. He asks 3 members of the audience to give him a number. He goes through all the theatrics to distract people from the fact that he is writing the numbers down in a notebook. He is actually writing the numbers down on the business card that he is using the notebook to conceal. After he writes the three numbers on the card he puts the notebook into his left armpit while he applauds Penn coming up on stage to be part of the act. The card is attached to the safety pin that is attached to a cord that runs through a hole in his jacket and when he puts the notebook in his armpit he draws the card and safety pin up to the back of his jacket. I think he pulls the cord with his left hand when retrieving the notebook from his left armpit. It has to be a very firm cord to give the illusion that the safety pin is attached to the jacket. Then he finishes his applause and puts the notebook in his jacket.