But how do you propose that he closed the pin? This seems like a very finicky gimmick to rely on regularly. Cords break, the pin could get snagged in the jacket, etc. A heat-based transfer through the coat onto the card seems more logical to me.
Cool interview. Thanks.
That’s because every shuffle cut out another way to prime the deck, to set up the order. He genuinely ended up with a shuffled deck with no control over the order, and that is what made it so frustrating. He’s looking for all the ways to stack the deck and watching them get obliterated.
You’ve convinced me.
My observations: first thing I notice is that when he walks out on stage, he is holding his left arm in a particular position, and he is very stiff about keeping that arm in exactly that position the whole time.
Second, I notice that his suit is somewhat oddly fitting. In particular, his left shoulder seems off. It’s almost like he has a padded extension for a fake left arm.
Okay, he does his rigamarole with “influencing” the number picks. That’s smoke and mirrors to set up his “prediction” that is anything but. He writes each number, twice over for 2, once for 4, and a couple times for 1. Now here’s one thing, from that picture that is the still frame, the writing seems a bit light. Well, if he’s using a mechanical pencil instead of a pen, then it would come out kinda light, and overwriting makes sense to make sure the writing is dark. More in a moment.
So after those, as mentioned, the notebook goes under his shoulder, he then claps, pulls the notebook and sticks it in his pocket, and then is standing there with empty hands. That set of moves pulls the string to pull the card to his back. That is when he first moves his arm from the tight position close to his chest. The card is already pinned to the string before he starts the trick. So when he turns around to have Penn check the card is pinned, he grips his own lapels and arches his shoulders. That ensures the string is tight, so Penn’s tugs are solid. Notice the pin is in the middle of the card, with lots of card height above and below the pin. That is to help hide that the pin isn’t actually through the jacket, just the string. Penn disconnects, and then it’s all hidden, the string can even pull into the jacket out of sight. The hole for the string is in the seam of the jacket, which is a beautiful mask for the slit.
Why the pencil? It could just be because he has a nice mechanical pencil. Or it could be because he thinks it will help mask the technique and suggest a different manner, like the aforementioned pencil lead in some sort of writing device on his back, or the printer. This method is much simpler, low-tech, but high reliability. He just has to keep his left arm close to his chest until he’s ready to do the move.
Chriswimd, you pegged it. Kudos!
Haven’t had time to go over it, but the writing on the card may be a transfer, although everything else done as a Chriswimd suggests. That means the card and pin can be entirely assembled ahead of time, in the pad to transfer the writing to, and then pulled by a string onto his back when needed. Very nice trick. The pin is a nice touch, makes you think it must have been on his back the whole time.
I like it, Chriswimd!
How could he pull the pin and card to his back, and then close the pin through the fabric of his jacket?
That really doesn’t give Penn much credit for figuring out how tricks are done. Implausible at best.
I just rewatched it because I was curious about that point. When Penn tugs at the card and pin, it seems firmly attached – but that could be because the cord is pulling the card/pin combo tight to the jacket, rather than the pin going through both the card and jacket. Once Penn releases the safety pin (and the cord, presumably, which then retracts), there’s no way to tell if it was in only the card or both card and jacket.
That doesn’t prove he did the trick as Chriswmd suggests, but I don’t think we should assume the safety pin actually went through the jacket.
But we should assume Penn can tell the difference when he opens the pin to retrieve the card. If it was secured with a cord through a hole in the jacket, it would be readily apparent to anyone opening the pin.
But Penn didn’t say he was fooled. He said they read his book so they knew how it was done. That would mean Penn was playing along because he knew from the start what the trick was.
And I don’t think it would be obvious if it was not pinned to the jacket. To unlock the safety pin, the audience member has to put his fingers over the card, not under it, and then pull the open pin out. At that point it’s released from the jacket, if it ever was attached.
Another point, I noticed that the card seemed to be in rough shape, sort of crumpled and worse for wear. Not the slick presentation you’d expect a magician to produce for his act, especially on TV and in front of Penn & Teller. That suggests to me that the card had been wrangled through some sort of device and forced through a hole to get where it was.
I don’t know, I find that…unpersuasive.
Are you describing a force of the type where it’s just mathematically guaranteed that the person will end up on a particular item based on a series of instructions? Or something more subtle than that? How does the six-color stick force work, in other words?
I think the stick works something like this: Picture a clock face with 1-6 as normal, then all 7s where it would normally be 7 - 12. The mark picks any number they want 1-6 in order to get the corresponding number on the other side. No matter what they pick, it will be 6.
I’m not sure how that pertains to a stack of books, though.
Does anyone actually know how Kostya Kimlat did his trick?
There’s a technique for sorting cards into two piles while appearing to simply file through them as he does when showing how the cards are scrambled towards the end. It’s called a roadrunner cull, and I’m not sure but he may have invented it.
He uses this technique to sort the cards into a faceup deck and facedown deck, then (this you can see in the video) surreptitiously flips one half over in his hand so the deck is all faceup.
Meant to spoiler, cannot edit in this device.
Ah, a carbon paper in the notebook,that way the writing is in the notebook if anyone checks, and it’s also on the card. Thus why he overwrites to push hard, and why it looks the pale color it does. Even better than my pencil idea.
I don’t think so. We’re not talking about a shoelace here, something closer to a thread. The pin doesn’t have to be in the jacket. When he pulls the cord and jacket tight by spreading his shoulders, then Penn can release the pin and it slides out of the cord, and the cord retracts through the slit in the seam. Now there’s nothing visible but jacket and a pin through a card.
You seem dubious, but it seems very plausible to me. Convincing, even.
Dingbang, I think that amount of crumpling could be just from Penn’s handling by unlocking the safety pin. Or putting a pin through a card. It’s not really wrinkled and manhandled like it has gone through the hole in the jacket, which I don’t think has happened.
Given that Kostya is selling a DVD on how to do the roadrunner cull, I’d call that a confirmation.
Basically, he has a deck of cards that are mixed face up and face down. As he fans through the deck to show they are in random mix, he removes the face up cards and flips them under the deck as he slides them over. They go to the bottom of the deck. The one selected card is either left face up or swapped to face up as necessary by the same technique. Bingo, all the cards but one are aligned one direction.
Here’s a demo. It’s not really a tutorial because there’s no explanation, but starting around the :46 second mark there is a view from the underside while this magician performs the cull. You can also look at something called a Hofzinser Spread Cull, which shows the technique with one card. The roadrunner just does that repeatedly.
Thanks for all the great info about the Paul Vigil trick. This one had me very curious.
Just to build on everything else that’s been said, I rewatched the performance and exactly when Penn “unpins” the card from his jacket, you can hear a curious whizzzing or whirrring sound - like the noise that some sort of line running though the jacket might make. Does anyone else hear that?
Yes, in fact I did!
I took another look at the business card trick and I’m sure it works as speculated here. Whether or not there’s a transfer of the printing doesn’t matter. There’s no way to tell that the card is pinned to a thread instead of the jacket. He holds the jacket tight by the lapels so when Penn pulls on the card the jacket hardly moves and it seems secure. There may be two threads so the card doesn’t readily rotate. He may use elastic along with some thread control with his right arm, also part of the reason for pulling on his lapels. As Penn mentions, it’s brilliant. I didn’t try to figure out before I started reading the thread, but I’m impressed by Chriswimd, he nailed this one solid.
ETA: Also notice that that Paul turns away as soon as Penn has the pin and card removed, so there’s no chance to examine the back of his jacket.