Oh – another thought: when he got a look at the tiles the people had drawn, all he needed was for there to be a letter that was only drawn once, and ask about that one.
With seven people drawing one letter each, there’s got to be a good chance of one tile being a singleton. And, if not, well, he just doesn’t ask about any letter, I guess.
Just watched it. Nothing overly tricky, though one Fooler on a misdirect.
I thought the bird to bunny swap was particularly bad as it was directly obvious. We even watch him secure the birds with a strap before, and we see the panel switch down. Too obvious. The bunny double was good. But most of it had some moves we saw, like the first bird pull you can see him reach into his sleeve, the first bird ditch, there was a pocket visible inside the left cape as he gestured to the cage when Diamond slipped behind the cape. A lot of flashes, nothing tricky.
When did that occur? I watched the trick through again, the book page was a simple force on flipping through the book, he turns more pages on “stop” to the pre-selected page. I even spotted as he turned it over that the word is already circled. Jonathan circles somewhere near the middle of the book, and the word is neatly circled in the first column. He does a pencil swap - he takes the pencil, then offers it back to Jonathan. I’m thinking a pencil tip cap because he takes the pencil by the writing end and then offers it back, and it’s very quick for a full pencil trade out. Teller was checking that the pencil actually marked, and it would, that’s why he had Jonathan initial the page - to ensure he didn’t swap the page later and to ensure that the pencil writes.
Note that P&T didn’t bother with the rest of the trick once that was discovered. Why the UK set? Plastic pieces instead of woodgrain pieces. Makes them unidentifiable and easier to swap.
The fanfare with the envelope in Jonathan’s pocket was just a gimmick, a fun way to reveal the Fooler. They could have done it for any contestant, they chose this one arbitrarily.
I watched again, and I think you’re right. He puts the ID face down, asks for the credit card, and as he picks up the ID, he pulls it to the edge of the table at his lap and palms in the dupe. We never see the ID face after that. It did look a little flimsy trying to insert into the envelope, he caught the slit and that hindered him. It was risky having Penn touch the ID at that point.
The second can had a slot and was partially full, he adds coke to the bowl from that can before he notices the rattling sound.
He did a pretty good job acting that the trick went wrong.
That’s a good way around that.
Oh, and have I mentioned how bad Jonathan’s catch phrase is? “The two and only” just does not work.
Yeah, it was bad enough that his sleeves looked heavy, he would often move such that you could see right up his sleeves.
The book clearly “wanted” to stop on that page.
I noticed that too. At one point Penn pokes at the holder a little bit. I don’t know if he saw anything or not, but I think P&T already considered themselves fooled and weren’t going to call him out after looking at the props.
I think they were looking to see if the pencil marked, and when it did they were left unclear on that point. I guess they missed where he took the pencil then handed it back to Jonathan. That screamed “swap” to me, and I was wondering if he could pull off that smooth a swap to a different pencil. On subsequent review, I concluded it had to be a cap on the tip.
I suppose it’s possible they weren’t sure how he got the tiles right. I didn’t see any noticeable swaps, but he did fiddle with the tiles on the green holder. And given how finicky he was with it, I strongly suspect he did the swap there somehow. And as mentioned, if he only gets one “L”, then that is the one to ask about.
I don’t know if they had guesses for the rest or not. Penn seemed to want to use his envelope gag, and that took some time.
You can actually see the swap right after he asks for Penn’s credit card. When he says “Take it out for me?” and the camera switches to showing Penn’s face, you can see him slide Penn’s license off the table and drop down onto his lap while he replaces it with the fake. The “lapping” comment refers to him dropping the license onto his lap.
As for getting it in the second can, his left thumb is tightly wrapped around the top of the can as he’s apologizing to Penn. There is already a slit there that he is covering up. When he puts the knife in to cut horizontally then down, he’s never actually cutting horizontally, just vertically. Because the horizontal slit is already there.
If you actually pause the video right at the next line “I gotta show them something” you can see the left side of the fake card in his hand and there is clearly no photo. Yet at the end you see Penn’s photo clearly.
10/5/15 - An Egg-cellent Trick
(These are just my observations, I leave it up to the experts to clarify my muddled thoughts)
Derek Hughes: I loved this guy and his believer/skeptic card trick. He was so professional and at ease that I decided to just enjoy the trick for what it was and not try to poke holes in it. Penn dismissed it all too quickly. Something about “bank” and multiple possible endings. I thought it was a marvelous performance.
Reuben Moreland: Silent magic with disappearing dice. I thought I was going to hate it, but found it mesmerizing. Great sleight of hand, but what did Teller write down? And more importantly, how did he eat the blended piece of paper at the end? Was it made out of some organic matter?
Suzanne: Band-Aids! I was glad to see them fooled, because I was stumped by it. Also nice to see a woman take it for once. Penn mentioned “slates” and Teller had another idea, so what was it? Some sort of disappearing/transforming ink?
Jared Kopf: What a weirdo! Couldn’t see where this was going, there were so many elements up in the air. The end prediction was genius, Penn looked so excited to open up that envelope and put together the pieces. I thought it was satisfying, but of course we already know by now that there is only one “fool us” per episode. What was the signal? (The crinkling of the bag?)
The egg-cellent trick: Gooey and disgusting, short at to the point.
Last episode of the season, I guess. Masters of Illusion wrapped up too. What magic shows are left?
For Suzanne’s trick, after replaying it over on slow-mo, it definitely appears to me that the heart on the first band-aid is different from the second heart on the other band-aid. Not enough for me to figure out exactly how it works but it’s a start.
Jared’s trick was pretty much just all talk and presentation, there’s really not that much of a trick. Three of the “digits” are already in a set order from the start, so it’s just a matter of getting the other ones in the right spots. Each time he asks the woman to choose a bag, then he tells her who to give it to. All he needs to do is be able to see which bag she is choosing each time, then assign them as need be. Something special in the bandana, maybe?
Band-Aids - I think they believed that like magic slates that there was an extra Band-Aid already marked and there was a double layer used to expose the previous markings. The part that fooled them was that there were no extra marked Band-Aids or pieces of them left over at the end.
Colored bags - ‘Signal’ was the key. All he needed was some way to know which bag was selected from backstage, or even a device in the bags themselves that provides the signal.
Dice trick - Very nice, he slipped a little at the end when the cards didn’t quite fall over right. I think some little tabs on the back cards keep them up in the air and require only a little breath to fold up against the so they’ll lie flat again.
Derek Hughes - This guy bores me. Didn’t pay much attention to his trick, I’ll look again, seems like forcing and multiple outs.
I would have liked to hear more on this one too. I’m pretty sure I caught one of his moves when he did a riffle shuffle and them immediately separated the riffled cards back out, so he was clearly using a false shuffle. Even so, he asked the volunteer to take a “poker hand more or less” out. So to be safe he had to be prepared for say up to seven cards to be taken out.
If the deck was stacked to repeat the same seven cards over and over, that would mean there were six other ways the trick could have ended?? I didn’t see any opportunity for anything fishy to happen with the envelope(s). Do we think he lucked out and he picked the card in the inner-most envelope? Maybe there were other cards hidden in the larger and larger envelopes? Hard to imagine 6 other ways that could go that would be nearly as impressive.
I didn’t like the band-aid trick at all. It was pretty clear where it was going from the beginning and so much of her handling the band-aids was completely out of sight, there are probably umpteen different ways of doing it.
Derek was a contestant this last season on “America’s Got Talent”. Overall, his personality was entertaining on the show even when his tricks got a little weak. This was a better trick than the rope tricks he did for his final performance on that other show.
“Bank” likely refers to having a series of maybe a dozen cards that repeat rather than having 52 possible choices. Multiple endings means different ways to reveal each card option, which he knows by the time he starts fiddling with the envelope. I didn’t see any funny business with the envelopes inside, so that’s a bit tricky as to what his other outs would be and still tie the envelope in, but he admitted that’s what it is, so it may be a case that Queen of Spades is sufficiently popular to be most likely pick, and got lucky under psychology.
It wasn’t fooling, but it was entertaining. I spotted the deck swap, and could see him doing things with his fingers while setting the cards - picking up dice. There were some sort of folding stands on the cards, probably spring close. He had one fake collapsing white die. I assume Penn was referring to the stands on the cards. He did get busted by a couple of mishandles on the cards not quite doing what they were supposed to.
I think it was secondary bandaid pads that she could write on and remove, like the slates that have secondary slates that can be moved. But it was weird, Penn says that she’s clean and everything on the table is examinable, but then Teller is over there looking for where she ditched the pads in the stuff on the table. The way she said her denial, it comes down to how she ditched the duplicate pads. I wasn’t thrilled with the act, it was kinda slow and projected.
I didn’t like his stage presence at all. Yes, it was strange for him to blindfold himself, for the bad selections, but then turned around and looked immediately. But he didn’t change anything after that, so he was blindfolded for the tricky part. But as Penn says, it all came down to bag selection and telling her where the bags went. It was a “thumper” like we’ve discussed on multiple other tricks, a tag in each bag that signals him when the bag is moved. Then he told her where to put the bags.
Quick and dirty.
[QUOTE=Joey Tightlips]
I would have liked to hear more on this one too. I’m pretty sure I caught one of his moves when he did a riffle shuffle and them immediately separated the riffled cards back out, so he was clearly using a false shuffle.
[/QUOTE]
That was the demonstration shuffle, the next pass was a real shuffle and real cut.
I was very disappointed by the Coloured bag trick simply because we’ve already seen this exact trick at least once this season (the guy who directed the audience which parts of a drawing to colour in with randomly drawn markers). This presentation was a bit nicer in the guys presentation (his affect and his personability), but I found the reveal of the inflatable doll a better punchline. This guy says that the envelope is not a prediction, but ultimately that’s exactly what it is. Had it just said the name of the location and P&T had supplied the date, that’s one thing, but the envelope did indeed say 19 August 1975 - the way he reacted to that he almost seems to think the audience wouldn’t put “19 08 75” together with that until he said it. And for the back of the slates to say “RANDOM” isn’t much of a feat if he already had to get the numbers in the right order (which he did in order for the prediction to work) it’s no feat at all to just right the letters on the back in the same order…
The Dice trick - that’s how I viewed it as well - fragile collapsible tabs behind the cards to prop them up that were easily blown down. The weakness of this particular trick is the way in which he “Steals” the dice with his ring finger (I think it was) awkwardly and unusually placed behind the cards - made it very obvious that he was stealing dice. His movements were just not natural enough (and I’m not sure if they could be given the nature of the trick), but still a nice job.
I really liked Derek Hughes (the skeptic guy) - I haven’t done research on what Penn was referencing with his “bank” comment (is that like an index?) - the trick on its face was a really nice one to me - it appeared that the guy chose from a random spot in the deck and took several cards and freely chose one of the several. That said, Hughes SEEMED to insist on the cards being cut despite offering choice - suggests a force. He took away the non-choices one at a time (marked deck? Or he could have just looked at each when he discarded them). May have had a bank of duplicates (in or out of envelopes) of those 5 cards he forced and just had to sneak the right one in. I’d have to rewatch for clues. Still a great presentation and entertaining person - I thought the trick was pretty clean from the “you pick one of these 5 cards” aspect - no apparent way to force that part and I didn’t see any mis-handling of those final envelopes (the fact that there was a mini envelope inside the other envelope may have not been for comedy but so the final envelope could be swapped out for one of 5 options.
I was disappointed by both the animal magic couple and the ropes guy. I think the latter was selected for his story. It’s not that they were bad at what they did, but they didn’t really do anything unique at all - those are the basic staples of magic - making birds appear and the fake knot two-rope trick… how could you possibly expect them NOT to get it.
The bandaid lady was interesting. I found her presentation a little bland, but she’s used to closeup and not presenting for large audiences. I think the “slate” reference was a thought that she used false fronts on the bandaid pads (aided by the fact that she only unfolded the protective paper from the pad in an interesting way) which were then removed to reveal a second underpad that is shown during the reveal. I think P&T thought she wrote the “J” on the false pad and transferred it to the other bandaid, which is why they expected to find the false “J” on the purple bandaid. However, it’s just as likely she used false fronts on BOTH bandaids and they are just in her pocket. I didn’t notice any particular sleight where she could have removed such fronts, but it’s possible.
Finally, someone posted a while ago about the rubicks cube trick. The magician posted about his appearance on Reddit shortly after his appearance and confirmed that he did not use rigged cubes at all. The implications were that he is just incredibly good with cubes, and combine that with the fact that after only a couple of specific moves, a “solved” cube can be made to look random, he uses that and simply makes two or three very fast moves before he tosses it over his shoulder.
He indicated also intentionally took a few steps to mislead P&T, such as not offering to show them the cubes so they’d think they might be rigged, and he also unintentionally made a move under the table that probably mislead P&T into thinking there was a cube switch.
All of this sleuthing about how the tricks are done has raised a question for me. What happens if something goes wrong during your trick? For instance, if Derek Hughes needed the guy to cut the cards so that he could force the card he wanted, but the guy opted not to cut the cards, would Hughes have a backup method to salvage the trick?
Or more simply, what if the magician realizes he has flubbed some crucial card maneuver and so the rest of the trick will be pointless? Would you play out the rest of the trick and say “Whoops! My bad,” at the end, or just stop and say you screwed up?
I’m sure the tricks are crafted to nearly eliminate the chance that the audience member will do the “wrong” thing, but I still could see it happening if the audience member doesn’t do something precisely the way the magician instructed.
So, just curious what would happen in a scenario like this on stage. Anyone ever seen that happen?
He was trying to mystify the stuff in the envelope. He was trying to say “it’s not merely a prediction, it’s a super magical connection” or some shit. Yeah, it’s still a prediction.
Some people need to be lead by the nose.
Agreed.
I think “bank” means he didn’t have 52 different cards, he had maybe 10 cards repeated. 10 might be high, but if you’re doing a “poker hand” you need a few more than that to help defeat getting repeats. That would make it more obvious.
That was mostly awkward because of the audience member. He gave a free choice, but insisted on the cut because that actually makes it harder to force. It’s a free cut. He only got insistent because the skeptic said it didn’t feel like a free choice to not cut. If he’d just replied to the question with “yes”, Derek would have dropped his “it’s not” line and moved on.
He had the specific card revealed (queen of spades) before he called for Jonathan’s envelope, or anything else. Taking away the cards one at a time was just staging to emphasize the volunteer picked the card he wanted out of a set of different cards.
As far as different endings, he needs some breakaway point if the selection isn’t the Queen of Spades. What those options actually are is unknown. Someone could possibly list examples of how they might do it or something.
Part of it is just getting to appear on the show, and part of it is maybe hoping one element of the act is a trick whereas the rest is pretty standard.
I think it’s pretty clear she used false fronts somehow, just how she ditched them so they weren’t in the stuff for Teller to find.
Dingbang, I’m not a performer, but part of honing your craft is developing the flow of the trick so it naturally leads to the desired result. If you flub a move, that’s on you for not practicing enough, and there’s really no recovery if the flub is bad enough. If you expect that, then you have to have a joke and move on. For this show, you’re hosed.
As far as getting the audience to do what you want, you have to craft instructions to get the desired results, and any choices have to not affect the outcome. If someone wants to be obstinate and not cooperate, well, that’s like a comedian dealing with a heckler, right? If someone comes up on stage, they’re most likely going to try to comply their best.
I’m also not convinced there weren’t plants involved. Three guys sitting one behind the other. At least one and maybe two looked like they were there solo. The third one started to get up before the second one was called. No hesitation of the “is he pointing at me?” and then the woman was the one right next to the first guy. A group of “strangers” in a small area of adjoining seats… kind of like if a performer got a block of tickets to use for “friends and family.”
I have been called up before and there was always the “me?.. yes you… is he still talking to me or is he pointing to someone behind me?” moment involved.
I totally noticed this, too. He points in their direction – without really specifying who he’s pointing to – and all three get up at nearly the same time with no hesitation or uncertainty and proceed to the stage.
None of the typical “Me? Or do you mean him? Oh, you mean me. Okay…”
This why they should always let Penn pick the audience participants. At least one magician has done this.
I noticed this too, and it certainly looked strange, but it’s possible it was due to editing rather than anything nefarious on the part of the magician. It’s not unusual for these shows to do ‘retakes’ of little things like that if the original take was messy or too time-consuming. There might have been a lot of ‘Who, me?’ confusion among the volunteers that simply was taking too long, so the producers decided to do another take where the the guys were instructed to just get up and go onstage when called upon.
Again, just a guess.