He had his eyes taped shut. P&T didn’t exactly guess that he could see but said they thought he couldn’t and he said he couldn’t. It’s possible that was done but Carrot Top could have noticed it, although he was probably avoiding looking downward, or maybe not because, well, it’s Carrot Top. It’s feasible, seems unlikely, but I suppose it’s possible that he catch a peek even with the tape.
We’d have to believe that would be against the rules, no? They asked if he was truly blind-folded and he said yes. If the truth is that he wasn’t and that the trick was done by peeking through slit-eyes, what chance would P&T have? (And what a rubbish trick!)
The rules are ambiguous. He said he couldn’t see, I doubt he could catch anything subtle if he could see at all. I think it was a vibrator or even an electric shock in the screen frame. But I don’t know, P&T didn’t know, so we just have to wonder.
Ooops, forgot about the eye tape.
Hmmm. Is there such a thing as an infrared projector? His back was bare – if they projected infrared, could he feel it without risk of Carrottop spotting it?
Then all you’d need is a simple preset code: 1 hit of heat = red, 2 = black. Then 1 = Diamonds or Clubs, 2 = Hearts or Spades. You could break the suit numbers down similarly if you didn’t want to take forever flashing 11 for Jacks.
Maybe. But the key to figuring how magic works is by looking for the simplest explanation. Some kind of signalling device is the simplest explanation, what kind is just open to speculation for now.
I’m kind of baffled by the iPad trick. Looking at Teller’s drawing in freeze frame, it LOOKS like he simply drew a picture of the box with maybe a spot where the iPad could have been hidden dead-center. But watching the trick again, I can’t see how that would be possible. His hands appear to be going through any space where the iPad could be hidden.
Two little details that may mean something: the box, which is resting on a table, is brought onstage by a sexy assistant. Why? Why couldn’t he already have had that with him onstage? She obviously doesn’t leave with the iPad but he does put it down on the table before picking up the box. Is it possible, somehow, that the real iPad stays on/in the table? I have no idea.
Also, was it strange he had some kind of red suspenders hanging out of his shirt? Maybe they could be supporting some kind of hidden pack for the real iPad?
See posts 892 and 894. It’s almost certainly that.
I’m not sure. I watched it again and his hands certainly don’t appear to be restricted to the outside halves of the openings. I guess it’s possible there is some kind of optical illusion taking place re: the size of the box, but it’s still a pretty good trick.
I just watched it again, the cut-outs in the back are more than half circles but still leave enough room to put his arm through with the iPad fitting in between. There’s just a glimpse of Teller’s drawing, but it would indicate that to be the case. Also, when he puts both hands through the cutouts they’re at the outer sides leaving plenty of room for the iPad in between.
Episode 4!
Firstly, I have to say that that intro was so painfully horrible. How did Allison get this job? I’m sorry. She’s a good actress, but terrible as a hostess. The flute joke was just painfully written AND painfully delivered.
**David and LemanB] - that was pretty obvious that when the scissors were passed, it hid a poorly masked reach into the jacket from the “Teller” to get the confetti and the false rope. More interesting to me was the card trick. I was misdirected with the very obvious “put the card back in the deck” (exactly where the guy cut the deck) so I thought it would be a very obvious tracking the card, but was impressed with the zipper reveal. It must have been a force then? But we saw a seemingly randomized deck with free choice so… that’s interesting to me (could it be an index on fly guy?). Entertaining personalities in any event.
Jibrizy - A bit stilted performance - kind of felt almost like he was reading; although his performance was not nearly as bad as some on this show. Very capable slight of hand artist. Quick changes were amazing. The pen-pencil thing, he was holding them so deliberately and he’s used to being a camera magician - does he have a two-sided pen/pencil (half pen, half pencil), that he quickly spins in his mouth/hand or something? The fact that he played off being poor and not affording props could be a misdirection. The coin trick, I never like when the magician tells you WHAT to write on the coin - an X is so non-unique. I’m writing this as I’m watching and I think Penn just made the same point - let the person write anything they want, and it’s a better trick. But anyway, I would have suggested that the way he picks up the coin by sliding it to the edge of the table (i assume this is the slidini reference Penn made) suggests he drops it off the table, swaps the sugar-only packet with a prepared sugar-and-coin packet and when he’s pouring out the sugar, he pinches so the coin from inside the packet won’t come out, but has also palmed Allison’s coin and drops that from within his palm alongside the sugar. I believe the last part is, in fact, what happens. Maybe he misled them with the slide move as to how he hid/retrieved the coin, but
Rick Maisel - Not a very polished performance style from Rick (holding the mic with two hands seemed somewhat amateur/nervous. The assistant who narrated seemed far more comfortable/polished in performance. I don’t know what other purpose that guy served other than showmanship, but I guess that’s a purpose… The trick reminded me a bit (in style) to P&Ts water chamber trick. All that said, whatever trick was involved (fake cuffs? Or a method for legitimately picking cuffs? Or a fake washer?) I didn’t get any keywords from Penn’s speech. I did think that one think that perhaps there’s a double glass to the door where the water stays within the door (i.e. he’s not submerged)- I suspect he gets out of the handcuffs much sooner and spends the rest of the time bubbling himself up for the reveal, but the whole not being able to breathe thing, I suspect, is a lie. Once there’s soap on the glass, you can’t see what’s going on inside at all and he could be doing anything.
Felix Bodden - He’s pretty good at slight as far as I can tell, but I’ve seen this style of trick before (the jokers or whatever it is “seeking” the card. I don’t mean this to be mean, but I didn’t care enough to thoroughly analyze the trick. I mean, these kinds of tricks always just come down to slight of hand and subtly playing with the cards with quick moves. Analyzing the precise move is less interesting to me than figuring out more unique tricks. But I’m sure I’ve seen this style of trick before. Decent performance considering I assume he usually performs in Spanish
P&TCan’t say I’ve ever seen this bit of before, but at the end of the day, it’s just fire eating right? It’s a cute framing routine, but it’s not magic (not do they purport it to be). What I have no idea about since I don’t know much about fire eating, is whether the fire eating they did is really impressive as fire-eating goes… Seemed pretty good to me with the fire-passing parts, but I don’t know.
Now I’ll go read what you all had to say about episode 4 
One thing I think is starting to annoy people (at least me) about the show is that the purpose of this show really originally was (or ought to have been) “can you do a trick that stumps Penn and Teller as to how its done”. Now we’re really getting much more often into “can you do a trick in a way that Penn and Teller can’t figure out which way you did it?” It is far more of a technicality.
You’re not a great magician. You didn’t come up with a unique trick or something that even magicians can’t figure out how to do… you did a trick with 5 possible ways to perform it and masked your moves well enough that they couldn’t guess which way you did it.
I know it’s completely impossible and impractical, as it comes down to props, tons of practice, and often even skill, but I think the premise of the show should ideally be “could penn and tell go up on stage tomorrow and perform the trick indistinguishably from what you just did” even if the precise method is different…
If your method is so awesome and unique, you should blow out any possibility of other guessable methods - if you didn’t do the trick using a deck swap, you should put something in your trick that explicitly proves the decks weren’t swapped - for a real win, that should lead to stumping P&T, not tipping them off that you did it the other possible way.
People are mentioning the washing machine guy’s cuffs being his own. That said, Penn noted that most of the trick was legit. It would be pretty unimpressive to simply have quickrelease cuffs. I want to believe that with all of Penn’s praise, the cuffs were real - my understanding is that it’s not that difficult to get out of legitimate cuffs. I also think there may be far more space in that washer than it looks like.
Tasteless
There are two ways this can be done. (1) Instant stooge, (2) a restricted deck
The clip is heavily edited, on the day Grosso accepted P&T had worked it out and left the stage. Producers, who know how the trick is done and can hear P&T alerted Penn that he’d actually got it wrong and they reshot. You can see how shocked Grosso is when Penn says he’s fooled. What Penn says is that Carrot Top “isn’t a stooge… but he is but nothing is pre-prepared.” Grosso takes this to mean CT has been instant stooged - which would be perfectly legit for Fool Us - whereas Penn simply means CT didn’t just happen to be in the audience that night. This leads me to think Grosso might have been instant stooging. However,a restricted deck would be a better method in my opinion.
Instant stooge
Lots of methods. There is a long history of instant stooging and P&T would respect it as legit in magic. Annemann has a trick, for example where he slips a card into a borrowed deck reading “let’s have fun, say the 7 of clubs.” He then instructs the volunteer to take the deck, shuffle and look through to see if any particular card stands out. They will obviously find the hidden message and he can reveal the card they’re thinking of is the 7 of clubs. Grosso could simply have done the same or something very similar. When CT checks the deck he finds a card saying pick the king of diamonds. My trouble with this method is that while it would work and is a legit method the show’s producers may think it too simple.
Restricted deck
This is the method I’d use. There are only eight different cards in the deck, repeated 6 times. Let’s say: 2 clubs, 5 hearts, 7 spades, K diamonds, 4 clubs, 9 hearts, J spades, 3 Diamonds. So there are 6 lots of each card, that is six 2s, six 5s etc. Such a deck when shuffled would easily pass for a regular deck. No-one notices the repeating cards because when they check the deck it’s only really to see that they’re not all the same card.
In the above setup there are four black cards and four red cards. Grosso only needs to mark the card to tell him the suit and he almost has his card. For example if he knows the card is a club then it is either the 2 or 4. If it’s a spade then it’s either the 7 or J. One further mark will tell him the number.
He can mark the cards with raised bumps. Say he makes a bump in the corner of the card if it is black (gently pushing the tip of a pencil will do) and does nothing if red. One touch with his tongue will reveal if the card is either: black or red. What about the suit? How about one bump over the other, like a colon : if it is a club and side by side if it is a spade, like . . For a heart we can have no bumps and for diamonds just one, like .
This tells him the suit, he’d still need to know which card of the two clubs, spade, hearts, diamonds had been selected. All he needs is a third bump a little further down the card from the others to avoid confusion. (If you watch the performance you see him take a long lick of the card at the end.)
Below I laid out the marking system:
: further down . (2 clubs)
No bump further down . (5 hearts)
. . further down . (7 spades)
. further down . (K diamonds)
: further down No bump (4 clubs)
No bump further down No bump (9 hearts)
. . further down No bump (J spades)
. further down No bump (3 diamonds)
CT picked the King of diamonds and so Grosso would have felt a single bump (telling him the card was a diamond) and then another single bump telling him it was the King.
Grosso could have taken a bigger risk and had fewer different cards, say 13 sets of four cards. Here, CT has more of a chance of spotting the deck is gimmicked but Grosso only needs to make three bumps to mark the cards. Realistically, there’s no way CT would point out that the cards were repeating even if he did spot it. You’ll note that Grosso doesn’t ask CT to shuffle. It would be much more obvious after shuffling that the cards are repeating.
Of course, other marking systems could be used. Grosso could have used cards from different manufacturers that have different tastes. Plastic coating and linen would taste and feel different. He could have roughed up the cards so some felt rough and others smooth. I don’t think he’d mark the cards with anything that has a flavour because there aren’t that many things that woulld work and there’s too much risk of contamination and the flavours rubbing off on other cards. The point is he only needs 8 different marks (or 4 if he’s being brave).
Interesting story here about Vinny Grosso’s act. He says the blindfold (taped eyes) was legit, and the screen wasn’t rigged, and that Carrot Top wasn’t in on it, although not strongly on the last part. The reshoots were done because he thought P&T had figured out his trick, but in fact they hadn’t, and also because of some scenes they didn’t want on television. So the stuff about Carrot Top still isn’t clear, so it could be instant stooging. A rigged deck is possible but chancy like actual tasting. But he says he thought they had it because they figured the blindfold was legit, so it must have been something he was sure they would know. The article mentions a book, that might have more details.
Episode 5!
Alex Ramon - Great performer and a really cute act. Great play on not trying to pretend the audience has never seen magic before. Beautiful simple trick. My guess is that somehow the ipad is hidden behind the backplate right in the centre of the box so that his hands have enough room to fit around it.
Greg Frewin - A very polished performance. I enjoyed it, although I thought the silhouette of him struggling seemed very pantomime and performancy and clearly not a real struggle… We know from a couple episodes ago, silhouettes can decieve - whether it’s someone else miming as him, or a prepared projection… but I suspect he’s gone from the chamber pretty quickly.
Vinny Grosso - Quite an interesting trick. Does the first deck falling down just make for an opportunity for the glove joke? (btw: did carrot top miss the glove somewhere? He looked shocked when the glove was pulled out…) I don’t know how it would be relevant, because he gave carrot top the deck to reinspect… Since he can’t predict for sure what part of the card the volunteer will touch to his tongue, a specific texture “mark” would be hard to use, and the volunteer would be able to feel it with their finger. 52 “tastes” to memorize would be quite a feat, but I suppose it’s possible the cards have some sort of “flavouring” on them.
Arthur Trace - The egg would be more impressive if she was the one who checked the bag and found the egg. It’s a nice gimmick and performance, but it’s all just traditional slight of hand, I would think. Loads and ditches and palming and pocketing… As for why she can’t tell there’s an egg in the bag, I’m not sure on that one. He directs her to be very specific in her motions. Does the bag shaking have something to do with it? Something in the bag obscures her vision of the egg, but when she reaches in, it’s there. Maybe he covers the egg with a black cloth so she can’t see it but the shaking knocks the cloth off? I don’t even know what to make of the apple. I wasn’t watching it in any way. A very polished routine. Does the bowl rotate the apple or did he rotate it at some point when no one was looking?
P&T - This is one I’ve seen before. The bacon is a new touch, I think - and I don’t think the original bit was a “Teach you how to do a trick” thing, but I could be wrong. I confuse this one with their cement block on Teller’s head trick (s01e06). Obviously there’s a card force (we know 3 club is their hallmark of a force). The rest is just stalling while teller sets up the reveal.
I have to profess to being much more impressed by the last couple of episodes than the first ones of the season.
I think you’re right. I didn’t think about this right before. The key is Carrot Top. Why have him assist? Well to pick a card right? Not just that, the guy is getting naked and the assistant is there to verify that he is totally naked, so he can’t just pick someone at random from the audience. He’s not going to have Allyson do it either as she may swoon :rolleyes: So why didn’t he pick Penn and/or Teller do come up and do that? Should have been obvious to me before, it’s because the assistant will be able to tell how the trick was done.
Regarding the iPad trick, did anyone else notice that right after he opened the
side of the box on his left, there was a green light glowing behind the box and
to his left?
So not sure that was supposed to happen as that light for sure came from the iPad.
Does that help anyone with where he hid the iPad?
Exactly what has bugged me about the show lately. Your description is spot on.
It’s really hard to find a trick that’s going to fool P&T. I enjoy most of the acts even when the gimmick is obvious. Some of the problem will just be scheduling to get good magicians at that location on that day. If they make any money at all from their appearances it’s not worth as much as the exposure they get.
They have, over the years, certainly have had people fool them with stumpers rather than “which way did they do it” tricks. (though sometimes, we have been able to figure it out, here).
I think a lot of magicians tend towards adapting an obvious technique in an interesting way rather than coming up with something completely unique that has any hope of fooling P&T.
That was a very interesting read. I’m actually very disappointed that they do things like reshoots and pick-ups because it makes it seem disingenuous. Little things we might pick up on in these reshoots might have no bearing on how the trick was done. It also just makes it seem more forced and faked (in retrospect) knowing that there was a second take for certain shots and jokes. However, it’s interesting to note that he nearly became a “non-fooler” just because he assumed P&T knew how it was done. I wonder how many times that’s happened, that a magician doubts themselves and caves in instead of contesting the actual details (usually foolers win on some little technicality). I still don’t know how that trick is done (I doubt it was a plant), but I think there’s some significance that he takes the tape off his eyes right before he reveals the card (could he have performed the reveal with the tape still on his eyes?).