Penn & Teller: Fool Us, US run on CW

Cafe Society
921

Episode 6. I’m curious how the guy did the trick with the shrinking origami box and his assistant. Penn just said it wasn’t a trapdoor but they “knew” what it was and didn’t divulge any details, unless it was cut out of the TV edit. Otherwise it didn’t really seem fair to assume they knew. So what was it, mirrors?

I wasn’t really impressed with the featured “fooler” trick. Even though I don’t know how he was able to spell out all those messages in the deck, I didn’t get why the last part was so significant. Once you figure out one part of it, don’t you figure out the rest? (If it wasn’t a switched deck, then was it imprinted somehow?)

The underwear guessing trick…I didn’t really understand Penn’s pseudo-speak. Was there an actual trick or was it all body language reading?

The X-ray act had lots of fancy trickery. I thought the best part was that Alyson’s movements seemed synchronized behind the screen.

I never knew Penn & Teller were a part of SNL. Now I want to hunt down the 1986 season.

922

I was surprised this guy even made the cut to appear on the program. I don’t know a lot about magic, but it appeared to me that this was the kind of simple trick a twelve-year-old could do, and he didn’t bring anything special to the presentation. I assume the cards the audience members wrote on were marked with the numbers 1 to 5, and all he had to do was read the hidden markings to hand them back to the original persons. I interpreted Penn’s remarks as being on the order of: “This simple routine used by the ‘spiritualists’ a century ago didn’t fool Houdini, so you shouldn’t have expected it to fool us.”

923

Obviously the guy knew which cards were handed to each person. He could identify the cards, or the ink maybe. His act was refined though, better to see simple tricks done well than complicated tricks done poorly.

The origami switch was incredibly obvious, don’t see how anyone could miss it, no idea why the mention of trapdoors unless he was referring to the table. Anyway, when an assistant wheels out a large prop for no reason, like to carry away a mirror that can easily be lifted by a person like the guy had done a minute earlier, there’s a reason for it.

Card guy was impressive. He fooled them because he took a deck that could reveal four messages on the side and it revealed five messages.

XRay guy used simple techniques. He gave a nice presentation but he seemed a touch nervous and gave away a lot. Poor execution takes away a lot.

P&T were very gracious again, I like that they try to find something positive even in the less than stellar acts.

I remember that SNL appearance, great trick then, got to the live audience and apparently those at home also.

924

Another thought on the underwear guessing routine – a number of people in this thread have wondered what happens if a performer performs a simple trick that can be accomplished in many different ways – do Penn and Teller have to guess the exact method used in order to not be “fooled”? In this case, it seems to me they just basically said the trick was so lame it didn’t matter.

I also found it educational, about the card-deck-spelling-words routine, that Penn said that, even with many years of experience, he wasn’t able to perform the basic moves. despite having the instructions on how to do them. It was interesting to find out that something that appeared to be fairly straight-forward actually required difficult technical skills that weren’t obvious to the average person.

925

I’m not sure, but Penn’s talk about magical powers re the underwear guy may have revealed the name of the trick. The rules of the show have never been clear, we don’t know exactly what they have to guess. After last week’s naked guy we now know the backstage consultant who has to be told the secret is listening to their conversation to keep them honest. The format is interesting, but I’d be just as happy to see P&T simply choose the best act from each show and put that into their show. However, if I was a magician, or even just the guy I am who entertains drunks and children (as if there was a difference) with an occasional trick I’d be thrilled to get one of those FU trophies.

926

He revealed only three messages:
“UNSHUFFLED” (the doubling and quadrupling being a consequence of the anti-faro shuffle),“KING OF SPADES” and “PENN & TELLER”.

But I agree, three is one more than can confortably be had.

I confess, I have NO idea why Penn would need to buy a book to know how to perform this trick (without the third revealed message). There are two elements: the riffle force (unimpressive IMO) and the faro shuffle (interlacing exactly the two halves of the deck to create the “perfect” shuffle – the shuffle is quite a skill but I’ve never seen it so it didn’t look artificial, and here it looked as artificial as ever). When Penn admits he can’t do it, he means he hasn’t devoted the 10s of hours (maybe hundreds) to perform the faro precisely and smoothly – I don’t blame him, it is thoroughly uninteresting).

The third reveal. One quick and dirty method suggests itself, so it gets my vote – invisible ink for the P&T, and disappearing ink for the KS – all that is required is to wipe down the card edges with the chemical reagent.

927
  1. At the start there are just lines
    2a. Unshuffled 4 times
    2b. Unshuffled 2 times
  2. Unshuffled 1 time
  3. King of Spades (I forget, was that it?)
  4. Penn&Teller

2a and 2b are the same markings, you get from 4 times to 2 times by interlacing the two halves of the deck.

I’ll have to watch in slomo, but I believe he had a stripped deck and wasn’t just taking out the top and bottom halves to shuffle, he was pulling apart the previous shuffle.

So the 5th markings were Penn&Teller. They were checking the cards maybe to look at the card backs to see if they were marked also but you can’t really display back markings like that without showing that deck is skewed because the top will be at an obvious angle.

I don’t believe disappearing ink or anything like that was used, I don’t know what he did do, but I have a notion that I’ll have to think about before I look stupid with a guess.

ETA: ok, wait, have to thing again, maybe the unshuffled 1 time can come from the same markings. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

ETAA: did he show one side of the deck was unmarked?

928

Just watched it. No time for slomo, but that will teach me to take a second look before guessing. :smack::smack::smack:

1a. Lines
1b. Unshuffled 4 times
1c. Unshuffled 2 times
1d. Unshuffled 1 time

Those are all the same lines. With 1a. you can’t see the horizontal lines because they’re only one card thick.

  1. King of Spades

I’ll have to see if he does a tilt there or goes to the other side of the deck.

  1. Penn&Teller

I think either this or the previous one is a tilt view, markings on the bottom of the deck are seen, not the side markings. I didn’t notice him show an unmarked side of the deck, but I do think I saw marks on the faces for the tilt view. I think the cards are stripped too which may help him re-arrange them so King of Spades can mostly be used for the Penn & Teller reveal. Should have looked closely at the form of the spelling, perhaps they can be the same side markings once re-arranged with a few cards not even shown. So both sides are marked, and rearrangement and/or tilt view gets the 3rd reveal that the guys didn’t know about.

ETA: don’t know why it would be so difficult for Penn to do. If the shuffles aren’t done well they might give away the gimmick. (and now I’m even remembering I knew how the first part with the ‘unshuffleds’ was done :smack::smack:.

929

I shouldn’t be wasting time on this today. P&T checked the tilt view and saw nothing. I do think through stripping or other means he is re-arranging the cards before the final reveal, and maybe for an order change before that. Or he’s using disappearing ink of some sort, but I think that would be difficult to do without leaving traces. But having watched P&T at the end again just now I see that they had decided on the tilt view or something similar before, and checked for that. And Teller was stunned when the deck was offered for examination because it wouldn’t reveal the gimmick, so they were fooled at that point even if they figured it out after seeing the deck. His hold on the deck for the Penn & Teller reveal was very careful, he covered one corner with a thumb, and maybe something like end stripping was needed to get the final arrangement just right. Damn, I wish I didn’t think I knew how it was done before, now I’ll obsess on this until i find out.

930

Sorry, I still don’t get it. I just watched it again, the girl goes into the box, fake kisses the guy, she goes down (!), the table moves, then he crumples the box. Where is she hiding? Inside the table? I thought she might be too thick to fit in there, but I guess she’s laying flat and her head is sticking out of the box (Se7en-style)? I feel like I’m overthinking this.

Re: the card trick, when Penn is examining them at the end, it seems like he was only able to replicate the last part of the trick where they read Penn and Teller and not any of the other messages. Are we sure he denied a dummy deck? And it’s not something he could have imprinted with his thumb? I thought it could be something as simple as that.

931

And, IMO, *that *was their “one guess” – because that failed, they were “fooled”.

I’m not saying invisible/revealing inks *were *the method, but that method words with a force (meh!) and faros (meh!). There is one other method I can imagine that I believe possible (see your comment about “one line thick”) but according to what we saw on camera I would have to exclude it (specifically, I never saw him reverse the two halves of the deck when he shuffled them, if he could do that, I could believe in this other method).

I saw no stripping (if you tell me it is worth it I will watch it again (youtube is horrible for analysing video)).

(Are we agreed that essentially there were just 3 messages? – if not I can explain why the doubling and quadrupling are not independent of the “unshuffled” message.)

932

Definitely agreed. As I said, I remembered from long ago how the ‘unshuffle’ 4,2,1, is done. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize it. He definitely does some funny shuffles, and he’s pulling the deck apart, not just taking top and bottom half, but I’ll watch in slomo later to get every last detail.

933

When P&T took the cards, the only message clearly visible would have been “Penn & Teller”. When Penn shuffled the cards (which looked like an attempt at a faro, which may or may not have been successful, but is strictly not relevant) that was just a pantomime to the *spoken *reveal; “You fooled us!” (i.e. he didn’t replicate anything.)

934

It’s a magician’s table, there’s quite a lot of room inside the top. It’s much deeper in the middle than at the edges, and this one has framing that hides a lot. I though you were asking about the switch at the end earlier, when the assistant takes away the mirror he goes out with it and the girl stays.

935

Well, from this story, it sounds like the producers are always listening in, and if P&T didn’t actually figure out how it is done, they would intervene just like they did in this case.

936

Episode 6!

Elliot Zimet - I liked the trick until Penn said Origami and it became clear this was just a repacking of an existing trick such that the original trick even has a wikipedia page. The old version also uses a mirror on the table, which suggests to me that it is important to the trick somehow… The compliment Penn gives on using the mirror shards is apparently undeserved because the mirror version is apparently Greg Frewins, and is available for sale

His table has a tiny bit of thickness to it - a little solid curtain at the bottom and I wonder if the assistant or part of her is able to hide (her legs perhaps) under the table in a hidden cavity. But that would mean the mirror isn’t actually doing anything in the trick and it seems odd to me that EVERYONE who does this setup uses the mirror. Otherwise, Penn says “origami” - she could just be much more flexible than you’d think, and just fold herself into the small box…

I’ll edit in here to indicate that some magic cafe discussion suggests you can perform the trick without the mirror, but someone suggested “It has to be presented with something in the back of the table, whether the original mirror or something else, otherwise it will be a giveaway for the secret.” And another says “IT works well as long as you have a black curtain in the back ground and must have controlled lighting. So as the girl steps in you keep the lights on her upper body and the box. Not below the table.” “Make sure you start with the box small and do a 360 spin in the start of the illusion and the audience will forget and think that you did the 360 after the girl gets in and the box is small.”

So clearly the mirror or other back wall is obscuring something while the box is small - that is odd to me, though because the trick on P&T seemed to show multiple angles including some that seemed to show behind the mirror while the box was small. I suspect perhaps the trap door that lets the girl get into the table might extend behind the table while she is getting in/out?

This isn’t a super important part of the trick, but I assume the fragile curtain contained a 2nd broken mirror with the appropriate shards to cover the original mirror, so that the broken mirror will have the right usable pieces.

Maybe I’m just missing something, but the final exchange of Elliot to his assistant seems pretty obviously swapping the two of them out behind the trolley… was the time that elapsed between the trolley coming out supposed to be insufficient to allow him to get to the back of the theater? It didn’t seem too amazing. Seems clearly Penn is suggesting he did run all around the theatre… which is why the assistant stalls for a bit.

Penn referenced “origami” and I think that was intended to tell the guy they knew the trick well and how its done. The rest of Penn’s talk was about the switch at the end (which isn’t part of the origami trick per se). Penn was saying that the guy didn’t drop down a trap door in the stage that led to the back of the theatre, but that he really would have had to have gotten offstage with the trolley cart and then run very very fast to get to the back in time for the reveal.

Paul Gertner - Riffle-stop - an obvious force. I think it’s clear that if you set the cards up right, taking a deck with the word “unshuffled” on the side, if you deal the cards into four piles and stack them, you will get “unshuffled” 4 times - because four adjacent cards are going to be very similar portions of the word, which you then spread into piles. If he’s good at perfect shuffles, it just takes two perfect cuts and shuffles to get two and then one “unshuffled”. I assume it’s these precise perfect shuffles (every card has to basically line up EXACTLY to get the cards in numbered order) that Penn was unable to perfect. That’s the part I was able to discern as not that complicated.

As to the guy here who asked why the end of the trick is hard - the cards spell out “unshuffled”. To have them also spell out a whole different word - do the same markings rearranged spell out P&T? If so, it wouldn’t seem to be a simple matter of one cut to get from “unshuffled” to “penn & teller”. Were there a second set of markings? I’m still unclear how he got from unshuffled to king of spades (I think it was?) so I’m not sure if that would shed light on the P&T reveal. The chemical ink change is an interesting theory.

I don’t think tilt can be relevant, because he let P&T inspect the deck.

It’s interesting that once you alternate the cards four times, they really do spread and appear to be pretty much randomized. I wouldn’t have guessed that if you asked me. What’s more impressive is the skill in the faro shuffle, as well as the speed at which they find the exact center of the deck to set up the faro shuffle.

Matthew Disero - I hope it’s not another thumper, but my first thought is some sort of mark or identifier in either the cards themselves or in the particular pens’ ink?

Rokas - Prepared xray video - his arm sync is not quite there. Another riffle-stop, but with a signed card - so I assume he stopped at the blue 2 and palmed it with a red-backed card until he finally got it into the blue deck and discarded the extra red-back card… As for the envelope, when he shows her how to cover the deck he palms her card and then puts it in his pocket while grabbing the pen. I assume he has a pass through from his inner pocket to the wallet in his outer pocket. I understand they make these wallets that let you easily pass an object into a “sealed” envelope within the wallet from the outside.

The X-ray, he clearly is still keeping the card atop the deck so he can access it. Given the 2 that appears on the screen is a bit cut off, perhaps he has some sort of scanner/camera such that he put the card on top of the TV on this device and it shows up in the video footage. (the cutoff being a slight misalignment of the card?) I’m actually more impressed Alison took “two steps” left and managed to align perfectly with the projected skeleton…

P&T - I hope everyone knows how its done (the snake tone doesn’t even match entirely with the snake’s colour), but I think that’s kind of the point of the bit. If this series goes another season, they are going to run out of bits to do at the end of the show!

937

They won’t run out. They’re doing their old bits, they have plenty more. Teller could take a few objects and perform some close up miracles without even prepping, but it’s the combination of Penn’s inexactitude and Teller’s dexterity that make the real magic.

Great Unwashed, I noticed the clarity of the ‘Penn and Teller’ reveal also. Those shuffles are tough to get right every time, but he’s done them thousands of times. I can see that maybe keeping Penn from putting the trick into their act, maybe something Teller could do, but he doesn’t seem to be big on cards (or I haven’t noticed him doing cards maybe).

938

Elliot Zimet - Yeah, for me the most impressive part of the trick is where the woman hides when she first gets in the box. I figured it’s a magician’s table that has more space than appears, but even looking for it, it looks pretty dang thin (and she was no waif). It does appear to not quite be flat (slightly angled up) on top, though. And if you pay careful attention when she steps in, you can tell the inside of the “box” is definitely lower by a few inches from the “table top” because her hip lowers. The switch at the end was really obvious, though (including being able to see two hands at once!)

Matthew Disero - I was aghast at when the trick ended because it seemed so obvious. I’m pretty sure I could do it and I have zero magician training. Just need something to identify the cards - slightly different sizes, hidden marks on the cards, etc. He never even asks the audience members he’s using that they’re blank, so they could’ve even been obviously marked.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure this is what Penn was getting at with his “the little innocuous things” comment - the scanner is on top of the TV, which is where he originally put the card on top near the start of the trick.

939

[QUOTE]
[
Join Date: May 2005
Elliot Zimet - Yeah, for me the most impressive part of the trick is where the woman hides when she first gets in the box. I figured it’s a magician’s table that has more space than appears, but even looking for it, it looks pretty dang thin (and she was no waif). It does appear to not quite be flat (slightly angled up) on top, though. And if you pay careful attention when she steps in, you can tell the inside of the “box” is definitely lower by a few inches from the “table top” because her hip lowers. The switch at the end was really obvious, though (including being able to see two hands at once!)/QUOTE]

Excellent catch how her hip lowers down. It is a good 6 inches, after watching it again it is very obvious. If anyone can tell me how the mirror plays into this effect I am so curious. I watched the other videos online of the same trick being performed it has me baffled. Why is it needed? Just to show the back of the box? Why use it at all? Just spin the table.
I don’t post on here much but I enjoyed reading all your explanations and enjoy Penn and Teller show a lot.

940

S03E07:

Vitaly Beckman: The fooler with his magic print image of Alyson’s card. Penn guessed there were multiple outs, but apparently there weren’t, so didn’t it have to be a force? Anyway, the old school animation effect was pretty cool.

Simon Coronel: I think it’s clear that some of the poker chips had sliding out pieces, just like the coin trick we’ve seen Teller perform before.

I love Mac King and his eating everything on stage. Last season it was the guinea pig, this year it was the goldfish. Very entertaining act regardless of whether he fooled them or not. (It’s very gracious that he opted to entertain them rather than “guarantee” fool Teller with the rope trick.)

Kevin Viner: “In this case, we have a remote idea how you did it.” Wow, that’s the first time I caught on completely.

I love the whole juggling sketch. It’s so entertaining and skillful to watch, especially as Penn is getting older. I imagine he’ll finally retire it once he catches it on the wrong end.