Why on earth didn’t Mac King fool Teller with the rope trick? Well I guess he doesn’t need to, he knows he fooled him and he doesn’t need to be in their act. He’s a great magician, glad to have him there, wish he had done the rope trick because i’ve seen the goldfish so many times. Have to figure out what the first guy was doing, I assumed he had an iPad in there, so he got me with the end. He didn’t admit there were 52 cards, just that Alyson had a free choice, so a force somehow, but hard to see how there weren’t multiple outs also.
Really enjoyed all the acts today.
For the photograph guy, I am going with some sort of force especially since his wording is “she has a free choice”. We never see her card so it could be an instant stooge. He also says they are all different but we can’t confirm that. My guess is that all the cards are 8 of clubs.
Poker chip guy was really smooth but if you watch closely you can see the moves. Plus he messed up one time where you can clearly see the red chip move behind the green. Really like it nonetheless.
Mac King is funny. No idea how he did it.
The clock guy was interesting and a remote makes sense. Very simple.
Given that he was asked explicitly about multiple outs we’d have to exclude that.
I agree that it is possible that there is a limited choice (I’m thinking black only cards early in the deck).
What is telling to me is after the selection he manipulated the cards, so I’m supposing that the card was controlled out of the deck (easy enough to mark the cards if he’d merely wanted to know what was selected).
Here’s a method (just to kick off, I don’t suppose it’s *the *method).
His photo-album clearly contained some gizmotronics, right? Certainly, if there were not multiple outs the card in the photo is originally blank, right? Suppose that blank area is coated with photosensitive gunk? And that in the bulky album there is a scanner and a screen? Slip card into scanner, screen projects onto paper (all that hidden by the clumsy movements he makes with the album). Moving bus is just a dramatic twist.
He doesn’t even need a scanner, just a printer, he only has to print into the blank space for the card already in the picture. So then he just need marked cards to know what it was. With a marked and rigged deck with less than 52 cards it takes a lot less input once the card is selected.
Hmm, and look at how the cards are chosen, he could just know the order, as could someone backstage who triggers the printer.
I cannot believe that the producers would allow Alyson to play instant stooge, if that’s how a competitor wanted to go I suspect they’d insist that an audience member be selected.
Beckman never said that “she had a free choice” he asked Alyson, she said yes.
You make a very good point though, it is perhaps telling that we, the audience, are not shown the card.
Right. A handful of cards to choose from, images stocked in memory. Too easy.
How thin are the thinnest screens nowadays? I suspect plenty thin enough.
How boring if we’re right.
ETA: can we explain why the audience never get to see the card, in the scenario above it makes no difference?
Who knows what the producers could allow. And yes you are right, he asks her but he also is being very careful with his wording. Penn asks if she could pick any of the 52 cards and he asks her if she had a free choice.
As Penn has stressed before, mundane details are important. The fact that we don’t see the cards is very telling. He also makes sure that the audience cannot see the cards so there must be a reason for this.
Speaking of which, how does the bus moving work? I presume it is some layer that can move and is pulled into the back of the album.
Good question. Smells more like instant stooge now.
That’s what I think also. I’ll have to watch again but I thought he turned the book away before pulling out the picture so the sliding layer could be pulled out entirely just leaving the back end of the bus that was already in the picture.
Did you notice from the end credits that the show’s producer is Alyson Hannigan herself?
That could be just to get her enough pay to do the job. Lots of producer credits have nothing to do with producing.
Found this video him performing the same trick. Here we clearly see the card. However watching it again, he is doing something fishy with the card selection. When he fans out the cards you can clearly see the 10 of clubs is next to the 2 of spades, but when the guy selects a card, it is clearly beside the Jack of Diamonds. Definitely looks like a force to me, especially when he first shows the cards to the audience he is hunting for the 10 of clubs. So at least one way of doing this is with a force.
I’m not sure I understand. Are you saying that presenter salaries are capped, so the only way of offering her more money is to give her a sinecure as a second job?
That looks *very *like a force. (And one that I do, so I can furnish the details if you care.)
That’s not how he offered a card to Alyson, so the plot thickens.
ETA: and with a forced card the whole trick is explained
Watched it again, that is exactly the force I was thinking of.
It’s very common. A producer sets the budget for the show in the first place. A certain amount of money is allocated for the presenter and producers. If the presenter wants more money then a producer will have to change the budget and then overrun the budget, so instead they give the presenter a producer credit and take the money out of that budget item.
So how did he force Alyson??? Have to watch the show again.
I don’t know – it didn’t look to me like he did. There are pschological forces (displaying one card longer than the others at just the right time, but they have a massive failure rate (and are hence only usually done when the magician has another out, which I can’t imagine in this case)).
It is worth noting that in the TedX performance the (forced) card was shown to the audience and no card manipulations after the choice were seen, not true for the P&T performance.
It’s hard to believe that two radically different methods might be done for the same effect by the same magician – but I cannot believe a card force would get missed by P&T (even if I/we missed it).
I have to believe there’s a reason the card wasn’t shown and he put the cards back in the box. I have to believe that because I ain’t got any other ideas at the moment unless it’s the printer trick we talked about. And even that fits in the category of multiple outs. If it’s a force it’s a pretty damn good one.
I think the “multiple outs” correspond to something like “multiple pages” – having equipment capable of many alternatives is not what I’d call having multiple outs.
I’m going to have to watch the damned thing again, but youtube is awful to navigate, slow-mo, zoom-in etc.
Exactly. In that TedX talk he uses a force. So for whatever reason here he changed it. My guess is that he realised P&T would see the force (which isn’t too hard to spot if you know what you’re looking for) and changed it.
Watching the video again there are some other plausible ways. He never shuffles the deck until after he makes Alyson select a card. So the order can be preset. He goes really slowly showing her the cards, making it likely that she will select a card near the top of the deck. Then simply make a different album for the top 10 or whatever. If she keeps going, have some excuse to “shuffle” the cards and but them back at the top and repeat. It’s not really multiple outs. Plus he knows that Alyson, being the host, will want to keep it moving so she will pick something quickly.
Personally, I think the trick is better when you see the selected card.