Agree with the above except for the Evasons. I’m sure she could see and they combined body movement, timing, and language to communicate, plus they had figured out the identity of the audience members ahead of time. There must be breaks between the episodes or even individual acts during which time confederates had talked to the audience members, or the producers allowed them access to information about them. A name and address can turn up a lot of info about people, even just the name could reveal a lot.
I assume ‘a lot of work’ refers to tearing the corner off a lot of King of Diamonds to get them to match, or maybe it’s referring to the name of an effect. I liked the guy’s style, because that’s pretty much the way I’d have to do a trick like that, no smooth operator am I.
The card was a force and you could see him slide it up. It did not necessarily come from the exact spot Penn said to stop.
He did tear it in a special unique way he had done many times before. Penn and Allyson could not have signed the card, as the final card was not the same one.
They said he did a lot of work. Well, he put that King of Hearts into all 200+ bags of tea and he did so manually.
It was a nice routine, he seemed like a nice guy, but they got him 100%
From Penn’s description it sounded like there was no electronic trickery involved, I think he was communicating to her via subtle code embedded in the language he used - I can see how that might work for things like audience member gender, common items like eyeglasses and watches, maybe numbers (Penn seemed to suggest he and Teller could communicate playing card ID, where you have 4 suits x 13 values)…I don’t know about less common items like the guitar pick, or how they would do names at all - I agree it was a very impressive trick.
The commenter who mentioned a ring that can detect the coin might be right, but the word “dad” also seemed to have a specific intended meaning that both Penn and Timon seemed to understand. No clue what it means though.
The “lot of work” may be preparing all of those teabags to all contain nearly identical kings of hearts(?) on a string (hidden behind the teabag in each packet, which string presumably is not attached to the teabag). Re: the force, unless someone is trying to fool P&T with a false move, anyone who says “tell me where to stop” as their card selection method is doing a pretty lazy face and about as pedestrian a force as you can find (because the deck is entirely in the magician’s control). “stop” is always a force situation.
Performance was just awful, imo. She sounded super boring and he just grinned like a fool. Given the way Penn is so impressed by the technique, I’m disappointed at how boring their act came off. Given his comment of hanging out all day with Teller trying to perfect this act, and that they “were able to do a deck of cards” and “mental gymnastics”, I believe they have literally memorized a full block of codewords for dozens or even hundreds of different kinds of items (something he says suggests it’s a guitar pick or a watch). The mental gymnastics comment suggests to me it’s not about the blindfold being see-through (although we’ve seen many magicians use coins and tape and things behind the blindfold when trying to really show a blindfold is true, suggesting a fake blindfold isn’t that hard to pull off either.
Well, when knowing what to look for, it’s obvious, but I certainly didn’t notice it in my first watching. There’s lots of different tricks that use the stabbing blindly and having one card stick on the end of an object or in your hand or something like that. I don’t think there’s any unique elements to this trick, but a nice combination of elements in a unique framework of pool. I’m curious if there’s anything meaningful in his use of a sticker instead of just signing the card itself.
Yeah, I’m surprised P&T didn’t ask to examine the blindfold. But Penn seemed so sure he knew what it was (without disclosing anything) that I guess it doesn’t matter. I wasn’t impressed with the trick much either; it was too “theatrical” for my taste. I remember seeing a Penn & Teller: Bullsh!t episode where they exposed a lot of mentalist frauds too, so I’m surprised Penn seemed so keen on them (I got the impression he hated mentalism).
I still don’t know about the 100 dollar bill though. How Teller produced it so readily, nor why he gave it to the woman at the end. And how she would know what the serial numbers are (if it’s otherwise not a planted bill).
I dislike metalists because most of them want you to believe, on some level, that they possess a mysterious power. These two, while their tricks were impressive, were not worthy of performing in front of P & T because of their ridiculous presentation. The woman had no stage presence nor personality, and the guy’s manner would be a better fit on a 3 am infomercial.
As for the 100 dollar bill, I think editing allowed Teller to, er, whip it out so quickly. And I was under the impression that Penn and Teller autographed the bill and gave it back as a souvenir.
mmm
Me too. In his videos he gives some very plausible explanations of how he secretly fooled Penn and Teller. The only real mystery is why he felt the need to disclose all this after the fact on YouTube. (He claims that he didn’t want to be be impolite by claiming during the TV show that he fooled them, but I don’t see how it’s much less polite to do so on YouTube.)
Sankey is a guy who made a name for himself years ago developing and selling some really good, innovative tricks. He then went on Fool Us and did some competently-executed tricks which were fine but not innovative or new, and which P&T had no problem figuring out. Months later, Sankey then posted a video in which he claimed his whole Fool Us act was a giant con, and he was actually doing his routine in a completely different way than P&T said, but using various moves to trick them into thinking he was doing it another way.
Except in the episode he claimed that he had not fooled them for…reasons.
And Johnny Thompson and the producers of the show, and the show’s lawyers, who know how every act is done before it is performed, allowed this to happen, for…other reasons.
None of it makes any sense, other magicians have called him on it, and Sankey now simply deletes unflattering comments from his YouTube videos.
Penn ranted a bit about the whole episode on his podcast, where he revealed that Teller was also really pissed off about the whole act, having to deconstruct a whole routine of separate, unrelated tricks rather than a single thing.
If you go on Fool Us, you are obviously saying that it is a trick, not a magic ability. Penn and Teller respect good quality magic tricks and I think their mentalism-routine was well done. If they go around the country/world charging for a genuine magical ability, they are scammers and should be exposed. If they sell tickets as an illiusion show, it’s a lot of fun.
Again, if you go on Fool Us, you are openly admitting there is a trick. The two of them even acknowledge Penn and Teller know the trick, otherwise they would insist they fooled them
Well, the dude kept chiming in with quick comments during her naming the digits. So my guess was that she was just silently counting between his comments to get each digit.
That could be it. They do what they do well, and I don’t know that they’ve ever tried to con people into believing they have psychic powers. It’s just entertainment.
Someone asked how they got the information about names, and a watch, and I’m sure they had found the names of these people before hand. With just a name you can find out a lot about people on the internet, including their mother’s name. He may even have a FB page that they could look at and see the story about his mother giving him the watch. And they certainly could have confederates that strike up conversations with these people during breaks. It’s the same techniques the con artists use.
ETA: I don’t know why a big deal is made about Sankey. We’ve talked about the problems with show where a magician just misdirects P&T with extraneous actions, but that’s the way the show works, and Sankey didn’t even claim to fool them. Magicians do dish dirt about each other, I don’t think it’s smart of him to be talking about P&T because he’s small time and they’re in a position to say whatever they want about him.
He claimed, months after his show aired, that he DID in fact fool them, because he was really running a con within a con, for reasons that are only clear to him. See the video I linked above. That’s why I say he’s full of shit. There was nothing wrong with his routine; he didn’t fool P&T despite his attempts at duplicity, and now he’s claiming that he really did use different methods, but didn’t take home a trophy, because he’s an amazing Mission Impossible-level con man, or something.
Yeah, that claim was ridiculous, and a little bit sad.
In the podcast Penn seems to say that if a trick can be done by more than one method, that a contestant cannot win just by having P&T unable to make a call between which method. I mention this because that question has been brought up several times in this thread.
Well, yeah. But who cares what he says? He doesn’t have an FU trophy, he’s just saying that they didn’t guess exactly how he did some simple things that have multiple ways to work, and he sounds stupid saying it. It was a lame act and he’s just making it more lame with his feeble excuse for not winning.
