Penn & Teller: Fool Us, US run on CW

[Dingbang]

I watched again and there definitely is another piece missing from the puzzle, at about the two o’clock position, at the end of the trick. As he dismisses the audience member, the magician looks directly at it and appears to hesitate for a second (maybe wondering what to do). When the camera cuts back to him after an audience shot, the piece has been put back. I’m wondering if he picked up the piece and put it back, which would be obvious to everyone, or if the producers did another take. But then, why wouldn’t they redo the whole trick so we never see the piece missing?

The piece did come from the spot where his watch or bracelet was toward the end of the trick.

There has to be something he manipulated when taking the cloth off. I didn’t see anything obvious with touching puzzle itself, but watch his left hand as he’s removing the cloth. Both hands are on the top of the frame, but as he removes the cloth his left hand slides to the left as if he is manipulating something behind the puzzle. It’s an odd and unnecessary movement for just removing the cloth, and he directs attention to the audience member with some comment as he does it.

[magnusblitz]

Finally caught up to the 9/9 episode.

Tracy & Leach: Good parody (especially switching the roles) but a bit disappointing that they seem to have basically just used a readily-findable trick without adding anything to the trick itself.

Neil Croswell: Yeah, stage magic is boring, and this was as bare-bones as it gets.

Ben Young: The eggshell was a nice touch. By the end I had forgotten all about the selfie, which is clearly when he’s putting the number into the calculator. I wonder, though, if all cell phone calculator apps have the same ability (or way of doing so). What would he do if Penn didn’t whip out an iPhone but instead some funky cell phone? I assume for his normal shows he can just ask the whole audience and grab the first iPhone he sees.

Henok:

@TheHYPO

I hear you on prediction people, but he was good. He was pretty good at hiding it, but he held his clipboard very close to his waist and himself at all times which was suspicious. The final paper clearly had the responses penciled in in a messier handwriting afterwards (obviously because he was writing them down while standing on his clipboard. I didn’t see the move to slip the prediction into the envelope, but that’s a minor triviality.

I noticed the envelope had a clear plastic front, making me think that he might have the whole envelope/prediction on his clipboard and was writing through it the whole time, perhaps with some sort of carbon paper. When he brings Alyson over he’s holding the clipboard in his left hand, and the prediction in his right, and brings them together, which is when he could’ve swapped them.

[randwill]

@sohvan

Probably this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmI9uwYzH9o

Just now catching up with the new season.

I-Pad Sucker Die Box. The silver-colored circles around the holes really help add to the illusion that there is less space between the holes than there really is.

As to Mac King’s rope trick, I don’t believe Teller doesn’t know the secrets. It is mostly Richard Sander’s “Fiber Optics” moves (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV_TqATlDMo) which are based on an even older rope routine by someone whose name I can’t remember right now. The ending with the rope with all the knots is pretty simple to understand from watching the video. Whenever a magician goes to a pocket, there is a reason. It can be a ‘put’ or a ‘take’ or both.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@magnusblitz

I noticed the envelope had a clear plastic front, making me think that he might have the whole envelope/prediction on his clipboard and was writing through it the whole time, perhaps with some sort of carbon paper. When he brings Alyson over he’s holding the clipboard in his left hand, and the prediction in his right, and brings them together, which is when he could’ve swapped them.

Just to emphasize this, it’s not merely that he could’ve swapped them then; it’s that he makes a big deal about how Alyson is the one who’s going to reveal the prediction that’s right here, and there’s no reason for him to then touch it.

Like, if you’re going to produce your own prediction with a showman’s flourish while announcing how great you are – okay, fine; that’s obviously the moment when you could’ve swapped 'em, but I’ll amiably nod because you’re building the performance around it, and it’s not like I actually saw you pull a sleight-of-hand move right then. Or if you hand it to her and then announce that she’ll read the prediction – well, maybe. But if you loudly announce that she’ll handle it, and then you grab it for no good reason? The benefit of the doubt just evaporated; no, not in hindsight, or on a second viewing; right then; you just told me what to pay attention to!

[Mahaloth]

One of the most common moves is to force a card. How is this done? I have watched tricks with forced cards and in many professional magician tricks, you can see that the card the person picked is the one slid out to be their card.

How do professionals force so well?

[randwill]

@Mahaloth

One of the most common moves is to force a card. How is this done? I have watched tricks with forced cards and in many professional magician tricks, you can see that the card the person picked is the one slid out to be their card.

How do professionals force so well?

Practicing on real people with card tricks that don’t rely on it. Even those who are proficient will miss from time to time, in which case they just do another trick that doesn’t require that they know the selected card.

[jaredmcohen]

@Duke_Sweden

Angela Funovits: … Almost like a girl showing off a cool trick her boyfriend taught her and stumbling through it. But other than that I love her funny looking hotness.

Ah, sexism. Glad these posts couldn’t just be about magic…

[cluck]

I know this isn’t quite P&T, but I was watching the S04E13 finale of Masters of Illusion and I’m quite stumped on the “purse in a bucket” trick. A female audience member stands on one side of the stage holding an empty bucket. Her purse is on the other side of the stage. The magician puts it in a box, then disassembles the box and the purse has disappeared. He comes over to the bucket, opens it up and pulls out the same purse (no one else has touched the bucket in the meantime). How does the purse get into the bucket?? I hope someone else watches this besides me, because it’s going to bother me for a long time.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@cluck

I know this isn’t quite P&T, but I was watching the S04E13 finale of Masters of Illusion and I’m quite stumped on the “purse in a bucket” trick. A female audience member stands on one side of the stage holding an empty bucket. Her purse is on the other side of the stage. The magician puts it in a box, then disassembles the box and the purse has disappeared. He comes over to the bucket, opens it up and pulls out the same purse (no one else has touched the bucket in the meantime). How does the purse get into the bucket?? I hope someone else watches this besides me, because it’s going to bother me for a long time.

I don’t know whether to feel pleased or disappointed that I knew before viewing the clip that it’d be the bucket David Copperfield uses in his slo-mo duck trick: the one he doesn’t really bother making a secret of, because he uses it as a joke.

So he opens one of the halves of the lid, but keeps the other one shut so we only see part of the insides; why do that, unless stuff can be hidden in the part that’s walled off from view? Why do that, unless he’s going to pull stuff out of that other half?

So the trick pretty much works itself if he picks an audience member with a purse matching one he has backstage and loads beforehand – and that’s simplicity itself if she’s a full-on plant, of course.

(Still, he puts the purse on that table and – the lights on it go down, and the camera pans away to follow him as he shows half the bucket before he walks back over to stand in front of it? And the lights eventually go all screwy, so the silver purse looks kind of weird? I don’t know if that’s relevant, but from a pure ‘showmanship’ standpoint it seems like the thing should be in plain sight and under an unwavering spotlight, since that’s, like, the whole point, right?)

[cluck]

@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper

I don’t know whether to feel pleased or disappointed that I knew before viewing the clip that it’d be the bucket David Copperfield uses in his slo-mo duck trick: the one he doesn’t really bother making a secret of, because he uses it as a joke.

So he opens one of the halves of the lid, but keeps the other one shut so we only see part of the insides; why do that, unless stuff can be hidden in the part that’s walled off from view? Why do that, unless he’s going to pull stuff out of that other half?

So the trick pretty much works itself if he picks an audience member with a purse matching one he has backstage and loads beforehand – and that’s simplicity itself if she’s a full-on plant, of course.

(Still, he puts the purse on that table and – the lights on it go down, and the camera pans away to follow him as he shows half the bucket before he walks back over to stand in front of it? And the lights eventually go all screwy, so the silver purse looks kind of weird? I don’t know if that’s relevant, but from a pure ‘showmanship’ standpoint it seems like the thing should be in plain sight and under an unwavering spotlight, since that’s, like, the whole point, right?)

Ah, makes perfect sense. Thanks for that. I did notice he went out into the audience and seemed to search for a bag that would match the final reveal. And yeah, he only shows one half of the bucket, but I thought I could see up into the other half (I guess not). But yeah, I get it now. There was no special effect with the lights in the version I saw, it was all pretty straightfoward.

[randwill]

@numeroussyrup

The mentalist woman was good and I agree that there is most likely a person in the table. There is some time between hearing the word and when the dictionary is pulled out giving plenty of time to do the rip. Especially given all the suffering for art talk. Still a neat trick.

Penn & Teller have a trick of their own which relies on a suffering assistant hidden in a table. A borrowed object is vanished and then appears inside a large fresh fish chosen from among several different fish on a table full of ice. The working is described, with photos, in one of their books.

[TriPolar]

@Mahaloth

One of the most common moves is to force a card. How is this done? I have watched tricks with forced cards and in many professional magician tricks, you can see that the card the person picked is the one slid out to be their card.

How do professionals force so well?

There are a lot of different kinds of forces. Whole decks can be switched, my favorite is a counting scheme where I know what the top card on the deck is. The Svengali deck is often used to make it look like a free choice from a whole deck but half the cards are the same. A good trick should have more elements to it than just the force so the force itself is forgotten by the time of the reveal.

[JSexton]

@cluck

Ah, makes perfect sense. Thanks for that. I did notice he went out into the audience and seemed to search for a bag that would match the final reveal. And yeah, he only shows one half of the bucket, but I thought I could see up into the other half (I guess not). But yeah, I get it now. There was no special effect with the lights in the version I saw, it was all pretty straightfoward.

The wall inside the bucket that divides the two halves has a mirrored side, so at a glance, it looks like you can see the whole thing. But you’re really seeing the same side, twice.

[JSexton]

@Mahaloth

One of the most common moves is to force a card. How is this done? I have watched tricks with forced cards and in many professional magician tricks, you can see that the card the person picked is the one slid out to be their card.

How do professionals force so well?

That’s not necessarily the case at all. Imagine this: Magician spreads out the cards, asks the mark to tap one of them. Mark does so. Magician then slides that card forward and hands it to the mark (or offers it for them to take, either way) while un-spreading the cards back into a deck, so to speak.

In reality, the magician makes a move that slides forward a pre-selected card instead of the card that the mark really tapped. It’s difficult to notice, because the cad backs are the same, of course.

(Aha, you say, but that’s not what happened! I saw the mark select a card and pull it out of the deck themselves, all in one motion)!

OK, then. Perhaps the cards are all the same!

(But I saw them show that they were all different!)

So maybe two thirds were different, and that’s what was spread and revealed to the audience, but a third of the cards are identical, and that’s the third that was spread for the mark to choose from.

(No, they definitely showed all the cards!)

So the entire deck was switched out between revealing it and letting the mark pick one.

(No, it was all one motion)

Maybe the mark is a stooge, then.

…

The point is, there are a lot of ways to do it, a small fraction of which I outlined above, and a lot of methods all look very similar while having a very different underlying technique. Knowing which one was used from seeing just the tip of the iceberg is what makes Penn and Teller so good at this show.

[psychonaut]

@randwill

Penn & Teller have a trick of their own which relies on a suffering assistant hidden in a table. A borrowed object is vanished and then appears inside a large fresh fish chosen from among several different fish on a table full of ice. The working is described, with photos, in one of their books.

That may be one of the ways they have done it, but in the versions they’ve done for Fool Us, there is no thick table to conceal an assistant. Teller probably just uses sleight of hand to slip the object into the fish as he’s cutting it. (And since this proves that a concealed assistant is not necessary, it makes me wonder if the description in the book you mention is just a playful hoax of theirs.)

[Mahaloth]

It’s been renewed for a fourth season. Summer 2017, of course.

[aktep]

@Mahaloth

It’s been renewed for a fourth season. Summer 2017, of course.

well your link definitely fooled me.

[Nars_Glinley]

@aktep

well your link definitely fooled me.

Golf clap.

[Mahaloth]

@aktep

well your link definitely fooled me.

Well…crap. Wow. :smack: Apolgies for that. Now, you can see how incredibly diverse my evening web-surfing is.

I meant this link. My bad.

[WaltP]

[QUOTE=Mahaloth]
One of the most common moves is to force a card. How is this done? I have watched tricks with forced cards and in many professional magician tricks, you can see that the card the person picked is the one slid out to be their card.

How do professionals force so well?
[/quote]

Very seriously – practice, practice, practice. Then when you can do it fairly well, practice even more…

Some forces are self working and seem fair.
Many do a little bit of sleight of hand.
But the best force is clean, gutsy, and devastating in the right hands. Just spread the cards and you pick one.

@JSexton

That’s not necessarily the case at all. Imagine this: Magician spreads out the cards, asks the mark to tap one of them. Mark does so. Magician then slides that card forward and hands it to the mark (or offers it for them to take, either way) while un-spreading the cards back into a deck, so to speak.

In reality, the magician makes a move that slides forward a pre-selected card instead of the card that the mark really tapped. It’s difficult to notice, because the cad backs are the same, of course.

Rarely does a magician blatantly switch a card chosen for their card. Granted it does happen, but those are not the best forces.

@JSexton

(Aha, you say, but that’s not what happened! I saw the mark select a card and pull it out of the deck themselves, all in one motion)!

OK, then. Perhaps the cards are all the same!

Perhaps, if you have no skill. Although there are a couple tricks where the mark picks a card “fairly”, then it’s revealed that the entire deck is all the same – except for the chosen card.

@JSexton

(But I saw them show that they were all different!)

So maybe two thirds were different, and that’s what was spread and revealed to the audience, but a third of the cards are identical, and that’s the third that was spread for the mark to choose from.

Quite rare. It’s hard to do a trick with this deck after choosing a card.

@JSexton

(No, they definitely showed all the cards!)

So the entire deck was switched out between revealing it and letting the mark pick one.

Oh, c’mon!

@JSexton

(No, it was all one motion)

Maybe the mark is a stooge, then.

Or maybe the magician knows his craft and actually knows how to manipulate you to take the card he wants – from an ungimmicked deck. You are correct that there are many, many ways to do this, but it is unnecessary to use a special deck to force a card.

Many magicians can simply spread a deck of cards in front of you and you WILL choose the card they want you to – they are that good at it. It’s all in learning and practicing the technique.