SomethingClever

Yeah, I thought this might have been the weakest episode of the show so far. Patrick had the best trick of the show by far. It's a really clever presentation and an elegant method. I didn't think I was going to like him when he came out, but it's a really good trick. It's really cool that Emily fooled them, particularly as an amateur, but it's not a particularly compelling trick to watch. It's very straightforward mentalism, which is not a genre of magic I have much affection for. The concept for Migz's trick is cool, but I thought the execution was poor. The force was weak (and there are SO MANY forces he could've used), and the other little bits of sleight of hand were pretty poor as well. Ugh, Seth Grabel. It's not just that it was a bad trick (it was), but it felt like a betrayal of all the things that the show is. Part of what makes the show great, to me, is that everything is done for a live audience and right in front of Penn and Teller. Even if I'm watching on camera, I know that they're seeing it with their own eyes, there's no fooling them with camera tricks. Here, that's not the case. It's also just so boring, there's nothing new or inventive added to it. As other people have mentioned, it lacked any kind of convincer that he was actually in there. It's just this cocky, showboating guy doing a boring trick. Felt like the opposite of Penn and Teller's whole ethos to me.

Yeah, it was a really strange performance, the tone was a bit all over the place. The technical skill is really excellent, though certainly this was one of those acts where P&T could've gone either way based on what they felt. There are so many moves that I'm sure P&T missed some of them, but I'm also sure that they saw plenty of them as well, so it just came down to them saying "yeah, he was awesome, we'll give him the win." He's super good, but I was less impressed than I would've been otherwise because I got to see Shoot Ogawa do a similar routine live at a convention I went to last year, and this guy is good, but he's no Shoot Ogawa. I would bet that she wasn't acting. I mean, he didn't just do that for this show, it's part of the regular floating table routine that you have a spectator hold the other side of it while its levitating, and they never see a thing. Losander is a legend and the Floating Table has become a classic for a reason. It's a beautiful trick, and the fact that you can do it in a spectator's hands makes it so powerful.

Nah, he legit fooled them. There's an "add-on" of sorts, but it's not what you would typically mean as a magician when you say "add-on". If they'd spotted his method, they would've been much more specific. The timing that they guess (adding on the royal flush while his back is turned) doesn't really explain the twist at the end of the trick. He very clearly shows the card that he is placing on the bottom of the piles when he says "this isn't your card, right?" and he very clearly puts that card down without switching it. The explanation has to explain how those cards change to the royal flush, and guessing that he added them on while his back was turned doesn't do that. I love Paul Gertner. I didn't think this was as strong as his previous two, but it's still an excellent trick. He's got such a great, warm personality, and he does such a great job of being super clear in his presentations. Even though they didn't fool P&T, I thought Morgan and West's trick was much better this time.

I've posted a few clips of Eric Mead on here before, he's one of my favorite magicians. His sleight of hand is exquisite, his routines are thought-out down to the tiniest detail, and his presentations are intelligent and thoughtful. So I was prepared to love this, and I did. I kind of wonder if magicians and non-magicians are going to react differently to that intro. I loved it. I thought it was a fun bit of challenging P&T, and it was very much of a piece with other stuff I've seen Mead do. I can see how it may come off as cocky, or an attempt to game the system, but I just thought it was fun, and I never care who actually fools them or not, so I don't care if he deserved it or not. As for the trick itself, it's gorgeous. Ramsay's Cylinder and Coins is one of my absolute favorite magic tricks. It's the only coin trick that's ever really made me want to learn and practice coin magic (I haven't done it yet, but it I ever do, it'll be for the purpose of being able to do this trick). Mead's version of it is exquisite. Every movement is motivated, the vanishes are gorgeous, his solution to the last coin problem is excellent, and the vanish of the cork is a great kicker (particularly for other magicians).

Super excited to hear that Kyle Littleton is gonna be on the show. I saw him at a convention a couple years ago giving his first ever lecture, and he was awesome. He's got some great tricks with some really terrific and clever methods.

Loved this episode. Liberty was okay, but everyone else was exceptional. Blass's trick was great, and the frog load was genuinely shocking. The way it just appeared from the deck just looked incredible and magical. Loved it. Gertner was fantastic, just like last time he was on the show. His routines are so clever and well-constructed. Sergio Starman legitimately blew me away. That's a classic style routine done absolutely flawlessly. I know what I'm looking for, and while I caught some of the steals and loads, there were a ton that I didn't see. A master class in misdirection, and one of the best acts they've had on the show to date.

Yeah, the McBride trick is certainly a respect fooler. Everything Penn described says he knows how it's done, but they gave him the fooler anyway. It's a very nice piece of magic, cleverly choreographed to create a convincing illusion, but I don't believe for a second that it fooled P&T. Watkins' trick was very good, but Eric Mead's is my favorite presentation of the trick. I think dice stacking is fascinating, and Steve Marshall was awesome at it. What a great, great act.

I really hated Berdini's trick. The presentation of it was so boring, and the reveal was so disjointed, it had no punch. Just really poorly constructed. 100th Monkey is an absolutely terrific effect, and his framing was really garbage. I liked Markson and Psenicka a lot, their personality and enthusiasm really made for good performances. I loved that moment where Psenicka went and sat down in Penn's seat with that huge grin on his face. Morphew's trick was easily the most difficult trick of the night to pull off, and he did it incredibly well. Palming cards when everyone knows you're going to palm cards is so tough to do, and it requires great routining and precise card handling. Really nice piece of card magic.

Alright, here's the method. There's a lot more going on under the surface with this trick than it first appears, and it's really cleverly constructed. Originally, I thought it was a peek, that he looks at the 6S when he gestures to Alison. If he's using a memdeck, the rest is trivial. But then there's a lot of process afterwards that would seem unnecessary, it actually doesn't really look like he peeked the card, and when he spreads the deck at the beginning, it's not in the order of any of the standard memdeck stacks. So I thought he might be marking or crimping the 6S as an indicator, but that doesn't really work either if you follow it through to the rest of the trick. It clicked when I watched again and saw the part where he spreads half the deck. That half of the deck IS in memorized deck order. It's the first 26 cards in Mnemonica, a popular memorized deck stack. So, the way the deck is set up at the beginning is that every other card is one of the first 26 cards in Mnemonica, and they're in reverse order. That way, when they're dealt out, those 26 cards are together and in order (as Amarsir noted, the cuts do nothing to change order, they just change where in the cycle you start). You can see this illustrated here, how the circle every other cards end up in order in the second picture: So now all he has to do is look for the one card in those 26 cards (the order of which he has memorized) is out of place. It's out of place because Penn took his card first, but then replaced it first, thereby reversing the order of the two cards. The card which does not belong in the 26 is Penn's card. The card which should be there instead is Teller's.

I'm still working out the exact mechanics, but I'm 100% sure he didn't use an assistant (magicians, particularly close-up magicians, don't use assistants nearly as often as laypeople think they do. It's impractical). Also, if I'm right, he does not peek at the 6S (which is what I originally thought he did), and he does not mark the card at all.

I'm just really surprised because with the first routine, it genuinely did feel like a fooler to me. Like, there were a few moves you could pick out, but even as an educated observer, I had to watch it 3-4 times before I had a real grasp of what was going on. Here, I just can't fathom that they wouldn't have been able to say That covers 80% of what he's doing.

I don't know quite how I feel about Shin Lim. He's a massively talented sleight of hand artist, but there's something very self-serious about his magic that I find a bit off-putting. Also, I really can't believe Penn and Teller got fooled by this one. There are some individual moves that they probably didn't catch, but the core techniques of many of those vanishes and transformations are pretty transparent if you know what you're looking for. This is a good performance, and very magical, but I didn't think it was as good as his first one.

I really liked Ichihana and Burns. I thought Burns was really funny. There were times when I knew the joke that was coming, but I laughed anyway because of the way he delivered it or the little twist he put on it (throwing the glitter out of the egg is a terrific little bit). The trick is a fun play on a classic, but it worked for me because his personality worked for me. Ichihana did a great trick, and he made it look effortless and came off as totally charming and personable in the process. Just really excellent card magic. I didn't love the chicken trick, but damned if it didn't fool the pants off me.

Really solid episode I don't really like Mike Super's whole vibe, and lottery prediction tricks are so boring to me. You know exactly where it's going from the very start, so you have to get creative with building tension or the reveal just seems so anticlimactic. Young and Strange are a really good act, I'd absolutely go see them do a show. They weren't ever going to fool P&T with that trick, but they're funny and energetic, and they put their own spin on classic tricks. I was blown away by Kayla Drescher. That's a great magic trick. I'm always jealous of a great wordless trick because I can never pull them off, myself. It was entertaining throughout, is infused with meaning, has a killer payoff, and happens in the spectator's hands. Awesome, awesome trick. If I had less scruples, I'd steal it and do it myself. Richard Turner is a marvel. I've seen videos of him before, but every time is a pleasure. His second deal is unbelievable. Even as he's telling you exactly what he's doing and the camera is zoomed in on the deck, you can't believe that it's really happening. I have guesses on how he does that last trick, but only because that's the only way I can figure it would be done, not because I can see anything.

It'll be interesting to see what he does, and if he actually does try to fool them. I think there are things he does that would be possible foolers (not necessarily because they don't know the technique, but because nobody can do it as precisely as he can). More likely though, I think it'll be like when Michael Vincent came on, where they talk about how they know what he's doing because it's classic stuff, but they gush about how unbelievably he does it.

I'm so excited for this show to be back. I know nothing about Kayla Drescher. Mike Super was on AGT, and he was fine. Not really my style, but fine. Young and Strange were on the first season of the show, and had a really good act. I've heard good things about them since, and I'm excited to see what they have in store. The star attraction of the episode is Richard Turner, and on his own he's reason for everyone to turn in. He's the best card mechanic in the world. That's no bullshit. You ask anyone with even a moderate knowledge of magic or card handling, and they will tell you that the most skilled sleight of hand artist with cards is Richard Turner. He is unparalleled. He's also blind. Everything he does with a deck of cards he does purely by feel.

So, here's the problem with that. Lets say he has a set of cards that he hands Penn, he has memorized those cards and they are marked. Penn then shuffles those cards. Ivan takes them back and goes to hand them out. Now, if he doesn't do a switch/add-on (which is what I believe he does), there are two options: 1) He has no predetermined groups. Basically, he's just giving three cards away to each person and noting one state in each group (which he can do because the cards are marked). As long as he knows all the cards, he just has to call all of them out except for the 6 cards he noted, and then he calls out those 6. There are two big problems with that. First, it's really hard. Noting six cards from subtle markings on the back and then remembering that set of 6 while you're calling out other states, and remembering which of those 6 cards went to which group. That's a significant amount of precise memory work that is different every show, and you have to do it perfectly show after show after show. Magicians don't like to do hard work when we don't have to, and there are so many better ways to do it. Second, he actually has to check the markings on all the cards to figure out which card Penn took so that he doesn't call it out. That's even more memory work, but it also means that he would know which card Penn took, so he could do the reveal at the end. 2) He has predetermined groups of 3 cards that he gives out (this is, I believe, what you're proposing). This removes the extra, on-the-spot memory work, he just always has the same cards he calls out (with one group that can be switched out based on what card Penn takes). The problem is, none of those groups are together in the pack, Penn has shuffled them up. Even with marked cards, you have to locate where each card in the 3 card group is, and you have to get them out without it looking funny. There's just no way to do that in a timely and well-concealed fashion that wouldn't have Penn and Teller notice it immediately. He can't spread through the cards to look where each card is, because that immediately gives it up, so it would have to be done with different types of crimps/short cards so he can do it by feel (and that kind of work would almost certainly be noticed by P&T when they shuffle the cards). Then he has to control them and distribute them in a way that looks like he's just taking the 3 cards from the top of the pile (as we see at 2:52 and 2:57). Compounding that, he has to immediately recognize which group doesn't have 3 because Penn took one, and he has to not control that group. Even with the time he spends with his back turned, there's no feasible way to accomplish that, not a chance. And again, if this were the method, if he can recognize which card is gone so that he doesn't call out that group, then he'd be able to guess Penn's card at the end. That's why it has to be an add-on/switch. It solves all of those problems, removes every bit of on-the-spot memory work, and explains why he can't name Penn's card at the end.

For Brent Braun's trick, I don't want to give it all away yet, cause it's so good and I think it's a fun type of trick to guess at. The hints that I'll give are that it mainly works off of two basic principles. One is the same principle that you'll find in a trick deck in most beginner magic sets. The second is a card principle that we've already talked about in this thread this season.

So, for Christopher Tracy and Jim Leach's trick, it's a trick named "Shuffle Bored" by a magician named Simon Aronson. It's a great trick, and even though the secret behind it seem really simple when its explained, it's nearly impossible to deconstruct in the moment. The have Penn and Teller come up, and they cut the cards and hand half-ish to Penn and half-ish to Teller. It's important that they're the ones doing the cutting because the cards that Penn shuffles are the only ones that end up face-up at the end. P&T shuffle their packs, and then cut each pack into two piles. I'll name these P1 and P2, and T1 and T2. Here's the situation: T1, T2 P1, P2 Then they do the "magic move". Now, even though they call attention to it, this actually is the magic move, because it does something you don't really catch in the moment. It turns two of the packets face up (that you do see), but it also switches the T2 and P2 packets. Now we have: T1, P2 (Face Up) P1, T2 (FU) The T1 and P2 piles are shuffled together, and the P1 and T2 piles are shuffled together. Those are true shuffles, they're truly mixed. But look, we've got Penn's cards as the only face up cards in one pile, and the only face down cards in the other pile. All that has to be done is to secretly (or even not so secretly) turn over one of those piles, and then shuffle the two together. Now all the cards the Penn started with are face up. So you can choose whatever cards you want in order to make the prediction, you just have to make sure you give those cards to one and the rest of the cards to another, and the thing works itself out. And yet, that shuffling procedure feels really fair if you're the one doing it.

He seemed kind of nervous up there. His patter wasn't nearly as polished as I'd expect from a guy who has almost certainly done that trick hundreds of times, and who gives off the air of a dude who has a really polished show. He also just had really weird inflection in his voice, putting emphasis at odd places. Once he actually got into the flow of the trick and naming everyone's card, he was much better, which is why I'm thinking it was nerves. It did kind of put me off though. 1) Vince Charming is a terrible name, and it made me want to dislike that guy immediately. 2) That's an awesome trick in search of a presentation. Seriously, it's such a clean, powerful, crystal-clear effect. You can make a career off an effect like that...and the presentation was so flat. It was so anticlimactic. Like, it was still a good trick because the effect is so strong, but it could have been so much better! He's taken a plot that is inherently packed with meaning, and rendered it trivial. It actually made me kind of mad, because I think in the right hands that trick is a masterpiece, and he just didn't put in the work to find a presentation for it.

My guess is that the way he had P&T shuffle the cards is a feint. It's not the kind of feint I get mad at, because you do have to have people shuffle there, I'm sure that's how he normally does the trick. But the way he splits the cards up between the two of them leads the magician's mind to "oh, he's got one set of cards that he cares about keeping together here." In actuality, he doesn't care about those cards, he does a deck switch or add-on (I think probably an add-on) when he picks them up off the stool. My guess is that he's got a small packet of 18 cards on the underside of the stool, which he just grabs and adds as he slides the deck off the stool. I think P&T were too focused on the shuffles, and missed the move there, which is why they ultimately missed their guess.

Here's the question you have to ask for confabulation (and like I said above, it's the fundamental flaw in most confabulation routines): "Why is he writing down their answers?" Here he doesn't say it, but the implicit reason is "so I can remember what they've said." That doesn't make much sense, but he doesn't draw attention to it and the routine is entertaining enough that you don't really care. Functionally though, the reason he's writing it down is because he has to for the method, he has to write each of those answers down on the sheet which he will eventually have Alyson read. It's simply a matter of writing in the answers then getting the paper folded behind that big old clipboard he has. So, how does the prediction get into the envelope then? Well, it doesn't. Watch the video starting at about the 4:05 mark You'll see that when he gestures towards Alyson, he briefly brings the envelope in contact with the board. It's at this point that he slides the prediction off the board and behind the envelope. Now, as he reaches into the envelope, with his thumb he's actually pulling out the prediction from behind the envelope. The prediction that is inside the envelope is pulled out of view and then left with the envelope. There are a few ways to do that. He may be pulling it into a slit in the envelope that hides it, or it's attached in some manner so that when he begins to pull it out it stays hidden behind the flap. There are other possibilities of how to accomplish that, but that's the general gist. You make it appear like you're removing a prediction that has been there the whole time, you're actually removing a prediction that you just wrote. Neil Crosswell is stage illusion, and I don't mess with that stuff, but I'd guess it's the same solution as 80% of stage illusion: There's actually a lot more room in that platform than you think there is. Ben Young uses what's known as the TOXIC force (hence, Teller's drawing at the end) to force the number. Essentially, you open up the calculator and enter whatever your force number is, then +0x( [hence, TOXiC], then you can have your spectators do whatever they want, whenever you hit = it's just going to pop up your force number. That's why he has to turn the phone sideways, parentheses are not normally available on the standard phone calculator display, you have to turn it landscape to get that option. It's a great little piece of easy mentalism that you can do with a borrowed phone. You do have to be careful though, I think for Android phones the standard calculator will actually display the whole sequence of operations, which blows the whole thing. Still works on iPhones though. That's how he forces the number. For the egg he feigns ripping off a piece of napkin, where what he's actually got is a crumpled little rubber (I'm not sure what the actual substance is, something that retains its form) egg that will, when he rattles it around in the glass, spring back to its form. He then switches that for a real egg when he drops it out, and cracks the egg to prove it's real. The card trick is fiendishly clever, and really deserves its own post.

I loved the Brent Braun trick. So many clever subtleties that made it feel so incredibly fair. Like Penn said, I thought the staging of it and the presentation was just wonderful. Really strong piece of card magic. I thought Joseph Reohm was fine, and certainly major props to him for coming back from a severe hand injury, that's crazy scary for a magician. There were some really nice parts, but I thought on the whole he lacked the smoothness which characterizes great manipulation acts, like things are just effortlessly appearing at their fingers. I was a little puzzled by Chris Rose at the beginning, and I didn't think I was going to like him, but it all came together quite nicely. A fun little routine, and a great example of how surprise and properly motivated actions can hide method. That might be the simplest method that's fooled P&T in 3 seasons.

I think him opening it himself comes out of a small flaw in the choreography of the trick. Alison really shouldn't end up with both the tea bag and the mug. As is, she can't open the tea bag because her other hand is full, so he has to either take the tea bag and pass it to Penn, or he just opens it himself. To make an entertaining effect, it's better if he just goes ahead and does it himself, especially because his hands are very free and can be seen empty both before and afterwards. I think it's slightly better if Penn were to open the tea bag, but it's a minor routining flaw, not indicative of method. Palming it in is certainly a way it could be accomplished, but that's not how he did it. It also presents a few other logistic problems that his method doesn't. If you palm it in, you also have to adhere it to the string. When we get a brief close-up of it, you can see that string is actually punched through the card, it's tied on there. You can't do that if you palm the card in, not in any remotely feasible way I can think of. Kyle's method is incredibly clean, it requires almost no sleight of hand, and gives you a result that you almost certainly could not duplicate with pure sleight of hand. It just requires an immense amount of prep work beforehand.

I loved Henok. Like Penn said, that's the first time I've ever cared about a confabulation routine. He didn't solve the fundamental issue with confabulation, which is "why do you, the magician, have to write anything down?" but he was so charming and entertaining that I just didn't care. It was smart and funny, and it felt like a routine very much inspired by the spirit of what Penn and Teller do.