Peeking Behind The Curtain: How You Think The Tricks Were Done

[greyhorse]

13 minutes ago, The Crazed Spruce said:

That's Stage Magic 101. Platforms for these tricks are designed to look from the audience to be smaller than they actually are. A small, thin person could easily fit in a storage compartment there. The trick was very well done, but there was nothing in it that really surprised me.

OK, that's what I figured.  Can you enlighten me on the light and shadows please?

[Monty]

(I loved that book of short stories that came with Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends! If you ignore the first line of each page, the stories were real, and written by Penn and Teller. And some of them were really good!)

[The Crazed Spruce]

8 hours ago, greyhorse said:

Can you enlighten me on the light and shadows please?

Classic misdirection. One of the other assistants stood in front of the light while the one in the box slipped into the base.

[greyhorse]

4 hours ago, The Crazed Spruce said:

Classic misdirection. One of the other assistants stood in front of the light while the one in the box slipped into the base.

I thought this thread was "how you think the tricks were done" and that people would reveal the answer if they knew.  It seems like you know but clearly don't want to reveal.  Perhaps you are a magician and abiding by the magician's code?  I get that the woman must be hiding in the platform.  And that there is another assistant that casts the shadow.  

1. So she hides in the platform.  That square base of a platform that the whole circle cage sits on?  It doesn't look like there's any room in there at all.  Does she hide somehow along the side of the circle and she gets spun over to the other side when he moves it over?

2. If there is another assistant making the shadow, where is she?  Obviously behind the cage and screen?  Where did she come from?  She's hiding in the darkness at the back of the stage and runs up?  It seems like there is a split second between when the assistant is completely covered with the screen and the light goes on.  So she has one second to get out of the way, and the second assistant from somewhere pop into place?  And the same thing happens again on the other side?

3. Why was Penn making a big deal about one woman wearing big clunky boots and the assistant was barefoot?

I'm hoping that this thread picks up some traffic and there will be some more helpful answers here.  I've googled and the illusion is called "Eclipse" but I can't seem to find any links that show how the trick was done.

[Amarsir]

1 hour ago, greyhorse said:

1. So she hides in the platform.  That square base of a platform that the whole circle cage sits on?  It doesn't look like there's any room in there at all.  Does she hide somehow along the side of the circle and she gets spun over to the other side when he moves it over?

Consider the possibility that she exits out the back. Although that curved bar makes it look like she could maybe hide in shadows at the top, I think it's unnecessary. Swing out the cage in back and hide in the platform below. (Which is nicely obscured by fog.)

Quote

2. If there is another assistant making the shadow, where is she?  Obviously behind the cage and screen?  Where did she come from?  She's hiding in the darkness at the back of the stage and runs up?  It seems like there is a split second between when the assistant is completely covered with the screen and the light goes on.  So she has one second to get out of the way, and the second assistant from somewhere pop into place?  And the same thing happens again on the other side?

My guess: Pre-recorded and projecting internally. The first half could be done via front-projection from off-stage but with him standing in front it's probably not that for the second half.

Quote

3. Why was Penn making a big deal about one woman wearing big clunky boots and the assistant was barefoot?

My guess: illusion of height. Wearing the boots made one assistant seem taller and gives the impression there's less room underneath. When in fact it's actually about knee-height to the barefoot assistant. Admittedly that makes it seem less important than Penn seemed to imply, but it does seem the most rational.

[Amarsir]

Over in the main thread, @tominboston asked about the tatoo trick. The short answer is force, pre-ordered deck with multiple out, and force.

1) Penn said they're all using the same deck. That's probably a good indication that they're not. There's plenty of opportunity to switch between the selection and the prior person completing.

2) Although Penn shuffles, "riffle until stop" is an easy thing to rig. And I think Penn might have simply done a bottom deal to Alyson. He forced her to take Queen of Spades and then revealed it.

3) Teller said between 5 and 15. So he just needs to know the order and to memorize at most 11 locations. But since he controlled the count, he probably did some trickery there and forced it even more. Let's say a combination of the two.

3.5) Notice that after Alyson get's Teller's card, Teller hands the deck to Penn, who holds it in his right hand and then moves a bit so his right side is even more behind Teller. (Who already has the attention.) Easy time for a deck switch before handing off to Jesse.

4) Easiest way: The deck all has the same card. We never saw the faces except the one she took. 

[SomethingClever]

Yep, all forces. Backslip force, false count force, deck switch to a forcing deck.

[The Crazed Spruce]

9 hours ago, greyhorse said:

I thought this thread was "how you think the tricks were done" and that people would reveal the answer if they knew.  It seems like you know but clearly don't want to reveal.  Perhaps you are a magician and abiding by the magician's code?  I get that the woman must be hiding in the platform.  And that there is another assistant that casts the shadow.  

1. So she hides in the platform.  That square base of a platform that the whole circle cage sits on?  It doesn't look like there's any room in there at all.  Does she hide somehow along the side of the circle and she gets spun over to the other side when he moves it over?

2. If there is another assistant making the shadow, where is she?  Obviously behind the cage and screen?  Where did she come from?  She's hiding in the darkness at the back of the stage and runs up?  It seems like there is a split second between when the assistant is completely covered with the screen and the light goes on.  So she has one second to get out of the way, and the second assistant from somewhere pop into place?  And the same thing happens again on the other side?

3. Why was Penn making a big deal about one woman wearing big clunky boots and the assistant was barefoot?

No, I'm just a fan who's seen just about every 'behind the magic' special he can. :)

One of the women who brought out the box was casting the shadows from behind. (The one with the boots, 'cause they gave her a few extra inches of height, so the light can be cast on her without hitting the other woman.) If you rewatch the trick, she disappeared as the magician was putting the main assistant in the box, because she was hiding behind it until it was time for her shadow to appear. It takes practice, timing, skill, and a well-designed box, but it's easy when you know how.

19 minutes ago, SomethingClever said:

Yep, all forces. Backslip force, false count force, deck switch to a forcing deck.

That was my take on it, too. The whole point of the bit was to showcase three different types of forces. Well done, too.

[SomethingClever]

On 7/21/2016 at 8:37 AM, Charlesman said:

I still don't know the full details behind Shawn Farquhar's book trick, but I can rule out a few things and provide some info. It has nothing to do with the glasses. The trick can be done without them entirely, they may have been added to the routine just to mess with Penn and Teller as a red herring. There is no book switch, and the blank one is not written in invisible or UV ink. 

Additionally: the trick cannot be performed while surrounded. There are 'bad angles' that would give away what he's doing. Being seen from the side and from at least a few feet away is the best way to perform it, so the back-to-back staging is actually slightly necessary. Also, the 'real' book isn't entirely kosher either. A magician who was hired to perform at a meeting of Sherlock Holmes fans asked Shawn if this trick would be good for that job, and was warned that a true Holmes fan might notice something odd about the book. Also, any intelligent reader who spends too much time with the book might notice something weird about it too. 

The book does contain some real Holmes material though, real characters and maybe some passages, but there's definitely something off about it. 

I know the method for the marketed version of this trick, but Shawn has said that the version he performed on the show was a modified version to be more fooling to P&T. In the original version, there's no way he could've handed the book to Alyson to let her look through it. What you're saying is correct for the version he's selling, but I don't know about the version he actually did on stage. 

[Amarsir]

6 hours ago, The Crazed Spruce said:

One of the women who brought out the box was casting the shadows from behind. (The one with the boots, 'cause they gave her a few extra inches of height, so the light can be cast on her without hitting the other woman.) If you rewatch the trick, she disappeared as the magician was putting the main assistant in the box, because she was hiding behind it until it was time for her shadow to appear. It takes practice, timing, skill, and a well-designed box, but it's easy when you know how.

I thought so at first too, but there are a couple problems with that:

1) She's on-stage for the "reappearance" shadows.
2) The time between her exiting the camera and the shadow appearing is less than 1 second. Although she was out of our view I doubt she was out of the audience's.
3) Her hair and outfit are both different enough to cast different shadows. No way could she have switched a wig (and back) that quickly.
4) We see the silhouette of bare (or at least stockinged) feet, and even if she could have slipped out of the boots they wouldn't have been providing a benefit anymore.
5) The further away the light was coming from, the harder it is to get the line-ups precise. Now in a fixed stage I'm sure it could be done. But given how they pivoted the wheel at the start, and the fact that the floor was covered in fog, it'd be really hard to hit their marks on the fly. 

So I stand by my prediction of a pre-recorded silhouette shot from a small projector internally. However, we're quibbling over something minor here since we both agree on the main point: it's not the main assistant casting the shadows.

[Amarsir]

6 hours ago, SomethingClever said:

I know the method for the marketed version of this trick, but Shawn has said that the version he performed on the show was a modified version to be more fooling to P&T. In the original version, there's no way he could've handed the book to Alyson to let her look through it. What you're saying is correct for the version he's selling, but I don't know about the version he actually did on stage. 

I believe @Charlesman is revealing something from Penn's podcast, which I just caught up on this afternoon. In it, Penn says that everyone's guesses are wrong: it's not contacts and it's not the method they used in Cruel Tricks. It is something that has special significance to P&T, though that's no hint to me.

A more interesting thing Penn shared is that in Farquhar's first appearance he only fooled them because the two partners didn't communicate well. Penn, who was on stage, knew that it started with a card force but didn't get the rest. Teller figured out everything else but didn't realize it was a force. So each one was fooled individually even though together they knew everything.  Unlike this second appearance where they didn't know until he told them afterwards.

Penn also revealed something about an upcoming trick, which I will spoiler tag since it hasn't aired yet:

Spoiler

There is one magician who towards the end of a trick tries a force on Teller, who avoids it and picks a different card. And the magician being a pro recovers with a second out, but it's "not as impressive". Penn's point in bringing this up is they're not sure if they should accept a force when they see it mid-performance or not. Because if they play along they become complicit in the act and aren't being honestly skeptical like the show's premise. However, if they avoid the force they're sabotaging someone's trick.

[Kromm]

On 7/16/2016 at 8:29 PM, greyhorse said:

New to this show and only caught the last part.  As I said in the episode thread, I don't see the point of the show if we're not told how they were done.  

Do you follow magic at all aside from this show?  Revealing tricks is pretty much a no-no. The few cases where that's done are for really old hat tricks, not new ones.

At least revealing (and thus "burning" them) to the general public on TV. That's why a thread like this is nice--its not ruining the tricks for the general public, but you can probably learn what you want to know.

Edited July 22, 2016 by Kromm

[greyhorse]

11 minutes ago, Amarsir said:

I thought so at first too, but there are a couple problems with that:

1) She's on-stage for the "reappearance" shadows.
2) The time between her exiting the camera and the shadow appearing is less than 1 second. Although she was out of our view I doubt she was out of the audience's.
3) Her hair and outfit are both different enough to cast different shadows. No way could she have switched a wig (and back) that quickly.
4) We see the silhouette of bare (or at least stockinged) feet, and even if she could have slipped out of the boots they wouldn't have been providing a benefit anymore.
5) The further away the light was coming from, the harder it is to get the line-ups precise. Now in a fixed stage I'm sure it could be done. But given how they pivoted the wheel at the start, and the fact that the floor was covered in fog, it'd be really hard to hit their marks on the fly. 

So I stand by my prediction of a pre-recorded silhouette shot from a small projector internally. However, we're quibbling over something minor here since we both agree on the main point: it's not the main assistant casting the shadows.

1. Exactly.

2. Yes as well.  I watched in slow motion.  As he is about to cover her, she kind of repositions her feet to be "up" the curve of the cage.  But then the shadows make it look like they are on the "floor" of the cage.  Her hands and arms are in slightly different positions as well.  And there is very little time.

3. It obviously can't be the first girl, so I do think that maybe it was prerecorded.  However, this trick looks very similar to the David Copperfield Great Wall trick that I alluded to up above.  And in that trick, they always talked about how the light cast different shadows and that the assistant hides while a second assistant who was in the box and out of sight does the movements.  But if there is a second somebody in the box/cage, then where does she go?  Surely they can't both hide in the trap door.  Perhaps there is a second girl who hides in the back of the stage and moves up to do the movements outside of the cage?  Penn really emphasized that "light does funny things" and that "shadows don't appear where they seem they should" and it is hard to get your mind around that even if you know it's going to happen.

[Totale]

2 hours ago, Amarsir said:

So I stand by my prediction of a pre-recorded silhouette shot from a small projector internally.

If you didn't sleep through the pre-trick interview, the guy specifically talked about how fascinated he was with combining stage magic with videography.  He would have been better off keeping his mouth shut, since once he said that I was looking out for possible video gizmos in his trick.

[SomethingClever]

3 hours ago, Amarsir said:

I believe @Charlesman is revealing something from Penn's podcast, which I just caught up on this afternoon. In it, Penn says that everyone's guesses are wrong: it's not contacts and it's not the method they used in Cruel Tricks. It is something that has special significance to P&T, though that's no hint to me.

A more interesting thing Penn shared is that in Farquhar's first appearance he only fooled them because the two partners didn't communicate well. Penn, who was on stage, knew that it started with a card force but didn't get the rest. Teller figured out everything else but didn't realize it was a force. So each one was fooled individually even though together they knew everything.  Unlike this second appearance where they didn't know until he told them afterwards.

Penn also revealed something about an upcoming trick, which I will spoiler tag since it hasn't aired yet:

  Reveal hidden contents

There is one magician who towards the end of a trick tries a force on Teller, who avoids it and picks a different card. And the magician being a pro recovers with a second out, but it's "not as impressive". Penn's point in bringing this up is they're not sure if they should accept a force when they see it mid-performance or not. Because if they play along they become complicit in the act and aren't being honestly skeptical like the show's premise. However, if they avoid the force they're sabotaging someone's trick.

The Penn podcast is interesting, particularly the bit about taking force cards. He doesn't really address the issue of angles or whatnot to Farquar's trick, only that it isn't special contacts and it isn't the svengali/magical coloring book method.

I assumed CHARLESMAN was talking about the marketed trick, since he refers to a magician asking Shawn about whether it would be good for performing at a Sherlock Holmes fan meeting (and because all the things he described are true about the marketed version of the trick).

[Kromm]

Okay, I'd like a one-off analysis of how people believe this (from America's Got Talent) was done. I'm thinking part of it is fairly simple.  Technically this is slightly off-topic, but I thinking posting this in the AGT forum wouldn't get any intelligent responses, and really its the same kind of thing we'd see on Fool Us under other circumstances.

The "hardest" part could actually the easiest to potentially explain. It's likely no accident that the guy makes sure he goes back and takes the metal scoop out of the bowl of jelly beans, because the bowl probably has a scale built into it somehow (alternately the tray that beans are later poured onto might have some way to measure what's put onto it as well). But there are other aspects to this.  

The fact that they let us see the "JEL" on the board before it is raised is also a clear distraction intended to (falsely) assure the audience that nothing has changed with that board. 

The earlier parts of this performance are, I believe, something simple like the man having some kind of transmitter/sending device and the woman having a receiver (note: it does NOT have to be in her ear--it could be a vibration device just as easily). One theory I've already seen for their earlier AGT performances is that it's apparently fairly easy to build a sending device into a shoe where you send simple morse code by pressing your toes against a trigger inside of a shoe.  Clearly both of them have to really practice to do it that quickly, and use shorthand, like just the first letter of the Jelly Bean color, but it's a clear method they could have used.

But as I said, there are a lot of moving parts/events in this performance. So... theories?
 

Edited August 3, 2016 by Kromm

[ae2]

My first thought was we can't see behind the board at any point, that there must be someone back there writing in the numbers/flavors. Then they somehow flip the board. Not sure how plausible that is.

We don't have the full view of the stage the entire time (I always assume the camera work is choreographed with the magic act so that they don't inadvertently give things away). When they show the chalkboard at the beginning it's just the board, hanging by wires. When we see it again at the end after he asks them to lower it, it's sitting on a stand of some sort with wheels. Then a stage hand walks away from each side. It's really tough to conjecture when we can't see what they do, but it's possible they brought out the real answers we see and manage to position it.

[Charlesman]

I think you're spot on. A thumper, a transmitter system, to signal from the guy to the girl what the two colors of chosen jelly beans are. He can tap with his toe and she'll feel it, probably strapped to her thigh.  There's maybe six colors to choose from, so, a pretty simple system.

Then, an accurate scale built into the bowl to tell how many grams of jelly bean were removed.

Finally, the chalkboard is kind of easy. At the beginning of the trick, it's raised with the curtain to the "top" of the stage. I think, once it gets there, a guy in the rafters unhooks it so that the red curtain stays in place, but, the chalkboard itself can be raised six more feet up. Above the catwalk. The audience can't see it, there may be blackout curtains up there to block the light rigs and stuff. So the guy in the rafters can just write whatever as the trick goes along. He then lowers it back into position behind the red curtain, clips it back on, and they lower them together as one unit again back onto the stage.

[Kromm]

2 hours ago, Charlesman said:

I think you're spot on. A thumper, a transmitter system, to signal from the guy to the girl what the two colors of chosen jelly beans are. He can tap with his toe and she'll feel it, probably strapped to her thigh.  There's maybe six colors to choose from, so, a pretty simple system.

Then, an accurate scale built into the bowl to tell how many grams of jelly bean were removed.

Finally, the chalkboard is kind of easy. At the beginning of the trick, it's raised with the curtain to the "top" of the stage. I think, once it gets there, a guy in the rafters unhooks it so that the red curtain stays in place, but, the chalkboard itself can be raised six more feet up. Above the catwalk. The audience can't see it, there may be blackout curtains up there to block the light rigs and stuff. So the guy in the rafters can just write whatever as the trick goes along. He then lowers it back into position behind the red curtain, clips it back on, and they lower them together as one unit again back onto the stage.

If you saw their earlier performances in previous AGT rounds, it was clear that the receiver on her end was actually a vibrating device built into a swing she sat on. She used the same stupid prop in two successive previous rounds, so it was clear (because otherwise a swing would be a really stupid prop). They did other kinds of "Mentalism" in those performances--other things she'd have to guess at that the guy was supposedly holding or looking at.  They made a big deal in their first audition, for example, with Heidi Klum looking inside both of the girls ears to confirm there was no earpiece.  Which of course distracted people from even thinking about what other ways she could be receiving a signal.  Some of those choices were far more complex than a color choice, so it was actually probably harder than what they did this time.

This performance, nobody bothered ever looking at her ears, so it could just as easily be an earpiece this time, although if she's used to interpreting vibrations anyway, perhaps there was no reason to switch (and instead of it being part of the swing it could indeed simply be on her body somewhere).

[ae2]

Any ideas on Jibrizy? I'm interested in knowing what P&T guessed and eddy he actually did. 

[theatremouse]

I basically got the gist of their guess, which is also what I guessed, but I have no idea what he actually did. Either way it was SUPER slick.

[paigow]

Is Teller using fake arms in the suit for the rat cage trick?

[ddawn23]

10 hours ago, paigow said:

Is Teller using fake arms in the suit for the rat cage trick?

Almost certainly a fake arm on Teller's right. Or at the very least an artificially stiffened glove with an opening for him to get his hand out.  The left appeared real. He moved his fingers on his left hand, but the fingers on the right glove were in the exact same position throughout. And the trapdoor didn't quite close all the way after he sprayed the fake blood and stuck the fake rat to his face. And the blood appeared to come from about where his hand would be if he stuck it up through the cage floor. A cute trick, but a rather obvious one.

[Monty]

I love the rat cage trick because it's got all the things that make a regular trick a Penn & Teller trick. Everything Penn says is a lie (he's forcing the card while claiming there's no card force, then he goes through this whole rigmarole with the slice of bacon that has nothing to do with anything, then he claims to shuffle the card to the top of the deck while doing nothing of the sort) and then there's a completely gratuitous shock ending that also follows the rules of revealing the card at the end of the trick.

[Amarsir]

My only problem with the Rat trick is that it's the same as the Blockhead trick.  (A card instead of glasses.) Presumably they take the latter on the road when obtaining rats isn't convenient. But since it was already on the show in season 1, this felt repetitive.  Then again I have acknowledged since CW picked up the show that they have to burn through tricks really fast, forcing them to do new inventions (Love Ritual) or bring back old stuff (cut and restored snake).

So Paul Gertner getting "Penn & Teller" on the side of the deck... My guess was deck swap. Although I didn't see when he could have done it, I also don't see a configuration for a deck that has already used 2 sides. But P&T ruled that out so I feel like I'm taking the easy answer.

[greyhorse]

Well, this thread doesn't seem too popular, and it doesn't seem like those who post here and know how the tricks were done are very forthcoming, despite the name of this thread.  Hoping somebody will clue those who of us are clueless in and relieve some of the frustration.

First guy with the cardboard box, broken mirror:  I think clearly the assistant must be lying down low underneath the table?  We see underneath the table but maybe there is a big enough area that would allow somebody to hide?  Only thing I can think of, nothing else makes sense.  In terms of the ending, if you watch in slow motion, you can clearly see her right hand replacing where his was.  So he must have ran out behind the black screen with the prop person and hauled his butt to the back entrance, as alluded to by Penn and how quickly he must have moved.

Unshuffled trick.  Well, he said there is a book, so I suppose he came on the show to try to sell more of his book.  Is this just a question of very precise shuffling?  If so, how?  There's no way you can precisely shuffle each and every time so every other card gets slotted in, right?  

Mentalist.  Seemed like a boring dumb trick with very little wow factor.  Is it as simple as the cards are somehow pre-marked so he can tell?  Or he gives them different types of pens?

[SomethingClever]

6 hours ago, greyhorse said:

Unshuffled trick.  Well, he said there is a book, so I suppose he came on the show to try to sell more of his book.  Is this just a question of very precise shuffling?  If so, how?  There's no way you can precisely shuffle each and every time so every other card gets slotted in, right?  

He's definitely not on the show to try and sell more books. Writing magic books is a very niche market, and no one is getting rich off it, The majority of people who would be interested in actually buying his book probably already know who he is. The amount he'll earn in bookings from being on TV will dwarf what few extra book sales he gets out of it.

As for the method, that's exactly what it is. It's a perfect one-for-one shuffle. If you do that 8 times in a row, the deck restores to its original state. So you take a deck in new deck order, write "UNSHUFFLED" on the side, give it 5 perfect shuffles, and it looks like a bunch of nonsense. Give it one more shuffle and it will read "UNSHUFFLED" 4 times, then two, then just one and it's restored to order. It requires doing what's called a Perfect Faro Shuffle, which is difficult, but not nearly as impossible as it seems. Basically, you butt the cards up against one another and give just the right amount of pressure, and they'll weave together perfectly. If the deck is in good condition, I hit my faros probably about 85% of the time. Also, as a side note, not only can a perfect shuffle be done, but I personally know a guy who can do it one-handed.

[ae2]

The Unshuffled part of the trick is (I think) what's in the book and what P&T knew already. SomethingClever explained how that works. It was the King of Spades and Penn & Teller on the cards that he changed for the show.

Having Alison choose the King of Spades was a force - maybe the wrong term, but he made it look like she was choosing, she wasn't.

I'm fairly certain that he used the two different long edges of the cards - one to do the Unshuffled part, and then rotated to do the ending of the trick. If you watch the deck as Penn looks at it you can sort of see writing on both edges. He said that looking at the deck would tell them "something but not all of them" - this is the "something" that the deck would tell them.

So the only real question is how he changed King of Spades into Penn & Teller. When they looked at the cards you can see Penn fanning the card edges. They thought that maybe the writing for King of Spades was on the top edges of the cards and he angled it to make it look flat, but this wasn't the case. 

Although near the end of the trick he said, "it's pretty clear at this point I can find any card in this deck I want to find. If he's implying that he could make the edge of the deck say any card, and that Alison choosing the King of Spades was not a force, then my mind is totally blown.

[Amarsir]

10 hours ago, greyhorse said:

First guy with the cardboard box, broken mirror:  I think clearly the assistant must be lying down low underneath the table?  We see underneath the table but maybe there is a big enough area that would allow somebody to hide?

Yeah. It's a well-constructed table for the audience's view because there are lots of different details breaking up the height so it looks smaller than it is. However, from the camera's downward angle you can see that not only is there whatever's under the table, but there's a rectangle sticking out on top where the box goes. And it's covered in cloth. So when you watch the trick mindful of that it's hard to not picture her lying in there. (Which is of course impressive contortionism.)

Quote

Mentalist.  Seemed like a boring dumb trick with very little wow factor.  Is it as simple as the cards are somehow pre-marked so he can tell?  Or he gives them different types of pens?

Could be either. You can change the ink cartridge in a pen to make it a different color without the outside showing, but given he used felt-tips I'd say the cards were marked. And there are lots of subtle ways to do that: slightly different size, puncture holes, notches, or just a stray mark.

[Amarsir]

10 minutes ago, ae2 said:

Although near the end of the trick he said, "it's pretty clear at this point I can find any card in this deck I want to find. If he's implying that he could make the edge of the deck say any card, and that Alison choosing the King of Spades was not a force, then my mind is totally blown.

He also made a couple claims about how seeing "unshuffled" 4 times means the deck was separated into 4 suits and 2 times was red/black. But didn't prove either time and it wouldn't work if one more Faro actually put them back in new deck order. So it's safe to say that your Force deduction is correct, and an unproven claim about "find any card" is not to be taken at face value.

[Charlesman]

I saw this version of Origami, shot from below, which really shows how much room is under the table:

note how slanted the bottom is on the mirror side of the table. Shows how much room is really under there (and how well hidden it is in the presentation)

[Monty]

For me, the key moment is when she steps into the box (about 1:26 in that video) and noticeably steps DOWN. Dead giveaway that there's space down there.

[theatremouse]

8 hours ago, ae2 said:

Although near the end of the trick he said, "it's pretty clear at this point I can find any card in this deck I want to find. If he's implying that he could make the edge of the deck say any card, and that Alison choosing the King of Spades was not a force, then my mind is totally blown.

I'm probably totally wrong, and I don't know that it helps explain the trick, but when he said the "pretty clear" thing I took it to mean he was admitting all the cards were marked in one way or another, which isn't really a giveaway of anything if P&T are examining the deck.

8 hours ago, Amarsir said:

Could be either. You can change the ink cartridge in a pen to make it a different color without the outside showing, but given he used felt-tips I'd say the cards were marked. And there are lots of subtle ways to do that: slightly different size, puncture holes, notches, or just a stray mark.

A thing I noticed, and have no idea what it means but it stood out to me bigtime, was when they passed the cards down the line I noticed they did it in a specific pattern, first person put their's in front, next person put theirs in back, always alternating like that. Did I miss him telling them outloud to do that? Because if not it made me think they were just plain all in cahoots. I was bored by the trick and forgot to pay closer attention.

[SVNBob]

On 8/4/2016 at 7:15 PM, ae2 said:

Any ideas on Jibrizy? I'm interested in knowing what P&T guessed and eddy he actually did. 

 

On 8/4/2016 at 8:44 PM, theatremouse said:

I basically got the gist of their guess, which is also what I guessed, but I have no idea what he actually did. Either way it was SUPER slick.

I'm getting caught up on the episodes, so I just watched this one.  Kid was really good.

First, the trick that didn't fool them, the pen and pencil swap with sleight of mouth.  This one I know how it was done too.  The pencil was real, the pen was not.  The "pen" was a tube that looked like a pen on one side, and pencil on the other. 

An ASCII visual aid:  "pen" -> (|) <- "pencil"

So to go from pen to pencil as he uncapped it, he simply twisted it very quickly to show the pencil side.  The real amazing part was as Penn said, when he did the reverse with his lips while distracting us by pulling out the real pencil in one hand and still holding the pen cap in the other.  Very talented indeed.

The coin in the sugar packet is a bit harder.  But I saw something that was pointed out on a reddit thread.  The sugar packet was marked.  Look back at the overhead shot when he pours out the sugar and coin, but don't look at his hands.  Look at the other portion of the sugar packet on the table.  There's a mark under the "r" of "Sugar" that isn't on any of the other packets on the table.  So that packet was important, and was probably gimmicked somehow.  Likely a slit in the side for inserting the coin, since it was confirmed that any indicator on the coin would be fine, and not just an X (meaning it wasn't pre-loaded with a pre-marked coin, and he didn't just vanish the one Alyson marked).

[theatremouse]

4 hours ago, SVNBob said:

So that packet was important, and was probably gimmicked somehow.  Likely a slit in the side for inserting the coin, since it was confirmed that any indicator on the coin would be fine, and not just an X (meaning it wasn't pre-loaded with a pre-marked coin, and he didn't just vanish the one Alyson marked).

I would go so far to say it was definitely a slit for inserting the coin. You could tell both by the way he held, and then tore open the packet he was covering for where it was already slit. That part did not fool me; I felt like I could see it.

[SVNBob]

All caught up now, so I can finally opine about some of the other tricks being discussed here.

On 8/19/2016 at 7:53 AM, Amarsir said:

You can change the ink cartridge in a pen to make it a different color without the outside showing, but given he used felt-tips I'd say the cards were marked. And there are lots of subtle ways to do that: slightly different size, puncture holes, notches, or just a stray mark.

Another easy way would be different kinds of felt-tips.  Fine point versus thick, well used and weak versus fresh from the pack and strong, wet erase versus dry erase (whiteboard markers)...  Looking at the Sharpie website at just their selection in black, and there's dozens of different kinds of markers.  So all he'd really need to do is get 5 distinct (to him) markers and observe who used which.  And since he handed them out, and they handed them back separately, he'd have two separate points of verification on who used which marker. 

That would also match with with the comments Penn had about how the trick was done.  He kept fiddling with his own pen and saying how "I" would like that power.  Meaning the power was in the pen(n).

[greyhorse]

48 minutes ago, SVNBob said:

All caught up now, so I can finally opine about some of the other tricks being discussed here.

Another easy way would be different kinds of felt-tips.  Fine point versus thick, well used and weak versus fresh from the pack and strong, wet erase versus dry erase (whiteboard markers)...  Looking at the Sharpie website at just their selection in black, and there's dozens of different kinds of markers.  So all he'd really need to do is get 5 distinct (to him) markers and observe who used which.  And since he handed them out, and they handed them back separately, he'd have two separate points of verification on who used which marker. 

That would also match with with the comments Penn had about how the trick was done.  He kept fiddling with his own pen and saying how "I" would like that power.  Meaning the power was in the pen(n).

Good point about Penn fiddling with the pen, I didn't catch that.  I do recall him saying something like "if we really truly could have magical powers, I would want what you have", but I didn't see how that revealed the trick.  So it must have been either different color inks or thick/medium/fine point, then that's truly a dumb trick.  Why would the show allow something so stupid to get on the show?  An 8 year-old could have come up with this trick.

[theatremouse]

An 8 year old could come up with a lot of these tricks, but I get the impression if the producers think the execution is particularly well done by a particular act, then the people get invited to do it anyway.

[Monty]

A lot of magic tricks sound dumb once you know how they're done. It's the presentation that makes it worthwhile.

[greyhorse]

15 hours ago, Monty said:

A lot of magic tricks sound dumb once you know how they're done. It's the presentation that makes it worthwhile.

Fair enough.  But did you think there was anything spectacular about that guy's presentation of his dumb trick?  He has five random people come up in the audience.  They just stand there stupidly.  He makes some stupid joke about the one man wearing a color typically associated with female panties.  He gives them the cards.  He says sit down if you have your right color.  And they all sit down.  Not funny.  Not entertaining.  Not suspenseful to say the least.

A cool trick would have been if he somehow actually removed the correct colored underwear from each person's pants.

[frogzapper]

On 8/21/2016 at 0:35 AM, greyhorse said:

Good point about Penn fiddling with the pen, I didn't catch that.  I do recall him saying something like "if we really truly could have magical powers, I would want what you have", but I didn't see how that revealed the trick.

I'm guessing that maybe there were "invisible ink" type markings on the pieces of paper that maybe he could only see through his eyeglasses, perhaps? Since he handed out the papers he would know who had each one. And maybe that would tie in with Penn's question about magical powers since a power that a lot of people would like to have is x-ray vision or something like that (or maybe being invisible?). I agree with others here though that the trick needed a twist or something to make it more entertainment-worthy!

[Zeditious]

11 hours ago, greyhorse said:

A cool trick would have been if he somehow actually removed the correct colored underwear from each person's pants.

Fair enough. But. A really cool trick would have been if he somehow actually (well not actually, since this is just all BULLSHIT! {magic}) made all of their clothes disappear right in front of our eyes and just left them standing there in said underwear... cold... frightened... horrified... traumatized...shamed... embarrassed... humiliated... exploited... subjugated &... objectified.

[greyhorse]

3 minutes ago, Zeditious said:

Fair enough. But. A really cool trick would have been if he somehow actually (well not actually, since this is just all BULLSHIT! {magic}) made all of their clothes disappear right in front of our eyes and just left them standing there in said underwear... cold... frightened... horrified... traumatized...shamed... embarrassed... humiliated... exploited... subjugated &... objectified.

Yes, agree.  I was going to say that but it obviously probably wouldn't fly with the volunteers.  Now if he had five willing, fit, attractive, hard-bodied, exhibitionist volunteers, then that would have been something!

[Amarsir]

I think P&T don't have a good sense of what technology can accomplish. This makes them both under and over-estimate how it's being used. Last year we had Simon Pierro who almost fooled them with a selfie. ("3 weeks earlier" he had.) While I don't know for sure how that was accomplished, it seems seems clear it was printed from the stand and fed into the picture frame, then revealed on cue.  So if I'm right, P&T didn't think printer, but were told printer.

So this time they did guess printer for Wayne Hoffman. But really I think the method is much simpler: the volunteer's name isn't Carlos. In fact his grin kind of gave it away as soon as he saw the letter. Hoffman insisted on having a man be chosen as the volunteer, so all he had to do was swap the license. And remember that Penn chose the guy, but Teller was the one reading information off "his" license. There's a risk Teller might have realized it's a different guy, but nothing that would ruin the trick.

Clear method on that for me. But they guessed printer.

So how about Vitaly Beckman fooling them the prior week with a photo? Remember that Penn ruled out both "multiple outs" and (seemingly) a force. (Vitaly did respond to "Any of 52?" with "It was a free choice" - which is not quite answering the question, but given his selection method it'd be impossible force without multiple outs.)

This one I'm less certain about. As performed, I think he had several photo albums behind the stand. (Which doesn't count as multiple outs since it's always the same reveal.) However I've also seen him do the same trick here and that method wouldn't have worked. (Though a force might.) He also has other tricks that I think could only be done with impressive printing technology. Maybe not relevant if he used a more mundane approach, but given that it involves photos I'm including it.

So basically I think that the guys are old school enough that while they're certainly not clueless about technology, it's sufficiently out of their comfort zone to mess with their guesses.

[theatremouse]

Mmm. I see. So I think of that bunch, the foolers were all moreso the category, not so much necessarily that P&T could not imagine how it was might have been done, but rather they could probably come up with several possibilities, but had to chose which one they thought actually happened in front of them, and in each case: chose wrong. Because they're not allowed to just list out every possible way a trick might have been accomplished in a neverending list, they have to decide on a guess and go with it. Or at least maybe the first printer guy they didn't think of it, but then it got in their head so it factored in to future guesses.

[Xantar]

I did figure that Wayne Hoffman was doing an instant stooge, but for some reason it didn't occur to me that he might have swapped the driver's license. If that was actually his method, though, he took a huge risk. If the chosen volunteer had turned out to be Asian, giving him the name "Carlos" would have looked rather odd. 

I think it was in the first season that someone else fooled Penn and Teller using essentially three instant stooges. At least that's what we on the forum thought it was, and I personally felt if that was really his method, he deserved to win just on sheer ballsiness.

[frogzapper]

I'm really interested to see everyone's theories on how Xavier did his levitation jump rope trick and how the self-working card trick worked in the Great Escape episode. 

Jump rope - I'm assuming the dark lighting was masking something, but I didn't know how to interpret Penn's handkerchief remark. Was he implying that Xavier was being pushed up from below by something? 

Card trick - were there multiple "3 of spade" cards at the top of the deck when he had Penn choose a card? That's my only guess since he told Alyson to go through the deck in a slow and deliberate fashion. Was that so that Penn would say "stop" early enough to choose one of them? What if he had waited a lot longer to say "stop?" Still an impressive trick - I don't know how he got all of the cards arranged in the correct piles at the end!

[Charlesman]

From the earlier episode, I'm assuming the mentalists bit with the dynamite was cover to get time for the card to be printed. Exactly how it worked I'm not sure of. 

[Amarsir]

10 hours ago, frogzapper said:

Jump rope - I'm assuming the dark lighting was masking something, but I didn't know how to interpret Penn's handkerchief remark. Was he implying that Xavier was being pushed up from below by something? 

 

My theory - and I haven't rewatched since forming this to verify it - is that there's a bar coming from stage right that he can either fit through the rope handle before attaching, or just grab in one hand with the jumprope handle. The trick to "jumping" the rope becomes to rotate his grip on that right side so the handle of the rope is going around as the whole rope does. Hold two markers in your hand and manipulate them to go around each other and you have a sense of what I'm talking about.  And then his left hand can be the driving force and just move normally.

Quote

Card trick - were there multiple "3 of spade" cards at the top of the deck when he had Penn choose a card? That's my only guess since he told Alyson to go through the deck in a slow and deliberate fashion. Was that so that Penn would say "stop" early enough to choose one of them? What if he had waited a lot longer to say "stop?" Still an impressive trick - I don't know how he got all of the cards arranged in the correct piles at the end!

I think so, yes. That part of the deck would be a force deck, where multiple cards are the 3 of spades. (Such was Penn's guess.) If it took too long, I imagine he has another out for that. 

For the reveal, all he has to do is pop a dozen or so cards on top of the deck after he does the riffle shuffle.  They're all set up with the counts, reveals, and instructions for Alyson to just do the rest.

1 hour ago, Charlesman said:

From the earlier episode, I'm assuming the mentalists bit with the dynamite was cover to get time for the card to be printed. Exactly how it worked I'm not sure of. 

The dynamite does seem like a time sink. But no, I don't think the card was printed.  Here's what I think. (And I apologize for the cultural insensitivity of what I'm about to say, but it makes the point.)

The magician (Wayne Hoffman) has 4 pockets, each with a wallet, a license, and a letter. One letter says "Carlos". Another says "Rahul". Another says "Tyrone" and the fourth says "Dylan". Each license has the same name, and a photo of the kind of person you're picturing when you heard that name because you're all as racist as I am.  He gets Penn to pick a male from the audience. As that person comes up, Hoffman reaches into the appropriate pocket. He takes the license and slight-of-hands it to reveal the fake one. Then he asks the volunteer to read the letter with the fake name at the top.  Then the volunteer goes to sit down.

Hoffman stalls. (Maybe to make it seem like the card is being printed. Or just to make us forget exactly what the volunteer looked like.)  Then he invites P&T on stage. He pulls out the appropriate wallet from that same pocket. Or on second thought, maybe he just has one wallet with many cards. Penn gets the embossed card from the wallet. Teller gets the fake license. They compare, and of course there's a match.  Great trick.

For fooling P&T, there's a chance Teller will realize that the photo he's holding doesn't match the volunteer. But Teller didn't pick the guy, Penn did. And neither has seen him up close. Fair chance they don't realize, because all the trickery was done up front.  And even if they do, it's still a great trick for the rest of us. Just a little bit of "instant stooge" which anyone would play along with.

[SomethingClever]

Ok, so I've watched Caleb Wiles' trick a few more times, and I've got a pretty good gist of what's going on. There's one place where I'm not 100% sure what he's doing, but I've got a couple different options.

First, he doesn't have a bank of three of spades( at least, not regular ones). You can see that from the spread at the beginning.

He's hiding maybe 5-6 cards at the top of that spread, but that's not nearly enough to have a confident bank of force cards. What you will notice is that the top stock of cards is spread much more closely than the bottom half of the deck. That's because it's a bank of misindexed cards. By that I mean this type of card:

So there are a bunch of cards that have the 3 of spades on them, except for one index, where there's a different card printed. That's what you see in the spread. You can see this by how he holds the card when he displays it. 

Now, the next bit is a clever bit of business where he gets her to put that whole top stock of misindexed cards on the bottom of the deck, then ends up shuffling those same misindexed cards (none of which matter anymore), leaving the stock of cards with instructions totally undisturbed. Then, regardless of which order she stacks them in, by going through and looking for the next instruction card, they're all going to end up on the bottom. So, to clarify, there are two sections of the deck that matter. There is a stack of misindexed cards at the beginning to force the card. After the card is forces, those cards do not matter. There is a second stack of cards in the second half of the deck that has the instruction cards. Those can't be mixed up. By the end of the shuffling procedure, the stack of cards that doesn't matter has been shuffled and cut and transferred to the bottom of the deck, leaving the important cards undisturbed on top.

So now the tricky part. Now, Caleb shuffles. Here's what he has to do in this shuffle. He has to maintain the top card. That's easy. It'll become the bottom card of the first pile. He also has to keep the next two instruction cards together with the cards directly underneath them (those will become the bottom cards of the next two piles. The last instruction card he has to keep together with the three cards under it. The first one has a part of the message, the 2nd one is indifferent, and the 3rd one is the 3 of spades. As long as those packets stay together, it doesn't matter how many cards get shuffled between the packets. So, how do you keep those packets together during a shuffle? Well, you can use riffle stacking techniques as if you were stacking a deck while shuffling. He might be doing that, but I don't think he is. The shuffle looks too clean, and there are easier ways. I think he's got a few of the cards sprayed with a very light adhesive (or they've got a clear daub on them that is slightly adhesive) which makes those packets of cards stay together during the shuffle. That's why, when Alison is dealing, he reaches over and grabs each instruction card to place it on the packet, he has to make sure it separates cleanly from the card below it. You can also kind of see it in the spread, there are a few small clumps of 2-3 cards that don't spread right in the middle of that spread, right where those instruction cards would be. 

That's my guess. I'm not 100% sure of the shuffling procedure (him shuffling, not her), but I'm pretty confident in that, and I'm certain on everything else. It's a really clever piece of business, and he gets several really nice displaces that really make it look like a normal deck.