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

[Charlesman]

2 hours ago, Amarsir said:

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.

My only hesitation on an instant stooge and a second, fake, license, is that Carlos was under 21. Penn picked a guy with a vertical drivers license, which several states issue to those who aren't of legal drinking age. When he came up and pulled it out of his pocket, you could see it was a vertical one. 

Later on, when teller was comparing the name and birthday, it was obviously a vertical license there too. Seemed like the same format for state and color, too. That's a lot of prep licenses to cover... 4 races, different state formats, etc... 

[SVNBob]

5 minutes ago, Charlesman said:

That's a lot of prep licenses to cover... 4 races, different state formats, etc... 

But he specifically asked for a Vegas local.  Meaning someone with a Nevada license.  That reduces the numbers to 8.  Assuming of course, that's how the trick is done.

Great analysis on the self working trick @SomethingClever.  I'd also wager that the real 3 of spades is the top card of the deck at the start of the trick.  Something else I noticed in the still you grabbed is that all the cards centered around the special cards in the deck (the jokers and the instructions) all appear to be real.  But there do not appear to be any special cards in the misindex bank.  That adds "natural" breakpoints in the deck to help sell that the cards are legit.

I'm not sure on Xavier's levitation, but we do have a point to start looking.  Penn brought up "The Dancing Handkerchief" in their guess, which seemed to be close. 

Looking into that trick, I found several video clips of big names in the magic community doing the trick.  I found variants from Lance Burton, David Copperfield, and even Doug Henning when he appeared on the Muppet Show.  But the biggest name attached to the dancing handkerchief is Blackstone.  Harry Senior made the trick one of his signature pieces, and naturally Harry Junior did the trick in tribute to his father.

In watching those clips, the key similarity would seem to be in the bottle gags.  That's when the handkerchiefs are "completely surrounded" but still get manipulated somehow.  Knowing how that is done might lead to the answer for Xavier.  @Amarsir's explanation seems like it might be on the right path.

Now, a trick I think I have figured out; the one with Moxie.  Simply stated, she was in the blue box the whole time.  Note that we never see the interior of that box until she appears.  However, there is something else we do not see: the bottom of the red box.  In fact, when they moved the red box both times, they tipped it so that the top was angled towards the audience, which angles the bottom away.   I think that was done deliberately so that we would not see that there is no bottom on the red box.

So if the red box is just a shell, that makes the trick relatively easy to explain.  Red shell is taken out of blue box, assistant is "secretly loaded" into the shell (per the conceit of the trick), then she vanishes immediately.  With no bottom to the red box, all that's needed is a trap door into the platform for her to hide.  Then the shell is placed back in the blue box over Moxie, and she is made to appear.

[greyhorse]

14 hours ago, SomethingClever said:

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.

...

Wow, this is excellent and exactly why I come to this thread!  Thank you!  Great analysis.  Normally these self-working tricks don't really interest me, but it was quite impressive.  And given Penn's "if I'm not right then you'll let me see the faces of all those cards" statement, seems like it is right on track.

The old school magician with the sleight of hand and the pigeon.... Yawn.  I'm again surprised how some of these acts make it on the show, as this would never fool pros like Penn and Teller.

The guy with the anagram box - So Penn was saying that he was using shells.  Does that mean when he puts the box over the letters, that there is somehow a preset sequence of letters that gets "pasted" onto the front of the blocks?  So the blocks don't fit snugly into the box but the box is likely bigger than the blocks to hold the shells?  And you could only do the trick a certain number of times before you ran out of sequenced shells?

The jump rope trick must be something to do with one hand not really doing much, sort of as described earlier.  You could see that the stage was quite dark.  Almost like there were black curtains coming from both sides.  I'll have to watch again, but didn't he do somersaults, or was he just raised up in the air.  You can see at the very end of the trick when he's touching the ground again that he looks down and it seems like he is picking his foot off presumably some darkened platform.  When Teller was holding the rope, it was tied in some weird knot but then Teller pulled it and it became all straight.  He motioned with his left hand and then the guy admitted they knew how he did it.

Was the trick at the end with the three escapes really a trick, or just some clever maneuvering?  I've always thought with all of these escape tricks, that the chains/handcuffs/bindings/etc. are just placed in a way that they aren't really secure.  So guy in the duffle bag - he was probably out of that immediately.  Who's to say there wasn't something in the bag that allowed him to get free immediately.  The two half naked men - wasn't watching too closely, but seemed with all the climbing up the pole and putting their legs over it, it untangled them.  The hot woman - this I was most intrigued with.  Was there something in the chair that allows her to cut the duct tape easily?  Does she inhale and push out her chest so it's not placed that tightly?  Somehow the same occurs for the arms and legs?  It would seem that just by pushing and stretching the tape, she was somehow able to break free, but we know that duct tape isn't that easily to bust.  And how convenient than when she flails violently, she frees her chest and the shirt pops open to reveal a sexy bra.  

[SomethingClever]

The dancing handkerchief is accomplished with a length of invisible thread that runs across the stage, run over pulleys just off stage (the hookups have varying degrees of complexity, but that's the general idea). The thread is manipulated by either an assistant, weights, or an electronic system to make the hanky dance around the stage. Applying this same principle to Xavier's levitation, I think we can probably deduce that he's got some sort of high tensile strength black wire running across the stage that he hooks into, which then raises him up. I think Amarsir got it right on how the jump rope "passes through" the wire, he's got it in his hands and lets the handle of the jump rope circle around the wire. 

[ddawn23]

On August 21, 2016 at 1:44 AM, 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).

And he really only needed two subtly different kinds of Sharpie. I noticed he carefully handed cards to two of the volunteers in portrait orientation and the other two in landscape. 

[Amarsir]

The mentalist couple: I rather suspect most of it is practiced code. E.g. If he starts the sentence with "I'm holding" it's eyeglasses. If he starts with "What do" it's a watch. You can build on that over years, planning for most stuff that might come up and just having the husband not pick anyone with something they don't have a code for.

What I don't get is her knowing something that he didn't seem to have known, e.g. Names. Clearly there's something unseen to that.

[Monty]

The part with the code is indeed a standard old-timey magician trick where they have a lot of phrases like "I wonder, can you tell me what is the name of this object Iam holding at this time?" and that means "A gold iPhone" or something.

The guy whose name and mother's name they knew couldn't work like that, so I suspect they had a confederate talk to him while he was in line for the show. It's called "warm reading," where you learn things about people ahead of time (as opposed to cold reading, where you mostly just fake it).

For the $100 bill, I strongly suspect that the guy switched in his own bill when he held it briefly.

[Amarsir]

Warm reading does seem the most likely, but I'm skeptical they have that level of access / control at the Rio. (At a small theater they're headlining, sure.) To find a guy who'd be sitting on the aisle toward the front and get that information in a way that isn't tempting disaster when you ask him "how many people here know that?" Impressive coordination.

[mansonlamps]

Plus the guy with the watch seemed so genuinely surprised, he would have had to be a pretty great actor to pull that off.  On the other hand, his wife or girlfriend seemed totally bored, so who knows?  I really enjoyed all 4 acts and I'm sorry the kid whose father was there didn't fool them so he could be in their act later, I'm a sucker for those kind of sweet moments.

[ddawn23]

So it's pretty clear the card in the teabag trick was just a force with a really elaborate reveal, right? He's practiced tearing the card in the exact same way each time and really did have an identical card in each of the 100 possible teabags. He made a big deal out of Penn completing the tear to lend a sense of authority behind the idea that the card in the teabag really was the one he tore at the beginning, but if that were the case he could've had Penn do the tear instead of controlling it himself.

I thought having Alyson hold the cup up in the air was strange, but of course that was to up the drama of the reveal, since had she not been holding the cup above her sight line she probably would have noticed, and perhaps commented on, the teabag dissolving in the hot water.

As for the pool trick shot guy-- it looked like he was using the trick shot to hide him jabbing the card onto the pool cue. His cries of "Hit the hat! Hit the hat!" were a pretty subtle use of misdirection to make it seem to us that he was concentrating on the trick shot too, when of course he was concentrating on jabbing the card onto the pool cue. The jabbing bit was what Penn was talking about when he said Anton used brute force instead of a gimmicked pool cue. Dude's pool shots are fantastic, but he needs to work on his sleight of hand. I usually can't see sleight of hand happening even when I know exactly when and where it's happening and am looking specifically for it, but even I noticed his steal and load.

[theatremouse]

I'm assuming based on Penn's response to the tea guy that this didn't actually have anything to do with how the trick was done, but for a moment there I was thinking the camera guy did him no favors as he was tossing things over his shoulder, because I could've sworn I saw a card or cards taped to the bottom of the cutting board thing as he tossed it away. And when he was initially moving the board around on the table, I thought I saw some funny business with how he placed it. But then in the next shot it looked like maybe that was just the camera angle making me think funny business where there was none. But since I thought I saw something underneath as soon as it threw it, it made me second guess myself. Anyone have any ideas on that front?

[Monty]

When I say a confederate talked to him, I don't mean that I think he was recruited. I'm thinking more of someone who circulates through the crowd and strikes up conversations with people to unobtrusively learn their names and hopefully things like their mother's names. Then they pass that information to the magicians, who proceed to blow some minds.

[theatremouse]

It takes some slick talking though to get that out of someone in casual conversation an hour earlier in such a way he'd not remember it happening when asked "how many people in the room knew that"? Otherwise you've pretty much got insta-stooge if he realizes in the moment "oh shit, that dude was chatting me up about this in line", but still answers "one" while looking at his SO, right?

[Monty]

I didn't say it would be easy! But knowing the name and mother of someone who hasn't said them out loud requires preparation. It's possible that they went on Twitter or Facebook to see who said they were coming to the show and then researched their families a little.

[SomethingClever]

5 hours ago, ddawn23 said:

So it's pretty clear the card in the teabag trick was just a force with a really elaborate reveal, right? He's practiced tearing the card in the exact same way each time and really did have an identical card in each of the 100 possible teabags. He made a big deal out of Penn completing the tear to lend a sense of authority behind the idea that the card in the teabag really was the one he tore at the beginning, but if that were the case he could've had Penn do the tear instead of controlling it himself.

It's not that he's practiced tearing the card the same way each time. That's all but impossible to match exactly, and it's more work than you need to do. He most likely used a gimmick on all the prepared teabag cards that allows him to tear them identically. More specifically, he likely used this gimmick. Then, he used said gimmick on the force card, but left it attached on the corner. The card is then forced, and he takes care to cover the rip when he takes the card out of the deck. All he has to do is feign ripping and let Penn tear the last bit of the corner off. The sound during the feigned ripping is created by ripping a small slit into the card as you fake the rip. To the spectator, it just looks like you ripped a little too far, and the sound is very fooling, since it's actually the sound of that card being ripped.

[Xantar]

I've heard that a hand that is holding something in it looks different than an empty fist because of the way the blood vessels constrict or something. Timon Kraus also gave Alyson a pretty big coin to hold. Is that how he guessed which hand was holding the coin?

[greyhorse]

22 hours ago, ddawn23 said:

As for the pool trick shot guy-- it looked like he was using the trick shot to hide him jabbing the card onto the pool cue. His cries of "Hit the hat! Hit the hat!" were a pretty subtle use of misdirection to make it seem to us that he was concentrating on the trick shot too, when of course he was concentrating on jabbing the card onto the pool cue. The jabbing bit was what Penn was talking about when he said Anton used brute force instead of a gimmicked pool cue. Dude's pool shots are fantastic, but he needs to work on his sleight of hand. I usually can't see sleight of hand happening even when I know exactly when and where it's happening and am looking specifically for it, but even I noticed his steal and load.

Yes, even a novice like me could see that he was palming the card and when you were watching the pool balls go around, you can see him jamming the card on the cue.  Then when the cards start shooting up, if you watch in slow motion, the card is already on the cue before he even sticks it into the flying cards.  Slow motion and frame advance on the DVR makes a lot of these tricks seem less magical!

20 hours ago, theatremouse said:

I'm assuming based on Penn's response to the tea guy that this didn't actually have anything to do with how the trick was done, but for a moment there I was thinking the camera guy did him no favors as he was tossing things over his shoulder, because I could've sworn I saw a card or cards taped to the bottom of the cutting board thing as he tossed it away. And when he was initially moving the board around on the table, I thought I saw some funny business with how he placed it. But then in the next shot it looked like maybe that was just the camera angle making me think funny business where there was none. But since I thought I saw something underneath as soon as it threw it, it made me second guess myself. Anyone have any ideas on that front?

I saw it too.  I'm guessing that he somehow moved the forced card to the top of the deck, there was some adhesive on that board, and when he placed it down on the table, it stuck the top card and that's why it's not in the deck at the end.

15 year-old t-shirt cannon guy.  I was impressed given his age.  But he should lose the awkward "sinister" look he gave each time he mentioned "t-shirt cannon".  You could clearly see that he tucked the three shirts into his jacket as he was running up on the stage.  I was thinking that audience members sitting on the far side of the stage would have seen him do that.  As far as the card "woven" into his t-shirt, I think it was basically a forced card, and the tear in the actual card was close enough to approximate the one on his shirt, sort of like with the teabag trick.  You can see that he kind of covers up the edges with his fingers.

[Amarsir]

8 hours ago, Xantar said:

I've heard that a hand that is holding something in it looks different than an empty fist because of the way the blood vessels constrict or something. Timon Kraus also gave Alyson a pretty big coin to hold. Is that how he guessed which hand was holding the coin?

There are tells that you can use to get a pretty good guess, but only getting 3 out of 4 would really hurt the trick on national television. Derren Brown has if not invented the trick then certainly popularized it, but I don't think even he would rely on body language unless he had to.  Some methods detect via magnet (hence the ring guess) but it wouldn't shock me if it used RFID or some other kind of detection now. 

[SomethingClever]

21 minutes ago, greyhorse said:

21 hours ago, theatremouse said:

I'm assuming based on Penn's response to the tea guy that this didn't actually have anything to do with how the trick was done, but for a moment there I was thinking the camera guy did him no favors as he was tossing things over his shoulder, because I could've sworn I saw a card or cards taped to the bottom of the cutting board thing as he tossed it away. And when he was initially moving the board around on the table, I thought I saw some funny business with how he placed it. But then in the next shot it looked like maybe that was just the camera angle making me think funny business where there was none. But since I thought I saw something underneath as soon as it threw it, it made me second guess myself. Anyone have any ideas on that front?

I saw it too.  I'm guessing that he somehow moved the forced card to the top of the deck, there was some adhesive on that board, and when he placed it down on the table, it stuck the top card and that's why it's not in the deck at the end.

I think it was probably just a sticker that came on the board. It's a little sloppy to leave it there like that where people might see it wonder what it is, but it would be a lot sloppy to angle the board up like that if it actually were the method for getting rid of the card, and I just can't imagine him making that big a mistake. I also don't think he controls the card to the top or bottom. There's a much easier way to do it. The card on top of the deck is prepared with a light adhesive on its back. Probably a substance marketed to magicians called "Science Friction", which is similar to clear Plasti-Dip, which you might find at a home improvement store. It allows you to do effects that utilize the rough/smooth principle, but only one card has to be treated, not two. The torn card is placed on top of the treated card, and when the deck is spread those two cards will stay together. So he spreads them, pushes them around a bit, then throws them off the table and out of play. The card appears to have vanished, and then it's off the table and out of play. 

[theatremouse]

On 9/10/2016 at 1:40 PM, greyhorse said:

 As far as the card "woven" into his t-shirt, I think it was basically a forced card, and the tear in the actual card was close enough to approximate the one on his shirt, sort of like with the teabag trick.  You can see that he kind of covers up the edges with his fingers.

That's one reason why I dislike "torn corner" tricks. They pretty much always hold up the corner in some hincky way and proclaim it a "perfect match!" and I'm like, um, no, the way you held that there was a very similar match but not visually conclusive enough for me to say "perfect". The trick ruins itself for me.

On 9/10/2016 at 2:10 PM, SomethingClever said:

I think it was probably just a sticker that came on the board. It's a little sloppy to leave it there like that where people might see it wonder what it is, but it would be a lot sloppy to angle the board up like that if it actually were the method for getting rid of the card

The thing I saw looked way too big (and playing-card-like) to be generic sticker, but I acknowledge it's possible. To your point, that's exactly why I asked because it did look incredibly sloppy to me, and I was surprised someone would be so sloppy on national television.

Edited September 12, 2016 by theatremouse

[Kromm]

On 9/8/2016 at 8:08 PM, Amarsir said:

The mentalist couple: I rather suspect most of it is practiced code. E.g. If he starts the sentence with "I'm holding" it's eyeglasses. If he starts with "What do" it's a watch. You can build on that over years, planning for most stuff that might come up and just having the husband not pick anyone with something they don't have a code for.

What I don't get is her knowing something that he didn't seem to have known, e.g. Names. Clearly there's something unseen to that.

It's not one thing or the other with them, of course. If they use codes with some of their bits, and a thumper with others, that allows them some flexibility. 

[marketdoctor]

Quote

It's not one thing or the other with them, of course

It's very possibly a combination of timing, tone of voice (going up/going down), word choice, and other subtle details (umms, errs, maybe even toe taps, etc.)

Since P &T noted it was an old-school method, that would be a code, possibly combined with a warm reading.  That doesn't rule out a thumper, it just means P & T noticed an old-school code or combination of them.

[theatremouse]

I might be misremembering (Penn definitely did this I just am not certain my memory is right that it was with them) but as he started talking he tapped his notepad on his lap twice, as if to punctuate his own enthusiasm, but I did also take that as intentional, so based on that I think Penn was most def suggesting all of the above.

[greyhorse]

It seems the consensus is that there is some intricate code that over years of marriage and practice, they've learned flawlessly.  But what about the obvious question of whether or not the blindfold was truly see-through?  I suppose if they have some code that she really wouldn't need it, but couldn't there be the slight possibility of a pinpoint hold in the blindfold that she can see through?

The $100 bill must have been swapped out, there's no other way that she could have guessed all that.

[mansonlamps]

Still, the name guessing....impressive.

[Charlesman]

It could be just as simple as the mother's credit card got them their tickets. He could have been selected specifically because they knew info about him and hoped it came up. 

 

As far as the teabag, it stood out that it was the only thing he handled. He let Alison hear the start and Penn finish the tear. He let Penn and Alison select the sealed teabag. But Alison had to give it to him to rip open. She wasn't allowed to do that herself. 

That's when the load happened. He had the torn card, folded into quarters, palmed. He held the teabag packet in front of his face, with the card pressed against it, ripped it open, handed Penn the pieces and pulled the real teabag out while at the same time sliding the card against the back of the packet so it was with the teabag. 

[ae2]

7 minutes ago, Charlesman said:

As far as the teabag, it stood out that it was the only thing he handled. He let Alison hear the start and Penn finish the tear. He let Penn and Alison select the sealed teabag. But Alison had to give it to him to rip open. She wasn't allowed to do that herself. 

That's when the load happened. He had the torn card, folded into quarters, palmed. He held the teabag packet in front of his face, with the card pressed against it, ripped it open, handed Penn the pieces and pulled the real teabag out while at the same time sliding the card against the back of the packet so it was with the teabag. 

It's very possible that you're correct about this, but my interpretation of Penn's guess was different. He talked about how much work went into this trick, that it was possibly more work than any other trick on the show. (Sure, he exaggerates a bit.) He said that all the tea tins were really full and they could have chosen any tea bag and the trick would have worked.

Based on that, I thought the implication was that every tea bag was preloaded with the card and then carefully resealed to look like a regular, unopened teabag.  Something that would take a lot of time and a lot of patience. So the only thing the magician needed to do was to force that card to be chosen, then everything else actually happens as you see it. 

[Charlesman]

Just now, ae2 said:

It's very possible that you're correct about this, but my interpretation of Penn's guess was different. He talked about how much work went into this trick, that it was possibly more work than any other trick on the show. (Sure, he exaggerates a bit.) He said that all the tea tins were really full and they could have chosen any tea bag and the trick would have worked.

Based on that, I thought the implication was that every tea bag was preloaded with the card and then carefully resealed to look like a regular, unopened teabag.  Something that would take a lot of time and a lot of patience. So the only thing the magician needed to do was to force that card to be chosen, then everything else actually happens as you see it. 

True. Totally possible that's it too. It's definitely more work, like Penn said. It also requires a force and the work on the tear. I guess that's what Penn saw, it just stood out that he wouldn't let them open the packet. 

[theatremouse]

I think his packet-opening fits both scenarios though. He put it in the cup too, right? I already can't remember. It seems to me whether he was loading the card in the teabag at the moment or if they were already done, he'd still probably want to be the one handling it to make sure it weren't given away before it'd "steeped". (or he was opening the packet himself in hopes of getting Penn to guess wrong, with a misdirect on the misdirect)

[SomethingClever]

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.

Edited September 13, 2016 by SomethingClever

[Charlesman]

Good eye, missed that part. Very clean, yes!

[mansonlamps]

Anybody want to reveal how the confabulation is done?  Or any of the other tricks n the trap episode?  I swear, I never figure out anything.

[SomethingClever]

32 minutes ago, mansonlamps said:

Anybody want to reveal how the confabulation is done?  Or any of the other tricks n the trap episode?  I swear, I never figure out anything.

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. 

[Kromm]

35 minutes ago, SomethingClever said:

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.

Yeah, things in envelopes are always suspicious, but this one is even moreso. The clasp is a total distraction from how he's handling the envelope (including how he carries that clipboard back to the table), and the fact that it's an envelope with a clear plastic window on one side is also meant to mislead I think (because you can briefly see the paper through the window and that, I guess, helps fool people into thinking it's always been there).  In fact, I'd say the clear plastic window is actually how he got the paper in there. It's probably only glued down on one side. 

Edited September 16, 2016 by Kromm

[ddawn23]

2 hours ago, SomethingClever said:

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.

The calculators on iPhones wait until you hit equals to do the calculation, so turning the phone to the side to get the open parenthesis is unnecessary. Dude still obviously used Toxic, but it works just fine without having to come up with a reason to turn the phone sideways. You can even preload it onto a friend's phone when they're not looking, then later have them run through the motions and it looks like you did it without ever touching the phone.

One smart move Ben Young made was just holding the phone up to Penn, who put in the first number, instead of handing it to him. I don't know about Penn, but I'm the kind of person who has to tap C a couple of times before starting a calculation, which would completely tank the trick. 

[theatremouse]

Good point. I totally always push C first. I'm a jerk and now want to volunteer/hope I get picked for audience participation in such a trick with someone who tries to do it in a way where they don't handle the phone. (to see if they had an out for an alternatrick in the event that happens)

[Amarsir]

So Ivan Asmodai fooled them with the state cards.  As most of us know, Johnny Thompson is the judge and he's not likely to give away a win unless they specifically thought wrong. So, where?

I thought it was fairly obvious that he just needed to know 18 cards, 6 of which anchored 6 groups and the other 12 could be randomly split among those groups. The card Penn picked was not predicted, but does actually complicate the trick if it was pulled from the same pool. Which made me think it wasn't.

My guess was "deck switch when his back was turned". That makes Penn's card irrelevant and pre-sets the cards to hand out. It would be easy to do. P&T gave him more credit by suggesting he rearranged the same cards. Is it possible that's what it was? Saying "arrange" or "control a shuffle" or "add cards" when it's a deck switch? Because they're pretty close, but we saw magicians get wins that way in season 1.

[SomethingClever]

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.

[Monty]

Penn said that pre-show work is one of the things that's absolutely not allowed on their show, so I guess there wasn't any warm reading in that mentalist act from before. Phooey.

[greyhorse]

Wow, there are so many of these on seemingly every other night that it's hard to keep up.

The Asian dermatologist with the poor stage presence.  Penn says you can't do preshow work, so even though it looks like she deliberately tosses the paper ball to the guy close to the stage, maybe he is truly just an audience member?  When Penn commented about how she was suffering in heels and said he was going to guess somebody else was suffering for this trick as well, I'm thinking that he is suggesting somebody was hiding in that skinny table?  And once the volunteer picked a word, he opened a sliding door so he could access the dictionary and then circle the right word and tear out the page?  She must have then palmed the crumpled up page and then switched it out somehow with the one that was visible the entire time in the glass jar?  Not sure when she would have made the swap but must have happened at some point.

I've seen that tearing newspaper trick many times.  Is it as simple as having an identical paper folded very small that he is carrying in one hand behind the paper he is showing?  And then he tears and tears, then wads up the torn pages, and unfolds the untorn paper while keeping all the trash in his hand behind the paper?  It can't be that simple, can it?

[Charlesman]

My guess on the balloon prediction trick... It goes pretty much exactly as presented. There's no helium tank. The trick starts with a real balloon inside that Teller felt. If I had to guess, it was an orange one, same as in the center of the grid. 

The audience freely eliminates 8, leaving one left. There are 8 matching uninflated balloons in the box, hanging for easy access. 

If the orange one is left, the magician has it easy, just present it. If not, he grabs the right uninflated one from the inside of the box. Then he just has to fill it with helium. So I think the balloon in the box at the start of the trick has a valve on it. Slip on the uninflated balloon and hit the release on the valve... Filling it with the original balloons helium. Slip on the string and it's done. The original balloon is empty and there are 7 uninflated ones, so the box can collapse easily. 

[SVNBob]

31 minutes ago, greyhorse said:

She must have then palmed the crumpled up page and then switched it out somehow with the one that was visible the entire time in the glass jar?

Visible, until she pulled the guy over to stand next to her to look through the dictionary together.  Then they were both standing directly in front of the jar, and that's when the switch was made.  He was a big guy, which is why she "randomly" chose him; more body area to help cover the switch.  If she'd had to choose between Penn, Teller, and Alyson for the trick, she'd have chosen Penn for the same reason.  Looking back at the trick, her right hand is behind the guy for most of the time he's looking in the dictionary.  She could easily reach into the jar and palm and ditch the bad page and drop in the good one.  And she'd probably palmed the good one when she got the dictionary out of the box in the first place.

[Amarsir]

4 hours ago, greyhorse said:

ve seen that tearing newspaper trick many times.  Is it as simple as having an identical paper folded very small that he is carrying in one hand behind the paper he is showing?  And then he tears and tears, then wads up the torn pages, and unfolds the untorn paper while keeping all the trash in his hand behind the paper?  It can't be that simple, can it?

Actually, Teller has an extended grabber device along his arm. While we're distracted by Penn's talking, Teller drops his pants and connects a cable that allows the grabber to extend out of his sleeve and make the swap. :)

Yeah that's pretty much it. Holding 2 and keeping one hidden.

4 hours ago, Charlesman said:

If the orange one is left, the magician has it easy, just present it. If not, he grabs the right uninflated one from the inside of the box. Then he just has to fill it with helium. So I think the balloon in the box at the start of the trick has a valve on it. Slip on the uninflated balloon and hit the release on the valve... Filling it with the original balloons helium. Slip on the string and it's done. The original balloon is empty and there are 7 uninflated ones, so the box can collapse easily. 

While that makes a fair amount of sense, without extra pressure two balloons are just going to equalize in size. If the starting one was thicker it might squeeze down a little smaller, but you can't simply just transfer all of the helium over without work. I suppose it's possible, but overly complicated.

Which raises the question: why not just use a tank? Was it simply to fool Penn & Teller's guess? The complicated part of that isn't the tank itself, but the automatic nozzles to switch to the right balloon. If he must have that anyway, I don't see what he gains by not having a small tank.

[Taeolas]

A tank would be something 'big'(ish) that might be noticable in the box after collapsing it down. A grid with 1 inflated balloon and 8 uninflated ones would compress easily. Even if the balloons equalize, once he brings the one balloon out, if the valve is left open the other will continue to deflate, letting him flatten the box completely. (Especially with his "stay" distraction to buy time) I would assume the grid is hidden inside the flaps of the box so Teller wouldn't notice it when he's feeling inside the box. 

I notice before bringing out the pet balloon, he does turn the box at an angle, probably so he can access whatever things he needs to do to switch balloons.  Plus his hand is busy doing stuff at the back of the box. Pretty slick all in all.

[Amarsir]

Well I was thinking a small canister as used for compressed CO2 would be sufficient. But looking again, the equalized balloon theory is absolutely right. I remembered the balloon as being bigger than it was. In reality it's about half-size so that makes total sense.

---

A couple weeks ago on Penn's Podcast he mentioned there was a trick where Teller didn't play along and it ended in a weaker alternate out. During Ivan Asmodei's trick, when Penn and Teller are shuffling the cards and the magician is talking about playgrounds, Teller seems to slip one into his pocket as well. That could be why he wasn't able to predict Teller's card - because 2 were missing. (And if so I wonder if it had anything to do with Johnny's call.)

[Monty]

That would make sense. I thought the ending of that trick was really weak. Penn had to reveal his state and then the magician just agreed with him, and...that's the big finish? You had someone select a random card and then never even tried to predict it?

[mansonlamps]

I'm not sure why, but watching this series has made me think Teller's kind of an ass.  While Penn seems to encourage, Teller is pretty dismissive of the other performers.  I've seen it a number of times now.

[SomethingClever]

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. 

[SomethingClever]

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. 

[SVNBob]

8 hours ago, Amarsir said:

A couple weeks ago on Penn's Podcast he mentioned there was a trick where Teller didn't play along and it ended in a weaker alternate out. During Ivan Asmodei's trick, when Penn and Teller are shuffling the cards and the magician is talking about playgrounds, Teller seems to slip one into his pocket as well. That could be why he wasn't able to predict Teller's card - because 2 were missing. (And if so I wonder if it had anything to do with Johnny's call.)

I noticed that too.  But the look on Teller's face at the time was that of confusion, as if he was thinking "Should I be picking a card too?  He didn't say so, but I might as well..."  It wasn't a calculated look of "I'm going to deliberately attempt to screw this guy up."  So Teller might have not played along correctly in that case, but in a way that any audience member could have accidentally screwed up the trick, leading to the weak out that we saw.  And I agree that that extra card in Teller's pocket had something to do with the judge's call.

Part of the onus goes on Ivan though.  He needed to be clear that Penn was the only one that needed to select a card even though both were shuffling, and be watching to see if Teller did too just in case.  So that's something for him to look out for in the future.