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Penn & Teller: Fool Us....how did the guy do this trick?

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Stellares said:
Teller is surprisingly talkative when he gets the opportunity. Penn gets more of the credit despite him being the brains. It doesn't seem fair, but oh well.
Its obviously the way they prefer it, otherwise they wouldnt have been doing it for so long together so dont worry about it!
 
Stellares said:
Teller is surprisingly talkative when he gets the opportunity. Penn gets more of the credit despite him being the brains. It doesn't seem fair, but oh well.

Is there any video that catches Teller actually talking?
 

RagnarokX

Member
parrotbeak said:
Penn says, "if we knew everything, would we be able to do that act?"

They respond, "Thanks for your time."

Then Penn says "that secret kept quiet the rest of your lives will make you one of the best magic acts the world's ever seen."

Pretty high praise if it's just twins. Plus how do they keep that secret in today's wikipedia'd world?

Well, maybe, I dunno.
I think the key focus was on the number of people in the act. Penn refers to the act as a pair and himself and Teller as a pair, then asks if it would be possible if just he and Teller performed it.

The tall guy clearly admits defeat as soon as Penn mentions Houdini.

Stellares said:
Teller is surprisingly talkative when he gets the opportunity. Penn gets more of the credit despite him being the brains. It doesn't seem fair, but oh well.
As obviously talented and knowledgeable as Teller is, I don't think he would remain with Penn if he did not find it favorable.

Wiki edit: Teller's trademark silence originated during his youth, when he earned a living performing magic at college fraternity parties.[7] He found that if he maintained silence throughout his act, spectators refrained from throwing beer and heckling him and focused more on his performance.
 

Socreges

Banned
Oh and Marty Chinn acting like that french illusionist trick was easy/obvious/anything short of excellent..... bullshit. Penn was stumped. He's familiar with the methods that you mentioned, but it's much more complicated than that.
 

nomis

Member
parrotbeak said:
Has the Prestige one been discussed already? That's the most esoteric reveal I've come across. Most of P&T's cryptic answers have been googleable, but I don't get what they meant by, if they knew everything about the trick would they be able to replicate it. Why did the contestant magicians immediately concede defeat after that question?

It's the second act in this clip, starts around 8 minutes in. The first act was posted in this thread already.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9BTB4aApzo

Penn being cryptic, and them immediately conceding is exactly because they want you to not know what they meant. P&T obviously think they have a career of doing tricks like this ahead of them.

500full.jpg
 

FyreWulff

Member
Marty Chinn said:
Is there any video that catches Teller actually talking?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5x14AwElOk


saunderez said:
I'm wondering if it's possible that the card was somehow attached to the scissors and manipulated into position whilst he was cutting the duct tape off. Would require some lip/jaw dexterity but I think it might be possible.

I believe when he smacks him in the back of the head and the guy is bent over is when the card is put into his mouth. Right before that, the duct tape goes down to the bottom of his chin. When he comes back up from being smacked in the head, the tape is farther away from the bottom of his chin.

Right after that you also hear him breath harder through his nose, which is a natural reflex to putting an object into your mouth and closing it.

It's damn fast and good sleight of hand, if that's when the card is moved to his mouth.
 

jdogmoney

Member
I'm still baffled by John Archer's trick with the envelopes. I found a video of him demonstrating without any patter and I still have no idea at all how he gets money into the last envelope. :/
 

Kentpaul

When keepin it real goes wrong. Very, very wrong.
John Archer reminds me of one of they guys you would find doing tricks in some bar in Benidorm Spain.

anyone any idea how he pulled of the envelope trick
 

jdogmoney

Member
Kentpaul said:
John Archer reminds me of one of they guys you would find doing tricks in some bar in Benidorm Spain.

anyone any idea how he pulled of the envelope trick

All I can tell is it doesn't matter what envelope the audience picks. There has to be some way to make sure the money is in* whatever happens to be the last one.

*or, rather, appears to be in
 

benjipwns

Banned
PjotrStroganov said:
Loved the old Pen and Teller tv show with them explaining how a trick works and in the process tricking the public on another level!
Always liked this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCr11y6V3qA

I love that part of their act, it's part of the further misdirection. Like the saw trick where they explain it completely and then at the last second throw in a better trick.
 

jasonng

Member
Why does this thread always resurface when I want to sleep? Now I'm going to go on a video binge and be extremely exhausted later.
 
Socreges said:
Oh and Marty Chinn acting like that french illusionist trick was easy/obvious/anything short of excellent..... bullshit. Penn was stumped. He's familiar with the methods that you mentioned, but it's much more complicated than that.
I don't get what I'm supposed to be amazed by in that act. Which is the part that Penn can't figure out?
 

tsigo

Member
What's great is they're showing exactly how to do the trick and it's still impressive even after you know how they do it. Maybe moreso.
 

captive

Joe Six-Pack: posting for the common man
+1 for someone that hasn't done shit all today but watch penn and teller videos. Shit is amazing.
 

Rapstah

Member
RagnarokX said:
I think the key focus was on the number of people in the act. Penn refers to the act as a pair and himself and Teller as a pair, then asks if it would be possible if just he and Teller performed it.

The tall guy clearly admits defeat as soon as Penn mentions Houdini.
I didn't really understand the Houdini reference, but ya, I get what you are saying with the referencing the pair. Penn kept pointing back and forth between them and then himself and Teller.

But whatever. I think it's cool that in this information era, some things are still kept secret.
 

FyreWulff

Member
parrotbeak said:
I didn't really understand the Houdini reference, but ya, I get what you are saying with the referencing the pair. Penn kept pointing back and forth between them and then himself and Teller.

But whatever. I think it's cool that in this information era, some things are still kept secret.

I think it has improved magic. Before the Masked Magician series, magicians were leaning on old standard tricks way too much. I remember going to magic shows as a kid and about 60-70% of the tricks were the same between each show and each magician. They were also very stooge-heavy.

After the Masked Magician, I started seeing a lot more unique tricks in shows, and a lot less dependence on stooges to pull tricks off.

Penn and Teller will blow up simple tricks that anyone could do, but don't blow apart someone's act that takes tons of skill and time investment to pull off. The guy that got the second chance was a good case of this, they tore him apart for barely trying the first time around, which put a fire under his ass to come up with something new and unique.
 

Ashes

Banned
parrotbeak said:
I didn't really understand the Houdini reference, but ya, I get what you are saying with the referencing the pair. Penn kept pointing back and forth between them and then himself and Teller.

But whatever. I think it's cool that in this information era, some things are still kept secret.

It's Houdini go to trick. & as far as I can tell, with that specific trick, you don't need more than the people that were shown.
 
Ashes1396 said:
It's Houdini go to trick. & as far as I can tell, with that specific trick, you don't need more than the people that were shown.
That's what I meant; I wasn't sure if Houdini used a twin but hadn't heard of that before and couldn't find anything on it.
 

firehawk12

Subete no aware
Didn't know there was a thread for this show. It was a great season, although most of the sleight of hand tricks were fairly obvious unfortunately.

It seems the best way to trick them is to fake making a sleight of hand move though. Meta Misdirection!
 

Ashes

Banned
parrotbeak said:
That's what I meant; I wasn't sure if Houdini used a twin but hadn't heard of that before and couldn't find anything on it.

Ahh I see. Minor spoiler
the trick, I believe is in covering the audience's view, and the trunk it self. One comes on, another leaves.

To be honest. Houdini could show you and the speed is what would kill you. Whilst the act in question had about half a minute, and dancing with the flag etc, houdini's version had a couple of seconds... but I can't remember now. Its been a long time since I've read that kind of stuff up.
 
Rapstah said:
He picks up the royal flush cards from under the table when he's asking Penn if the cards are face-down, then adds them to the bottom of the deck and manages to sneak them to the top.

How would he be able to match the card brand up correctly though? I mean what you said is right, but doesn't it rely on the faith that you have the same card design since Penn & Teller brought the deck?
 

Rapstah

Member
Marty Chinn said:
How would he be able to match the card brand up correctly though? I mean what you said is right, but doesn't it rely on the faith that you have the same card design since Penn & Teller brought the deck?
There's probably a small amount of well-known brands from which he knew Penn would bring a deck, for all we know there are several flushes hidden under there for him to pick from.
 
I'm guessing Mathieu Bich's trick is done by
him memorizing the "sections" where he splits his deck. At the first split you can see him take the top 5-6 cards and show both sides, they're completely blank, but as he continues segmenting his deck, he takes 5-10 card chunks out and rearranges them in such a way that they form the needed words. Each section basically has a blank side that he can rearrange to and he can basically separate the cards as needed to get the desired reveal. That's why its easier to separate into suits, and then high or low cards. As for the sections, the first one or two are probably the suits, the second or third are of, and the rest are devoted for numbers.
I honestly have no knowledge of magic and I'd probably be fooled by the simplest sleight of hand plus this is a total guess but that's how I think it was done.

As for the duo where the lady was in the box afterwards
when the short guy goes to move the black background, the lady has actually gone inside the bag, and the taller dude has run off of the left of the screen (which is why he swings the background in that direction, to cover the dudes exit). Then he just simply runs around to the back and re-enters when he gets his cue. Box has an exit on it's backside and the bag has a hole I think. Girl is either in the box the whole time or comes out with the black background.
Again, I have no idea but I think that's how it was done.
 

Trurl

Banned
Stellares said:
Teller is surprisingly talkative when he gets the opportunity. Penn gets more of the credit despite him being the brains. It doesn't seem fair, but oh well.
Are we sure that Teller is so much brainier than Penn? That is certainly the impression I got from watching these videos, but then I thought of a few things.

1)If Penn has no idea how a trick is performed but Teller does, he graciously admits it and then presents Tellers idea.
2)If they both know, Penn presents it as such and credit is given equally.
3)If Penn understands a trick but Teller doesn't, it seems unlikely that Penn will boast "well, Teller has no clue what's going on but I think I do." Thus this third situation ends up looking like the second situation.

Taken together it seems that the group's dynamic could possibly exaggerate Teller's intelligence relative to Penn's by revealing his moments of insight and hiding the moments when he alone was in the dark.

btw, I'm really enjoying this series through Youtube. It presents magic in the most fun way possible for me. Every act is treated as a puzzle.
 
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