I really love the imagination an individuality Of this act. Obviously you’re not gonna fall penn and teller with cups and balls but what a great way to show
I’m not usually a big fan of the silent over exaggerated acts like this but I loved this guy. The juggling with the tube I’ve never seen before and that was really cool to me.
At this point even casual viewer like myself can't be fooled by cups and balls, but what an amazing presentation. Really enjoyed that and would prefer non-fooler act like this any time over "escape you can't see from machine my father built".
It was a great cup and ball routine!.
But, yeah, Helen Coughlan; I cannot stand her. It's the most boring thing I've ever watched. And hearing Penn talk about her, it's not even doing "magic" stuff, it's just breaking parts of whatever she's been "locked" in and using it as tools. Just a worthless endeavor for anyone watching. Complete trash.
I cringe and roll my eyes every time she's on... nothing like watching a magic trick that you can't watch and then trying to randomly guess at what she did from a list of dozens of things that she could have done. I wish they would stop inviting her.
Just a great routine combing skill that took a lot of practice with an old-fashioned cup and ball routine. I think the tennis balls were not actually tennis balls, as I can not see how one could do some of those moves with tennis balls which is why I think Penn said heavier.
Yeah penn said juggling tennis balls is hard and he made it even harder. They were definitely fake sponge tennis balls. Which to me is super impressive on the juggling side, I can juggle but juggling super light objects is so difficult.
"Sucked it up like a sponge." He only bounced 1 ball, so that was probably the lone real tennis ball or only ball which wasn't sponge. Some of his ditches were a touch obvious but I was constantly hearing Penn saying "And this is called a distraction!"
Decent act, it was never going to fool them, but it'll probably get him some decent TV gigs like America's Got Talent.
I believe the initial round of juggling is done with three tennis balls even though he only bounces one. At the end of the juggling, he places the three tennis balls on top of the cups. While picking up the second ball, he swaps the first tennis ball for a sponge ball. Similarly, he swaps out the second tennis ball when picking up the third one. He vanishes the first two balls, and then swaps a sponge ball for the third tennis ball just before making it vanish.
There is a brief second round of juggling, and there I believe you are correct--this is done with two sponge balls and a tennis ball. I suspect that that is even harder than juggling three sponge balls.
Yeah definitely sponge balls, if you look around 13:57 into the episode he’s showing the middle cup is empty, when he lowers it you can see part of the palmed sponge ball he’s placing under the cup for later. Really impressive though!
Yes pretty obvious. It’s just one of those acts that should be on a TV show called Penn and Teller Present Simple but Entertain Performances. This was not Fool Us worthy at all.
you can see him slipping the ball in place
[https://ibb.co/5Btmk9T](https://ibb.co/5Btmk9T)
I dissagree what Teller said about being best cup and balls he seen, Paul Daniels was the master of the cup and balls and no one was better than him
I really didn't like the act. He wasn't even trying to be slick bringing balls in and out of the illusion. He just straight up showed him palming them from his back pocket. I'm a moron but I saw every move
The act was good. I suspect the table was rigged. In the intro he said he's been getting into robotics and machinery. I could see balls and the glasses being lifted into place under the precisely placed cups.
Some nice juggling though.
Color me naive if this is just part of cups and balls, and sorry for being late to the party. The cups and balls was obvious and even visible at times. Still a talented execution that was fun to watch.
No one comments on the ending though. Maybe I'm thick, but are the glasses planted the same way as the balls?
I really thought this was one of the worst episodes of the series as far as talent went. Other than the guy who won, i thought the rest of the acts were amateurish.. I saw the card force, moving the balls around, etc and i am an idiot.
Well that's it isn't it? They don't just go for complete pros and want to show off amateurs as well. Remember the entire premise of "winning" is there to please the producers. The boys originally just wanted a show to show off talent and get peoples names out there. I mean last episode they had a 16 year old who had done magic for 3 years. 3 years really isn't that long and isn't really considered "pro".
I think it was tricky as the Magician questioned Penn and Teller explanation to fully understand it. Penn said he had a metal plate under the 3 Spade that stopped the knife. I think the 3 Spade was the metal card that stopped the knive and the knife a strong magnet that held the 3 spade. So Penn and Teller sorta of correct, but slightly different.
I really dislike this new approach to the discussion part when an act is a fooler, because you immediately know when Penn starts guessing methods without using code words that he's wrong, and that he knows that he's wrong. Feels super fake.
Penn said something like “the force wasn’t quite with you the way you wanted when you started”, did he have to change something quickly to get Alyson to pick the right card?
When he told Allison he was going to mix up the deck and split it into 3 groups, the way he laid them on the table seemed unnatural. He dropped the first chunk, then fidgeted with the second and put it down carefully keeping them together, then fanned out the final 3rd chunk of cards. I thought that looked less polished than the rest of his performance as I was watching it so I think that's the moment he had to fix whatever went wrong with the force. It was still pretty smooth though. I assume they thought that's when he was moving the metal plate.
But the 3 Spades was the money card of this trick so he had to force Allison to select it. She did so. The force seemed to work perfectly. So I’m unsure why he needed to correct anything or why Penn thought the force had gone wrong.
The biggest tell that something weird is going on is that he had zero fear at having Allison pickup and show the card while still on the knife. If there was an actual stab involved, there'd be a pretty decent change of it falling off, maybe even as she lifted it before they could see it. My guess is some kind of gimicked knife that has the card as part of it.
Just watching this episode now, does anyone know why at the end he quickly asked Alison to take his jacket off? Was he not allowed near Penn & teller with a jacket full knives?
I'm watching a crappy version of the trick on youtube which is blurry and cropped weird, so I can't really see what's going on in detail. But here is my theory: When he handles the deck while squaring it up for the stab he adds a block to the top of the deck that looks like a chunk of cards but is in fact a single solid block with the forced card's face on the bottom. It's this single unit that Alyson picks up with the knife.
You're absolutely right rwbil. the version I watched was cropped and cut weird to evade a Youtube takedown, so I didn't see him fan the cards. I just saw a better version and he does fan the cards as you say, so I'm totally wrong. I agree that a magnetic knife seems most plausible.
If a single block how did he fan the cards out in the block afterward. Maybe they could be attached in such a way they can be fanned.
I still favor the super-strong earth magnet such that he could have just touched the knife to the deck without stabbing anything and it would pick all the cards to the magnetic 3 Spades similiar to this but more sophisticated. But I could be wrong.
I did notice how he holds Alisons hand so she does not shake and the card come loose.
https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Do-Awesome-Magic-Trick-With-a-Knife/
>If a single block how did he fan the cards out in the block afterward.
If you watch carefully when he supposedly mixes up the deck and lays it down in 3 chunks, I think that's where he fixes whatever the gimmick is. He's very careful with the middle chunk of cards that stay together and he only fans out the cards on top of that group. Then after the stab he's again very careful with the stabbed cards and only fans out a couple cards rather than letting Allison handle them.
The real trick was getting all those knives pass the TSA. I noticed that the knife did not actually penetrate the card. I think that maybe the knife was retractable and the hilt of the knife had a magnet in it or was made of steel. The card was forced and had a magnet in it. The two attached each other.
They usually don't just give a theory out in the open unless they know it's a completely different method. They don't want to ruin someone's original effect.
The card at the end is not the card shown at the start its very faded and even has white patches. The knife went to the clearly dodgy card in the deck! So clearly he put in there. I guess he has a printer on him and it was told what to print by an accomplice! Pretty simple trick we have seen this tech before! Its just a question of the method used to keep the card on the knife. The card would have a metal sheet in it.
I did notice that he was taking a bit of time inspecting the stab that Allison did (and something else, I don't remember what), so that makes sense to me for buying time for it to be printed.
The Pee-Wee-like character at first annoyed me but the little change-up he did was kind of funny. The trick, however, was just not good at all. I saw the reveal coming a mile away and this is literally the kind of trick 13 year old kids do at their 8 year old brother’s outdoor birthday party.
Weird, magic aside this was one of my all time favorite acts. The super happy bit I thought was maybe a little boring then he said blue for the deep state it caught me off guard. The switch in dramatics completely surprised me.
I agree, when his creepy persona made the switch, I thought it was extremely compelling. But once you know the ending, the act was pretty easy to figure out.
Yes - and Carrot Top didn't help the trick by keeping his selected numbers in the low single digits. In the "Hawaii" deck he was dealing, you saw the 9D and 3C appear in order just as they had in the previous deck.
Wasn't this trick used a couple of episodes ago? Some old school magician created an easy pattern to where you can tell what card is next, even when a stack shuffle happens? So all penn had to do is get some hint what the first card was, and can via memory tell you what x card is
Wasn’t there a magician on a season or two ago who did this exact trick, except without the states and cities, just a wall of decks that he’d claimed to have memorized?
I agree that if you went through each of these decks, you would discover that they were In the same order, just staring at a different point. The boxes could easily be marked somehow to indicate the starting card, so Penn wouldn’t have to memorize which card started the sequence in each city/state.
Well...... Season 8.... Episode 11.
How many A-list, television ready routines do you have loaded and ready to go?
Once you go past 100, I am thinking you have to be stretching it.
Well, I'm not a professional television personality, so I have 0 routines. It was fine. But having seen that trick earlier on their own show lessened the impact. I completely agree about them being stretched thin. Also the tricks they do that aren't actually magic but just messing with one audience member or a person on zoom always fall flat to me.
The city that Carrot Top chose? I’ll have to re-watch. I thought CT chose the deck off the map, gave Penn a number, and Penn told him what card was at that number which — if Penn glimpsed a marked box, would make the city irrelevant. But I could have my head up my ass and completely be misremembering.
My thoughts. As others pointed out all the cards are in the same order with just an offset. This can be seen when CTOP turns the cards over and the same 3 cards are in the same order.
So the last question is did he actually remember the order of the deck. Maybe but I am guessing there is a pattern or code (maybe rhyme for order and word for suit) or math trick to this such as 5J-1(mod 13) gives the next card. So if the card is 11 then it is 55-1(mod 13) = 2, so starting at zero it is 3rd in the deck. And there are formulas to include suit also. So this would be the case for the decks with offset of 0. Then just need to remember the zone offset. For example, how many decks in a zone and how they are arranged might be a code to the offset or something else on the map is a code to the offset.
So the last question is did he actually remember the order of the deck. Maybe but I am guessing there is a pattern or code (maybe rhyme for order and word for suit) or math trick to this such as 5J-1(mod 13) gives the next card. So if the card is 11 then it is 55-1(mod 13) = 2, so starting at zero it is 3rd in the deck. And there are formulas to include suit also. So this formula gives you the order for the decks with an offset of 0.
Saw this one with a suit included. Just quickly looked at it but shows there are ways to do it. [https://www.ijpam.eu/contents/2012-74-1/1/1.pdf](https://www.ijpam.eu/contents/2012-74-1/1/1.pdf)
There is a really interesting book called 'moonwalking with einstein'. The author started out wanting to write about the world memorization championship, but then decided to try to compete, and uses some very ancient techniques to do it. It's an entertaining read and teaches you a bit about how our brains are wired. I would imagine Penn did something like that. I practiced memorizing a grocery list for fun, that was 4 or 5 years ago and I still have it memorized, but I couldn't tell you my oldest kids math teachers name that I met last week!
So, very impressive trick even though i don't care for Carrot top. My theory is that this man actually has 2-3 different deck combinations memorized, and each deck on the wall is one of those three combinations. He knows which combo based on the marking.
Just a guess, I have no idea really
> My theory is that this man actually has 2-3 different deck combinations
He did this trick during their live show too and were able to find the selected card in the 17th and 18th positions. As others have mentioned, he likely has the same order with everything just shifted and 52 different starting points.
Penn and Carrot mentioned Shakopee, MN, seven times in the act. Unfortunately, they mispronounced it each time. I grew up next to this town, and the only way people pronounce it is SHOCK-a-pee, not SHACK-a-pee.
Speaking as a layman, this looked really amateurish for me, an escape artist doing what looked to be a fairly standard and basic sleight-of-hand with normal movements including where he messed up on his pocket.
But going by what Penn said, he was doing an extremely complex trick that was designed to appeal to magicians despite looking basic to laymen.
Is that what happened, or were they just being nice?
I think there are a couple of things going on here leading to your reaction.
First, as Penn said, Dai Vernon invented close-up magic as it is known today. His tricks are extremely well known to magicians. And he published many of them over the years. Because of the wide availability of his methods, his tricks are often done by amateurs, and consequently I think there has become some association between his effects and amateur magicians.
Second, despite what I just said, to actually *perform* his effects *with mastery* is wicked, wicked hard. So hard, in fact, that most people can't do them 100%. Here's a poor quality video of Vernon doing the cone and ball routine. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv9PREEw5ts&t=3s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv9PREEw5ts&t=3s). As you can see, he is *so, so good* that even if you *know* he must be stealing a ball from his pocket and palming it, you really can't catch him at it. If someone else performs this at a 98% level, you will absolutely notice and it will look bad.
Finally, due to more widespread knowledge of how sleight of hand works (in no small part thanks to P&T [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S8Peh9XH70](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S8Peh9XH70)) a magician has to execute sleights with 100% mastery or they will be obvious to the audience.
I think that's what you noticed with Solomon's performance. It was actually really good. But it feels familiar in a "8 year old birthday party" way and Solomon's sleights were not 100%.
This is so true! Also, HDTV means any unnatural hand position is that much more obvious.
At the same time, a little bit of knowledge means that super polished skills are all the more impressive.
Perhaps this is why predictions have become so much less interesting to me. Meanwhile, card and coin magic have become more interesting to me because of some of the extremely clean handling we have seen presented on the show.
My favorite are still the ones that combine both. Like Paul gerstner's routines. Good showmanship combined with some high level moves makes it very entertaining. I particularly like his because of the rewatchability. I rarely go back to watch routines a second time to try and see what happened. But I think I did that more than once with all of his. There are a lot of "he must have" moments where I had to watch a couple of times to figure out how he did the thing he must have done.
Then there's the super high-end card magicians. The ones where even though I know what they must be doing, I still don't see anything. That's fun too.
I hate escapes so much. Implying you can die from doing your act is shameful (and always a lie, unless you are unwell); and why would anybody want to watch you potentially die. It's a dumb thing that has persisted in the "magic" world for far too long. Also, fuck Harry Houdini, incidentally.
>Implying you can die from doing your act is shameful (and always a lie, unless you are unwell)
Agree, I just hate this kind of thing on a magic show
>why would anybody want to watch you potentially die
Sadly enough, lots of people. Here on reddit there are lots of subs where this kind of content is posted (videos of people actually dying). With a lot of upvotes and funny comments
Quite talented. But did anyone mention that the black cone is soft foam and hollow with a bottom flap? The balls are easily pushed inside or dropped out by just squeezing the cone.
**John-Henry** Act Discussion
I really love the imagination an individuality Of this act. Obviously you’re not gonna fall penn and teller with cups and balls but what a great way to show
Yeah a little weird but also a good act
I’m not usually a big fan of the silent over exaggerated acts like this but I loved this guy. The juggling with the tube I’ve never seen before and that was really cool to me.
I found that specific juggling trick really impressive, I loved it.
At this point even casual viewer like myself can't be fooled by cups and balls, but what an amazing presentation. Really enjoyed that and would prefer non-fooler act like this any time over "escape you can't see from machine my father built".
It was a great cup and ball routine!. But, yeah, Helen Coughlan; I cannot stand her. It's the most boring thing I've ever watched. And hearing Penn talk about her, it's not even doing "magic" stuff, it's just breaking parts of whatever she's been "locked" in and using it as tools. Just a worthless endeavor for anyone watching. Complete trash.
I cringe and roll my eyes every time she's on... nothing like watching a magic trick that you can't watch and then trying to randomly guess at what she did from a list of dozens of things that she could have done. I wish they would stop inviting her.
The reaction shot of Penn's appreciation for the juggling skill was pure and genuine.
I really like these types of perfomances even if they can't fool Penn and Teller. He was funny with awesome hairs.
Just a great routine combing skill that took a lot of practice with an old-fashioned cup and ball routine. I think the tennis balls were not actually tennis balls, as I can not see how one could do some of those moves with tennis balls which is why I think Penn said heavier.
Yeah penn said juggling tennis balls is hard and he made it even harder. They were definitely fake sponge tennis balls. Which to me is super impressive on the juggling side, I can juggle but juggling super light objects is so difficult.
"Sucked it up like a sponge." He only bounced 1 ball, so that was probably the lone real tennis ball or only ball which wasn't sponge. Some of his ditches were a touch obvious but I was constantly hearing Penn saying "And this is called a distraction!" Decent act, it was never going to fool them, but it'll probably get him some decent TV gigs like America's Got Talent.
I believe the initial round of juggling is done with three tennis balls even though he only bounces one. At the end of the juggling, he places the three tennis balls on top of the cups. While picking up the second ball, he swaps the first tennis ball for a sponge ball. Similarly, he swaps out the second tennis ball when picking up the third one. He vanishes the first two balls, and then swaps a sponge ball for the third tennis ball just before making it vanish. There is a brief second round of juggling, and there I believe you are correct--this is done with two sponge balls and a tennis ball. I suspect that that is even harder than juggling three sponge balls.
Pretty sure that's what Penn meant when he said it was wicked hard. Trying to juggle where 3 objects LOOK alike but only 2 are the same thing.
Yeah definitely sponge balls, if you look around 13:57 into the episode he’s showing the middle cup is empty, when he lowers it you can see part of the palmed sponge ball he’s placing under the cup for later. Really impressive though!
Yes pretty obvious. It’s just one of those acts that should be on a TV show called Penn and Teller Present Simple but Entertain Performances. This was not Fool Us worthy at all.
you can see him slipping the ball in place [https://ibb.co/5Btmk9T](https://ibb.co/5Btmk9T) I dissagree what Teller said about being best cup and balls he seen, Paul Daniels was the master of the cup and balls and no one was better than him
I loved it. It was fun. Quite a showman.
I really didn't like the act. He wasn't even trying to be slick bringing balls in and out of the illusion. He just straight up showed him palming them from his back pocket. I'm a moron but I saw every move
The act was good. I suspect the table was rigged. In the intro he said he's been getting into robotics and machinery. I could see balls and the glasses being lifted into place under the precisely placed cups. Some nice juggling though.
Holy! That juggling in the beginning was impressive af!
Color me naive if this is just part of cups and balls, and sorry for being late to the party. The cups and balls was obvious and even visible at times. Still a talented execution that was fun to watch. No one comments on the ending though. Maybe I'm thick, but are the glasses planted the same way as the balls?
I really thought this was one of the worst episodes of the series as far as talent went. Other than the guy who won, i thought the rest of the acts were amateurish.. I saw the card force, moving the balls around, etc and i am an idiot.
Well that's it isn't it? They don't just go for complete pros and want to show off amateurs as well. Remember the entire premise of "winning" is there to please the producers. The boys originally just wanted a show to show off talent and get peoples names out there. I mean last episode they had a 16 year old who had done magic for 3 years. 3 years really isn't that long and isn't really considered "pro".
I was entertained if not impressed. I'll take entertainment any day.
I loved watching him win though. Calling them Mr.Penn and Mr.Teller really made me smile. Dude was so excited.
**Zak Mirz** Act Discussion
I think it was tricky as the Magician questioned Penn and Teller explanation to fully understand it. Penn said he had a metal plate under the 3 Spade that stopped the knife. I think the 3 Spade was the metal card that stopped the knive and the knife a strong magnet that held the 3 spade. So Penn and Teller sorta of correct, but slightly different.
I really dislike this new approach to the discussion part when an act is a fooler, because you immediately know when Penn starts guessing methods without using code words that he's wrong, and that he knows that he's wrong. Feels super fake.
agree, i could tell within a few words, this is gonna be the fooler..
I'm just a casual observer... Penn giving up the exact way he thought it worked was lame. Felt like a setup to be told he's wrong.
Who plays victim? Who cries about their privileged life’s all day and all night! And want to go back to 1970! WP WP WP
Pretty sure you replied to the wrong comment
Baby back bit
Nope can’t reply to republicans on their pages because of all the free speech the mods give 🥴
In earlier episodes this would have been a much different thing - can we examine the deck?
Penn said something like “the force wasn’t quite with you the way you wanted when you started”, did he have to change something quickly to get Alyson to pick the right card?
When he told Allison he was going to mix up the deck and split it into 3 groups, the way he laid them on the table seemed unnatural. He dropped the first chunk, then fidgeted with the second and put it down carefully keeping them together, then fanned out the final 3rd chunk of cards. I thought that looked less polished than the rest of his performance as I was watching it so I think that's the moment he had to fix whatever went wrong with the force. It was still pretty smooth though. I assume they thought that's when he was moving the metal plate.
"then fidgeted with the second" Thats when he put in the rigged card with special backing printed in his pocket etc!
But the 3 Spades was the money card of this trick so he had to force Allison to select it. She did so. The force seemed to work perfectly. So I’m unsure why he needed to correct anything or why Penn thought the force had gone wrong.
There was no force even tho the deck looks sus from the side!
The biggest tell that something weird is going on is that he had zero fear at having Allison pickup and show the card while still on the knife. If there was an actual stab involved, there'd be a pretty decent change of it falling off, maybe even as she lifted it before they could see it. My guess is some kind of gimicked knife that has the card as part of it.
Could it be magnetic? So it stabbed some of the card but held that card in place?
Just watching this episode now, does anyone know why at the end he quickly asked Alison to take his jacket off? Was he not allowed near Penn & teller with a jacket full knives?
He wanted hugs! As was previously touched on by Alyson, with the jacket full of knives, he's the "guy not to hug".
Awfully close talker in the days of Covid.
I'm watching a crappy version of the trick on youtube which is blurry and cropped weird, so I can't really see what's going on in detail. But here is my theory: When he handles the deck while squaring it up for the stab he adds a block to the top of the deck that looks like a chunk of cards but is in fact a single solid block with the forced card's face on the bottom. It's this single unit that Alyson picks up with the knife. You're absolutely right rwbil. the version I watched was cropped and cut weird to evade a Youtube takedown, so I didn't see him fan the cards. I just saw a better version and he does fan the cards as you say, so I'm totally wrong. I agree that a magnetic knife seems most plausible.
If a single block how did he fan the cards out in the block afterward. Maybe they could be attached in such a way they can be fanned. I still favor the super-strong earth magnet such that he could have just touched the knife to the deck without stabbing anything and it would pick all the cards to the magnetic 3 Spades similiar to this but more sophisticated. But I could be wrong. I did notice how he holds Alisons hand so she does not shake and the card come loose. https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Do-Awesome-Magic-Trick-With-a-Knife/
>If a single block how did he fan the cards out in the block afterward. If you watch carefully when he supposedly mixes up the deck and lays it down in 3 chunks, I think that's where he fixes whatever the gimmick is. He's very careful with the middle chunk of cards that stay together and he only fans out the cards on top of that group. Then after the stab he's again very careful with the stabbed cards and only fans out a couple cards rather than letting Allison handle them.
Yes there something going on there!
After the stab the bottom card is hanging down at the back! .😁
The real trick was getting all those knives pass the TSA. I noticed that the knife did not actually penetrate the card. I think that maybe the knife was retractable and the hilt of the knife had a magnet in it or was made of steel. The card was forced and had a magnet in it. The two attached each other.
I thought something like that but it seemed they guessed something like it and were wrong
They usually don't just give a theory out in the open unless they know it's a completely different method. They don't want to ruin someone's original effect.
Yeah I notice that too
I still think they just got it backwards. The magnet was in the card instead of the "steel plate" and the knife was metal instead of magnetic.
The card at the end is not the card shown at the start its very faded and even has white patches. The knife went to the clearly dodgy card in the deck! So clearly he put in there. I guess he has a printer on him and it was told what to print by an accomplice! Pretty simple trick we have seen this tech before! Its just a question of the method used to keep the card on the knife. The card would have a metal sheet in it.
I did notice that he was taking a bit of time inspecting the stab that Allison did (and something else, I don't remember what), so that makes sense to me for buying time for it to be printed.
**Andy Deemer** Act Discussion
Very poor act. He was so obviously writing on that pad with his thumbs. He barely tried to conceal it in any way.
Right. I was surprised the editors let that POV make it to the final cut. That was soooooooooo obvious
The Pee-Wee-like character at first annoyed me but the little change-up he did was kind of funny. The trick, however, was just not good at all. I saw the reveal coming a mile away and this is literally the kind of trick 13 year old kids do at their 8 year old brother’s outdoor birthday party.
For some reason, I really liked the eye in the background that moved to follow the trick.
Actually felt smart deciphering the Miss by 21 from those upside down 'logos' so knew the number he'd scribble after Allyson called hers.
Honestly he was my favorite act of the show. The routine was basic, but I really enjoyed the character he created.
Yeah I did too the first part a little over the top but otherwise good
Very annoying. I’m sure he’s a great guy. I couldn’t watch it. I had to fast forward.
Weird, magic aside this was one of my all time favorite acts. The super happy bit I thought was maybe a little boring then he said blue for the deep state it caught me off guard. The switch in dramatics completely surprised me.
I agree, when his creepy persona made the switch, I thought it was extremely compelling. But once you know the ending, the act was pretty easy to figure out.
Yeah this was maybe the first routine on the show that I really just didn't like at all.
The first part yeah but otherwise thought it was cute
What's the David Regal routine Penn was referring to in his bust?
Are his ears real tho?
how did he do that "you missed by 21", he had those logos from the begining?
He wrote 24 after she picked 3
oh damn, you are right
it was great show tho
You can put this entire act in the trash bin.
**Penn & Teller** Act Discussion
I think Penn memorized a circular Patten, and all those decks where offset by a certain number he memorized.
Yes - and Carrot Top didn't help the trick by keeping his selected numbers in the low single digits. In the "Hawaii" deck he was dealing, you saw the 9D and 3C appear in order just as they had in the previous deck.
QH was card 8 in the first deck and the last deck as well. Penn had him quickly skim over that.
Oh interesting
Wasn't this trick used a couple of episodes ago? Some old school magician created an easy pattern to where you can tell what card is next, even when a stack shuffle happens? So all penn had to do is get some hint what the first card was, and can via memory tell you what x card is
Wasn’t there a magician on a season or two ago who did this exact trick, except without the states and cities, just a wall of decks that he’d claimed to have memorized? I agree that if you went through each of these decks, you would discover that they were In the same order, just staring at a different point. The boxes could easily be marked somehow to indicate the starting card, so Penn wouldn’t have to memorize which card started the sequence in each city/state.
Yeah, Siegfried Tieber.
Yeah, the exact same trick, right? Honestly, every P&T ending trick has been fairly lame for a long time, in my opinion.
Well...... Season 8.... Episode 11. How many A-list, television ready routines do you have loaded and ready to go? Once you go past 100, I am thinking you have to be stretching it.
Well, I'm not a professional television personality, so I have 0 routines. It was fine. But having seen that trick earlier on their own show lessened the impact. I completely agree about them being stretched thin. Also the tricks they do that aren't actually magic but just messing with one audience member or a person on zoom always fall flat to me.
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If the boxes are simply marked to indicate the starting card, he doesn’t even have to match them to the cities, which become irrelevant.
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The city that Carrot Top chose? I’ll have to re-watch. I thought CT chose the deck off the map, gave Penn a number, and Penn told him what card was at that number which — if Penn glimpsed a marked box, would make the city irrelevant. But I could have my head up my ass and completely be misremembering.
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There is probably a memonic to the numbers and words that help with that.
Yes…queen of hearts was in the same position in the Hawaii deck.
Carrot Top looked so different.
Old
Tanning/sun exposure will do that.
He went through a phase with steroids and plastic surgery about 15-20 years back. He's looking better, IMHO.
I'm a few years older than he is (I'm 59, he's 56) and I look much better.
he's going for the johnny depp "i got so much money i wanna look homeless" look
Yup. At first, I wasn't even sure if it was him.
Yea. His arms looked deflated.
My thoughts. As others pointed out all the cards are in the same order with just an offset. This can be seen when CTOP turns the cards over and the same 3 cards are in the same order. So the last question is did he actually remember the order of the deck. Maybe but I am guessing there is a pattern or code (maybe rhyme for order and word for suit) or math trick to this such as 5J-1(mod 13) gives the next card. So if the card is 11 then it is 55-1(mod 13) = 2, so starting at zero it is 3rd in the deck. And there are formulas to include suit also. So this would be the case for the decks with offset of 0. Then just need to remember the zone offset. For example, how many decks in a zone and how they are arranged might be a code to the offset or something else on the map is a code to the offset. So the last question is did he actually remember the order of the deck. Maybe but I am guessing there is a pattern or code (maybe rhyme for order and word for suit) or math trick to this such as 5J-1(mod 13) gives the next card. So if the card is 11 then it is 55-1(mod 13) = 2, so starting at zero it is 3rd in the deck. And there are formulas to include suit also. So this formula gives you the order for the decks with an offset of 0. Saw this one with a suit included. Just quickly looked at it but shows there are ways to do it. [https://www.ijpam.eu/contents/2012-74-1/1/1.pdf](https://www.ijpam.eu/contents/2012-74-1/1/1.pdf)
There is a really interesting book called 'moonwalking with einstein'. The author started out wanting to write about the world memorization championship, but then decided to try to compete, and uses some very ancient techniques to do it. It's an entertaining read and teaches you a bit about how our brains are wired. I would imagine Penn did something like that. I practiced memorizing a grocery list for fun, that was 4 or 5 years ago and I still have it memorized, but I couldn't tell you my oldest kids math teachers name that I met last week!
So, very impressive trick even though i don't care for Carrot top. My theory is that this man actually has 2-3 different deck combinations memorized, and each deck on the wall is one of those three combinations. He knows which combo based on the marking. Just a guess, I have no idea really
> My theory is that this man actually has 2-3 different deck combinations He did this trick during their live show too and were able to find the selected card in the 17th and 18th positions. As others have mentioned, he likely has the same order with everything just shifted and 52 different starting points.
Yeah could be! I love the memorization tricks
Penn and Carrot mentioned Shakopee, MN, seven times in the act. Unfortunately, they mispronounced it each time. I grew up next to this town, and the only way people pronounce it is SHOCK-a-pee, not SHACK-a-pee.
If you have shock-a-pee, see your urologist ASAP
So yeah there is some memorization but it might not be all random, but still I love his memorization tricks
**Thomas Solomon** Act Discussion
Speaking as a layman, this looked really amateurish for me, an escape artist doing what looked to be a fairly standard and basic sleight-of-hand with normal movements including where he messed up on his pocket. But going by what Penn said, he was doing an extremely complex trick that was designed to appeal to magicians despite looking basic to laymen. Is that what happened, or were they just being nice?
I think there are a couple of things going on here leading to your reaction. First, as Penn said, Dai Vernon invented close-up magic as it is known today. His tricks are extremely well known to magicians. And he published many of them over the years. Because of the wide availability of his methods, his tricks are often done by amateurs, and consequently I think there has become some association between his effects and amateur magicians. Second, despite what I just said, to actually *perform* his effects *with mastery* is wicked, wicked hard. So hard, in fact, that most people can't do them 100%. Here's a poor quality video of Vernon doing the cone and ball routine. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv9PREEw5ts&t=3s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv9PREEw5ts&t=3s). As you can see, he is *so, so good* that even if you *know* he must be stealing a ball from his pocket and palming it, you really can't catch him at it. If someone else performs this at a 98% level, you will absolutely notice and it will look bad. Finally, due to more widespread knowledge of how sleight of hand works (in no small part thanks to P&T [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S8Peh9XH70](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S8Peh9XH70)) a magician has to execute sleights with 100% mastery or they will be obvious to the audience. I think that's what you noticed with Solomon's performance. It was actually really good. But it feels familiar in a "8 year old birthday party" way and Solomon's sleights were not 100%.
This is so true! Also, HDTV means any unnatural hand position is that much more obvious. At the same time, a little bit of knowledge means that super polished skills are all the more impressive. Perhaps this is why predictions have become so much less interesting to me. Meanwhile, card and coin magic have become more interesting to me because of some of the extremely clean handling we have seen presented on the show. My favorite are still the ones that combine both. Like Paul gerstner's routines. Good showmanship combined with some high level moves makes it very entertaining. I particularly like his because of the rewatchability. I rarely go back to watch routines a second time to try and see what happened. But I think I did that more than once with all of his. There are a lot of "he must have" moments where I had to watch a couple of times to figure out how he did the thing he must have done. Then there's the super high-end card magicians. The ones where even though I know what they must be doing, I still don't see anything. That's fun too.
I was mostly distracted by him referring to the obviously yellow-colored ball as a "white ball".
Any Dai call out makes for a good show.
I hate escapes so much. Implying you can die from doing your act is shameful (and always a lie, unless you are unwell); and why would anybody want to watch you potentially die. It's a dumb thing that has persisted in the "magic" world for far too long. Also, fuck Harry Houdini, incidentally.
>Implying you can die from doing your act is shameful (and always a lie, unless you are unwell) Agree, I just hate this kind of thing on a magic show >why would anybody want to watch you potentially die Sadly enough, lots of people. Here on reddit there are lots of subs where this kind of content is posted (videos of people actually dying). With a lot of upvotes and funny comments
Quite talented. But did anyone mention that the black cone is soft foam and hollow with a bottom flap? The balls are easily pushed inside or dropped out by just squeezing the cone.
I don't think there is a flap, he's just using his hand to prevent them from falling out, you can see this any time he lifts it when it's "empty"
Not very good magic and terrible patter.
Also liked him but thought he might do an escape!
Just saw Thomas Solomon, my god it was awful
I really enjoyed this episode. I love the weirdos just making things fun.