Penn & Teller: Fool Us

The Master

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Let's hear it!
Well, he starts out with four decks. Each one separated by the three cards that are printed with the "Your Card is the" cards. the answer is always going to be "Symbol of Card" You have four symbols. Spades, Diamonds, Clubs, Hearts. Each card has four sides, recto left and right, verso left and right. So one deck is the symbol deck and one of each of those spells each symbol. That leaves you with three more decks. The "of" never changes and he counts off a few cards from one of the decks before playing around with them. That is the "of." That leaves you with three decks for 13 symbols. He is missing the 6. When he asks high or low, he'll say 7+ for high and 5- for low.

At that point it is all about remembering the combinations and doing your shuffle/ordering correctly.
 

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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Hmm, yeah maybe he has a way to compress the four 17 symbols into the deck. Pretty impressive though and it leaves a lot of room for error on the unveiling.

Looking at it again, how would he be able to have variations for all 17 symbols? He shows the cards a lot and it seems only a few have writing...
 

Arbitrary

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There was more shit going on with the box/table and the dude is amazing at sleight of hand, exactly as Penn and Teller deduced. What they missed was that part of the trick involves the performer knowing that they'll accurately guess how the trick is done so he had an additional step of the trick that was just about covering his tracks and having the "No" card ready to be found.

But as far as the nuts and bolts I couldn't begin to guess.
 

The Master

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Looking at it again, how would he be able to have variations for all 17 symbols? He shows the cards a lot and it seems only a few have writing...
I covered that. He has one deck for the symbols and three decks for the numbers. Each has four "sides." Verso left and right, recto left and right. That is 3 decks for 13 symbols, which gives him 12 sides. So he just cuts out the six from consideration with his high/low question (notice he set the range). Or he takes cards off twice. One is for the "of" but the other could be a shorter combination that he is removing and he actually can do all 13 numbers.

The cards are only written on in the middle so you won't see it from the edges. Half of each card is covered on the spread, the other half of the card you don't see has the other option for that side. Notice how careful he is not to spread them to much and then "neatens" the spread at the end.

EDIT: He probably matches up the letter length as well. So Four, Five, Nine, Jack, King. Ace, Two, Six, Ten. Three, Seven, Eight, Queen.

Looking at that I'd actually want to cut a 4 length number for simplicity. He could cut the five the same way I suggested cutting the six.
 

Jait

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Waiting to binge on this. Just rewatched 4-5 of the UK ones. The French trio with the mime and street lamp act is still one of my all time favorites. Incredible choreography.
 

Jait

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Again, this IS the UK one. Just edited down some. Same shows we've already seen.
Ahhh. That's a shame. Avoided reading this thread in case there were any spoilers
tongue.png
 

Xarpolis

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Yeah. Penn was on Opie & Anthony last week talking about it and he said that it's the same footage from the UK version, just edited down to fit our commercial breaks.
 

Cantatus

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I covered that. He has one deck for the symbols and three decks for the numbers. Each has four "sides." Verso left and right, recto left and right. That is 3 decks for 13 symbols, which gives him 12 sides. So he just cuts out the six from consideration with his high/low question (notice he set the range). Or he takes cards off twice. One is for the "of" but the other could be a shorter combination that he is removing and he actually can do all 13 numbers.

The cards are only written on in the middle so you won't see it from the edges. Half of each card is covered on the spread, the other half of the card you don't see has the other option for that side. Notice how careful he is not to spread them to much and then "neatens" the spread at the end.
I don't think he needs that many back-ups. My theory is it's not really as random as it seems. The ball looks the way it does for a reason. It subtly influences which of the choices people select. Almost all of them take their time looking at the ball before giving their answer. Notice how the ball is red and divided into 3 diamond shaped slices of color and clear (and I believe has 3 sea creatures on each clear slice, but I couldn't get a good enough look at all of them)? I'd also speculate that the hand motions he does when he asks for their choice also figures into it somehow, but the camera cuts away during parts of those, so it's hard to see if there is any pattern.
 

Byr

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i dont think predicting what number random people will pick beforehand is a very reliable trick either. You can see he switches something in his hand when he moves the deck case from one side of the table to the other, a move that makes no sense what so ever to do. The camera leaves the table shortly after which is a shame.
 

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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I don't think he needs that many back-ups. My theory is it's not really as random as it seems. The ball looks the way it does for a reason. It subtly influences which of the choices people select. Almost all of them take their time looking at the ball before giving their answer. Notice how the ball is red and divided into 3 diamond shaped slices of color and clear (and I believe has 3 sea creatures on each clear slice, but I couldn't get a good enough look at all of them)? I'd also speculate that the hand motions he does when he asks for their choice also figures into it somehow, but the camera cuts away during parts of those, so it's hard to see if there is any pattern.
Eh I doubt it. Whenever these tricks are done it's always specious to think they are leading the audience but the downside to getting burned by someone who breaks your mold is too high.
 

The Master

Bronze Squire
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I don't think he needs that many back-ups. My theory is it's not really as random as it seems. The ball looks the way it does for a reason. It subtly influences which of the choices people select. Almost all of them take their time looking at the ball before giving their answer. Notice how the ball is red and divided into 3 diamond shaped slices of color and clear (and I believe has 3 sea creatures on each clear slice, but I couldn't get a good enough look at all of them)? I'd also speculate that the hand motions he does when he asks for their choice also figures into it somehow, but the camera cuts away during parts of those, so it's hard to see if there is any pattern.
Occam's Razor. As Penn points out, the whole point of the ball is that it makes it so you can't guarantee an answer.
 

Hoss

Make America's Team Great Again
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Yeah, I found it really weird the way everyone looked at the ball. But I gotta assume that if there was something in the ball making people choose a certain way, Penn and Teller would have noticed it.

And if there was something else making them choose that way other than the ball (like maybe his speech patterns), then when we were playing along at home, we probably would have picked the 7 of diamonds too.
 

darkmiasma

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Spreadwave by Mathieu Bich - YouTube

The "Spreadwave" is an ingenious trick.

It does not require complicated sleight-of-hand. It's a simple process to flip and orient the "deck" sections which spell out suit and color. The necessary separators between the word sections are the "Your Card Is The" cards and a distraction to prevent you from seeing the significance of manipulating the sections so they'll spread that way.

A section has 4 ways it can be oriented to show 4 different messages when spread, and there's a white cover card to conceal the content until the reveal. So it's a fairly simply step to remember how to rotate the sections.

The only physical sleight-of-hand skill is in spreading the cards cleanly.