10 ms·
Penn & Teller do have a show called "Fool Us" where a magician performs a trick for them, and then P&T try to guess how the trick is done, immediately confirmin
by trevyn 10y ago
Penn & Teller do have a show called "Fool Us" where a magician performs a trick for them, and then P&T try to guess how the trick is done, immediately confirming their accuracy with the magician. They're quite good, but they're also "fooled" reasonably often.
Although maybe that just makes for better television... ;)
- grabcocque 10y agoYeah, I think that's just for TV. Ain't no way Teller's getting fooled by any fresh-off-the-cruise-liner cabaret magician.
- csydas 10y agoIn this case it's difficult to tell. A lot of small time acts hit it big with their one REALLY good trick they develop, or just good enough showmanship that there's reasonable doubt. I've watched the show a few times and I don't know how carefully detailed the rules of success vs failure are, but on a few instances, Penn and Teller announced they had a fair idea of what tricks were being done but couldn't really place it in an acceptable order or say the how/when. So even if Teller is the magic encyclopedia, he can be fooled, it seems.
- seanc 10y agoThose guys do come on the show, and very rarely win. The winners are most often low-profile professional magicians who make a significant income consulting for the famous ones. Inventing and selling tricks is an important revenue stream for many magicians. So they come on, do some trick that they invented in secret and worked on for years, and give P&T that same childlike sense of awe and amazement that the rest of us experience almost all the time. It's the best part of the show. Like this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyZp4sPqBAI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyZp4sPqBAI
- repeek 10y agoI thoroughly enjoyed this reddit AMA[0] with a Rubik's Cube magician who 'fooled' P&T.[1] [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3d5wlc/hi_im_steven_brundage_the_magician_who_fooled/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3d5wlc/hi_im_steven_b... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwDAXC0_Bxk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwDAXC0_Bxk
- derefr 10y agoHuh, I never thought about "consulting magician" as a career. Sort of like the professional songwriters who work for music labels, ghostwriting for dozens of bands. Given that these exist, I wonder how many magicians with a signature trick got it from a consultant instead of inventing it. Are a few people creating all the world's magic acts?
- duncan_bayne 10y agoYou should watch Jonathan Creek - a murder mystery series about a consulting magician. Pure fiction but rekindled my childhood interest in magic. I'm currently, slowly, teaching myself card magic now. Starting with The Royal Road.
- drb311 10y agoHow often are P&T's guessed solutions better than the real ones?
- neaden 10y agoThey're kind of vague on what the solution is since they don't want to give it away to the audience so they just kind of say a hint. The attempted fooler will generally understand what they are getting at and say if they are correct or not and there are some judges listening who know how it was done as well.
- seanc 10y agoUnless the contestant is an ass about it, in which case they blow the secret wide open. That part's fun too.
- fenomas 10y agoThe default case is the that the contestant's trick isn't original to them, and Penn just gives the trick's trade name or its inventor's name, obfuscated a little, and the contestant grins and waves goodbye. When P&T actually make a guess about an original mechanism, sadly Teller either whispers it or draws it on some paper that they then dispose of in some suitably flashy way. (He's usually right of course!)
- zwily 10y agoWell according to the rules, if their first guess is wrong, they are considered fooled. I'm pretty sure they have the right guess for all of them somewhere on their list of possibilities. There have been a couple where they very convincingly look fooled though.
- lisper 10y agoThere was one episode where they didn't even make a guess. Penn got really pissed off and said something to the effect of, "Fuck you, I have no fucking idea how you fucking did that!" Not sure if the anger was real or a put-on but it was a lot of fun to watch. Just thinking about it is making me smile :-)
- fenomas 10y agoThat was real! I mean he wasn't really angry but he really did have his mind blown. The backstory is that the magician in question (Kostya Kimlat) did a trick that Penn & Teller also do, and he did it more or less the same way they do it - except that at the end, at the part where P&T do the sleights that make the trick work, in Kimlat's version the effect was already done because he'd done a different sleight, earlier, about five inches under P&T's noses. It was pretty glorious. The trick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCFXV6o7cro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCFXV6o7cro Penn talking about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuKail7Jwwg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuKail7Jwwg
- k-mcgrady 10y agoI think the only reason they get fooled is that they're time limited to come up with a solution and only get one shot at it. 99% sure it's not 'just for TV' as they did the original series in the UK and as it's a competition (which is highly regulated) they said there were lots of rules in place to ensure it was real and not set up or anything like that.
- fenomas 10y agoBeing a huge P&T fan who's watched them all, of the tricks where they get fooled there are a small handful where someone just flat-out, stone-cold bewilders them. But there are a lot more where they clearly know pretty much what's going on, but either they take a 50/50 guess and miss, or there's some hangup about wording or somesuch. But definitely I agree that they don't miss on purpose for TV reasons.
- k-mcgrady 10y agoAgreed. I happened to watch a video earlier today of one (from the US series) and it seems like one that really does fool them [0]. Worth watching if others haven't seen it. [0] https://youtu.be/3gpq4ML2DDo https://youtu.be/3gpq4ML2DDo
- T-hawk 10y agoDeliberately taking advantage of that 50/50 guess is one way to improve your prospect of winning on Fool Us. Have a trick that could be done in several different ways. P&T propose one method, and if that wasn't the way you did it, then you win.