@eric3579 Apparently, Penn/Teller confirmed on twitter that she wasn't a plant. (This from an unrelated blog post, I don't know how to find the tweet itself). Also, every participant has to tell a "judge" backstage how the trick is done, to avoid any funny business (for instance, denying that Penn & Teller's explanation is correct, even if it is).

Rubik's Cube Magician Steven Brundage fools Penn & Teller... has been added as a related post - related requested by lucky760 on that post.

All I saw was someone that had a tremendous amount of experience with Rubik's Cubes and very, very, fast sleight of hand. Some of his switch moves are incredibly fast. The best one at showing this skill is the trick @ 1:51. Penn & Teller are easily noticing the amount of sleight of hand needed to pull it off, as they clap at every one of the tricks involving not only solving the cube but also using very fast sleight of hand as well.

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I was providing a more "technology tailored" way to fool us and how it might create a great magic trick. I also love magic tricks that make use of self-created "magical" devices (his vest counts towards what I'm talking about).

As I mentioned there are probably quite a few ways to do this trick and I wholeheartedly agree with you that the most likely way the majority of this was done was via misdirection and cues. As it is true with almost everything, the simplest answer usually is the truth.

I however, became interested with he kept moving his hands (and the "cards") to the same spots or moving them, repeating, the same movement over and over again right before the "change" or flip occurred (with other things as well like the smoke--and yes, I know it was more than likely misdirection--but, sometimes smoke is just smoke ).

That is what made me think of a scanner (mostly because I'm a computer/engineering/physics hippie and I have seen scanners that can be made to look exactly like that mat; but I also have learned a bit of magic, with that instead of becoming an amateur magician I instead learned about magic and it's history instead). But, like you said and I also said above in my comment, this all can/could be done through many various schemes. Using differing ways of that same scheme/idea, the same mechanics and/or devices, with sleight of hand and a lot of misdirection (very well done too, simply because there was so very much of it needed--which Penn & Teller commended him on in their own way).

His jacket for example is obviously HIS engineered creation. It has a lot of hidden and secret functionality; in fact it may have been the underlying foundation that allowed the whole trick to work so well (you never know just what exactly is the magician's biggest helper in many tricks). That is what I love, personally, about magic is the engineering and love--the workmanship--that can go into it. Every great magician definitely has that engineering facet to their personality; they all know how to create a device that gives them just what they need. I've seen so many magical devices and how they were used and how they're made as well and I must say, it is a terribly interesting thing to learn about and see done. Sometimes you have devices made just to perform one extremely small function, just to add that little bit of "panache" to a trick...

Every magician--good and average--however do have or need one thing in common no matter what, and this refers to what you talk about (and this magician may be leagues ahead of others, making all tricks completed in that same manner seem simple and mundane compared to what he can accomplish with the exact same, extremely fundamental, aspect to magic; pulling off tricks that almost all magicians would believe to be impossible using such a standard fare of abilities and methods): agility and sleight of hand. With this comes the uses for that "god-like" speed and manipulation. Use that with engineered tools (not necessarily what I mentioned--the scanner, printer, and ink method--but, things easier to craft and more likely to be used like his vest) and it can suddenly make any of the simplest tasks (or even tricks that other magicians perform) we do everyday, extraordinary if not miraculous.

I thought I'd add my idea, because I like to figure these tricks out as well; as I'm sure many of you are as well.

Overall, if I was Penn and Teller, I'd be most impressed with his ability to keep his showmanship intact while obviously needing great concentration on the trick at the same time--not to mention he keeps showing superb sleight of hand the whole time.

So many magicians are just amazing to watch. The tools they create (which can be so complicated that you'd never believe that someone would create such a thing or something fairly complicated to complete one very easy task) sometimes never let their presence be known--if done right. But in other cases you know there is "something" helping the magician, but you can't begin to imagine what exactly he has created or what exactly it is accomplishing for him.

I do wish they'd give us a general idea how these tricks are performed, without destroying the "magic" involved. Just tell us general things, like "misdirection and a magical device", etc... They don't need to explain it into it's minutiae.

I'll always love magic and the amazing use of the mind and the body to create illusions grand and small (or "magic" that just tests the limits OF the mind or the body; feats, as it were).

When the body and mind work together in perfect unison to create such wonderful uses of sleight of hand, feats, and "magical" devices...these are the type of people that will continue--hopefully for as long as humans exist--to create magic as real as it can get. Waking up the child inside us all!

/length

There were a lot of different tricks in there. A part of me really wonders if the mat on the table is a "printer/scanner" and that "marker" is extremely important. There may be a time-released chemical that helps all of this go down (meanwhile he may actually have a small printer on his body somewhere). When the smoke appears that is when the "card" is doing it's chemical thing (as you could smother one card with this chemical making it fully black, but then the printer could change the chemical pattern again as it is scanned and therefore reset the card with the other signature...).

The truth is, I have no idea how it was done, but I think what he is wearing (and possibly what is underneath--not to mention the pockets that are very hard to determine their location or size), possible chemical reactions used in a few different ways, a slim printer, and a slim scanner. Plus all of the sleight of hand tricks you did or did not catch...

If true, he used some fairly complicated technological prowess, besides his agility to get this done. But, for ages untold the creations made and used by magicians are just as important sometimes as the act.

This would also be THE perfect trick to give Penn & Teller the slip, as they may have never ran across anything like this (I've run into tech that could easily do lots of this--scanner through things, etc; it just depends on what is in that pen exactly...think of it kind of like invisible ink, but it need not stay that way and it more than likely can be made to "dissolve" as some sort of inert gas).

Everything was done here flawlessly, even the music feed into the act making it harder to catch.

Phew, that is long enough and I may only have 50% or so right on this one.

Thank you for posting this. I watched and rewatched the routine a few times on my DVR and am still blown away by it.

I cannot imagine how he could possibly have done some of the things he's done, like making two cards switch hands at a distance in full view. Or making a functional stack of cards swap hands with a single, signed card... *WTF?!

Anyone have any reasonable explanations for how this could at all be feasible?

Just as good is the magician who fooled Penn & Teller by getting Penn's signed card in new-deck order inside a wrapped box of playing cards, while his hands were in full view the whole time.

Mind = blown.

Penn & Teller pointed it out

Also, @blahpooks comment has a great article that points out the central flaw in all the arguments, that autism is assumed to be worse than measles.

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I have rewritten this post about 20 times.

My first instinct was to tell you that your mom was a moron and you don't even have the excuse of not having the information that mom didn't have.

Oh hey, turns out I'm really not that conflicted on it.

Your attitude is unbelievably selfish. There are kids out there that genuinely cannot be vaccinated, because of (incredibly rare) allergies to the vaccines. You are putting those kids at risk.

@Trancecoach, of course, continues his tradition of not having a fucking clue about anything by spouting complete and utter bollocks espoused by someone who has embraced believing in water memory.

Here's some of your libertarian pals on the reality of vaccination.

It is unfathomable how people in the 21st century can be so mind-numbingly ignorant.

How fucking retarded do you have to be when even FOX MOTHERFUCKING NEWS is smarter than you.

Penn & Teller on the Anti-Vaccination Movement has been added as a related post - related requested by ChaosEngine.

My expertise is not really scatology in general, but more specifically around bovine fecal detection.

This registers off the scale.

And since you have decided to engage in an Ad Hominem on Gorski rather than refute any of the actual science, I will do the same and ask that if you are going to attack the author rather than the argument, you at least do so using a site that doesn't have Jenny fucking McCarthy as one of it's contributors

Anyway, even if there was a link between autism and vaccination, it would still be the lesser of two evils.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Penn-Teller-on-the-Anti-Vaccination-Movement

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Yeah, he's not super strict about it...it seems to just be part of the act and most of the time we see him they are appearing as "Penn & Teller". When he is doing his own thing like promoting a book he wrote he has done radio interviews on NPR.

Then there's also the ending of their movie Penn & Teller Get Killed.

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