He has some of the best sleight of hand I've ever seen. It's up there with, if not better than, Shin Lim.

Second Oldest Trick in Sleight of Hand has been added as a related post - related requested by blackfox42 on that post.

Second Oldest Trick in Sleight of Hand has been added as a related post - related requested by blackfox42 on that post.

Your video, Second Oldest Trick in Sleight of Hand, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Not to ruin it for you, but look carefully for the sleight-of-hand (or is that sleight-of-foot) @3:21. She goes from high-heels, to flat-soles for the flip, then back to high-heels for the jump.

Still a cool video.

OK, that explanation and video are clearly the answer.

One element that I want to confirm is this: you've got evens face up one direction, and odds face up the other direction -- so that precludes the ability to allow the viewer to examine the cards before or after the trick, right?

I guess that the confusion / surprise from "guessing the correct card" acts as sleight of hand and keeps the mark off balance for long enough to get the cards back in the pack, so it doesn't matter much. But I'd imagine that you'd get people asking to see the cards *all the time*, so it would be a bit more fun if you could allow them to inspect them.

Still, thanks for the explanation!

As for more ideas; I didn't hear if the Rubik's Cubes were random (as in P & T went and bought their own for this trick). If he brought his own Cubes, then things change again. Since after all he could be engineering Rubik's Cubes with some added perks.

It'd require some pretty good "quirky" engineering knowledge (and BTW, this is quite common with magicians)... But he may be able to make a Rubik's Cube that with a touch to a button, change in acceleration, heat & cold, etcetera, perform many simple yet crucial tricks to complete his act.

Anyway, it all depends on what his goal is for the Cube. He may NOT want a Cube that solves itself instantly with a press of the button (plus that may be a little too much over-engineered). But, you could have stickers that switch color via various means, like a switch based on temperature.

It all depends as well as what is available out there. There are a lot of very tricky things you could accomplish if you truly had the ability to get some of these items.

It's very hard to tell you what types of abilities this Cube could have; it's probably easier to tell you what features it wouldn't have based on the performance we saw (like I said, one that "solves itself" would more than likely be over-engineered)...

But, to me it's far more easier to see it via a extraordinary ability in sleight of hand and an extreme amount of experience with a Rubik's Cube (go look at Rubik Cube videos; there are a lot of people that do very neat things with Rubik's Cube...).

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.

Is it possible to solve 3 sides of a Rubik's cube whilst the opposite sides are scrambled?

I think he solves the cube in the bag when he reaches in to take it out. I wonder if he is doing the behind the back toss one the same way. I can only imagine that for the last trick he is able to eye up Teller's cube and "solve" his one to match, which would be pretty astounding even without all the sleight of hand.

I've watched much of the clip at 1/4 speed and learned a little. SPOILER ALERT.

The marker vanishes are now definitely obvious. The first time he slips it into his vest. The second time he flips it to the back of his fingers then drops his hand behind him and discards it.





So, the vest definitely does come into play a lot. He also pushed a card into the lower opening in his vest at about 3:45 while misdirecting by spinning a card in his other hand.



That's all good and fine, but other things are not simple sleight of hand.

At 5:10 with his back turned he shows us the signed card with the hand behind his back. Then in full view he simply turns the card against his back. Then his other hand raises up from the other side of his body to reveal the "same" signed card. (The one that was in view, btw, he tucks up into his vest at this point, keeping in hand the blank that was paired with it.) The only possible explanation for the same card being in two places at once is there must be multiple copies of each signed card, which means he has stooges who sign the exact same way every time or he has a technological advantage like others have mentioned (tiny scanner and printer).

The other thing that confounds is how he has a signed card in one hand and a stack of cards in the other. Then in full view the tall stack shrinks down to (approximately) one card and the single card grows into a stack instantaneously. I guess there must be some kind of technological solution to this as well, but I don't know how a functional stack of cards (and not just the appears of a stack of cards) could collapse and appear... unless they aren't functional and it's a trick deck that can easily expand or shrink to look like a deck or single card.

At 6:00 when he just shakes the bag and the signed card inside changes to the other signed card, I think he just flips the bag around with his shake motion and that the single card is printed on the front with one signature card and the other signature card on the back.

That's the only thing that makes sense... which again requires a special scanner and printer setup... I guess.

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.

To a certain extent, but I would contend that flawlessly pulling off complex sleight of hand in front of multiple cameras, 2 professional magicians/tricksters and an entire studio audience is, imo, a form of magic.

I don't think there's a way for sleight-of-hand tricksters to not have a retarded look on their face as they do their tricks. Like they're fooling themselves but not, making it up as they go along but we all know it's rehearsed.

Part of a series of therapy exercises for magicians suffering from depression as the result of chronic audience indifference to sleight-of-hand.
*quality