# Penn & Teller: Fool Us - Whole season ***SPOILERS*** (Trick speculation)



## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

I'll start a thread for spoilers on the tricks by the contestant magicians and Penn & Teller on Penn & Teller: Fool Us aired to date.
I really like the show.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_&_Teller:_Fool_Us

I'm amazed and curious at some, and that Penn was fooled! See below.

After watching "revealed" I know how some are done, but....

P&T tricks:

The nail gun in P&T's "Russian roulette" was rigged. Those nails looked really big to me so they could have been plastic. In any case a real gun will only fire when the spring at the front is compressed, which may be it, but otherwise Penn had a way to fire or not fire, and I suspect it's not just that the gun has to be horizontal.

Teller "drowning" in the water tank. I think that his head wasn't underwater. The tank has vertical sections with the water in front where Teller could stick his head into a cut out or something.

Teller in the concrete box. Teller's hands weren't in the gloves holding the box. The empty gloves and sleeves were attached to the box. He picked the glasses out of Penn's pocket and put them on.

Contestant tricks:

Cubic Act: The last one with the 2 French guys and girl with the fabric box. Really, Penn had no idea? I guessed that the street light had a lift in it like the levitating girl trick. I wonder why they had to prop the box at an angle at the start and end, maybe to make it longer on edge to cover a door on the lamp or just to cover her getting in and out. I'm sure she stands behind the light but that platform was a lot like the typical trick (With mirrors?) so maybe she hides below. In any case, Teller knew.

The kid with 1-6 held up the full deck at 6.

Romany with the rope trick. Penn knew it was a classic. I have no idea. The rope is elastic?

Morgan & West, the Victorians. Did they fake out Penn with a phony deck switch? They denied it. I can think of a few ways the trick is done with the one partner telegraphing the card to the other with verbal cues or hand signals. I was thinking that the cards were marked but I don't think he always showed the back.

The guy with the guts. The mechanism has a way to move the ball around him?

Gazzo? Did he fool them?


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## JohnB1000 (Dec 6, 2004)

Could have just used the existing thread 

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=520589&


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## busyba (Feb 5, 2003)

MikeAndrews said:


> Teller "drowning" in the water tank. I think that his head wasn't underwater. The tank has vertical sections with the water in front where Teller could stick his head into a cut out or something.


His head _is_ underwater. There's no trick to the tank itself (except for an emergency valve at the bottom that can instantly empty the tank in case of an emergency). He can breathe because of his hand that he is holding the key with that is out the top of the tank. Hidden inside his sleeve is a breathing tube that leads to his face mask so he can breathe through his nose.

Note that except for one brief moment (brief enough in duration that holding one's breath during it is no big deal) that hand is always out of the water.


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

busyba said:


> ...He can breathe because of his hand that he is holding the key with that is out the top of the tank. *Hidden inside his sleeve is a breathing tube that leads to his face mask so he can breathe through his nose...
> *


this is what i had guessed.


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## ebockelman (Jul 12, 2001)

The Victorians didn't use a deck switch. If you play back the scene slowly, you can see the guy on the right doing hand signals. You couldn't see them from Penn or Teller's vantage points, but the camera did.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

ebockelman said:


> The Victorians didn't use a deck switch. If you play back the scene slowly, you can see the guy on the right doing hand signals. You couldn't see them from Penn or Teller's vantage points, but the camera did.


Well, Teller and Penn would know full well they could use a telegraphing technique which is why they probably did fake a clumsy desk switch.

Didn't Morgan & West get the "fooled' trip to Vegas because Penn's first guess was wrong and he only gets one? Penn might roast them in the desert!

BTW they did say they are "public*" school teachers and they live together, NTTAWWT.

* Assumption on my part. Public schools are private schools in England.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

> I just re-watched it to be sure. When Ross goes to sit down and passes in front of Morgan, Morgan inserts Jonathan's deck of cards into a sorted deck of cards he had hidden.
> 
> They start to name cards, he discards Ross's cards, Ross names a few more, Morgan discards some of their fixed deck, and then lets Ross finish up the rest.
> 
> ...


http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=439643&page=8


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

MikeAndrews said:


> P&T tricks:
> 
> The nail gun in P&T's "Russian roulette" was rigged. Those nails looked really big to me so they could have been plastic. In any case a real gun will only fire when the spring at the front is compressed, which may be it, but otherwise Penn had a way to fire or not fire, and I suspect it's not just that the gun has to be horizontal.


I haven't kept up with this show, but if this is the same trick that I remember him doing on some other show, the nail gun cartridge or whatever you call it has nails left out at specific places, e.g.
|||||_||||||||||_

the 6th one is empty, so he just counts how many he's fired so far..


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

mattack said:


> I haven't kept up with this show, but if this is the same trick that I remember him doing on some other show, the nail gun cartridge or whatever you call it has nails left out at specific places, e.g.
> |||||_||||||||||_
> 
> the 6th one is empty, so he just counts how many he's fired so far..


i don't remember seeing the tops of the nails, and wondered if they could have been marked.


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## midas (Jun 1, 2000)

mattack said:


> I haven't kept up with this show, but if this is the same trick that I remember him doing on some other show, the nail gun cartridge or whatever you call it has nails left out at specific places, e.g.
> |||||_||||||||||_
> 
> the 6th one is empty, so he just counts how many he's fired so far..


That was kind of the point of the trick. The idea was that he went beyond what any normal being would be able to memorize.

My suspicion is that there's 2 buttons, one to shoot nails and the other to just make a noise.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

mattack said:


> I haven't kept up with this show, but if this is the same trick that I remember him doing on some other show, the nail gun cartridge or whatever you call it has nails left out at specific places, e.g.
> |||||_||||||||||_
> 
> the 6th one is empty, so he just counts how many he's fired so far..


That what he says but it can't work that way - for safety.
For another thing a nail gun doesn't hold that many nails, and you never see the strip in the gun and see it advance.



midas said:


> That was kind of the point of the trick. The idea was that he went beyond what any normal being would be able to memorize.


Exactly, The whole bit that Penn does at nearly the end where's he replaying and trying to remember where he is in the sequence. All part of the building drama in the act.



midas said:


> ]My suspicion is that there's 2 buttons, one to shoot nails and the other to just make a noise.


My point. The gun is rigged someway, and I think the nails were phony anyway. It may be that the gun is empty to just make the sound and the phony nails pop up from below like a knife throwing act. Again, on real guns the tip has to be depressed as a safety feature so you can't shoot into the air.

Remember many years ago when P&T were on Letterman and did the Russian Roulette rat trap wheel. Backstage they had told Dave that the thing is rigged, and under no circumstances at some key point should he touch any of the traps. They dare Dave pick one trap and like he was instructed he refuses. Penn harrasses Dave and makes a big show for being a p*y, etc, so Dave reached over and grabbed Penn's hand and pulls it to a trap. Penn nearly wet his pants.


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## wouldworker (Sep 7, 2004)

In the versions I've seen, Penn tells the audience that the whole trick is a scam and that there was never any danger (this is usually demonstrated by pressing the gun to Teller's neck and pulling the trigger). To be no danger there has to be no nails in the gun or, if there are nails in the gun, there is no compressed air so they can't be shot. I don't think that having two triggers (one that shoots a nail and one that doesn't) would count as posing no danger. If he pulled the wrong trigger he would fire a nail into his hand (or Teller's body) and he has promised that there is no chance of that happening.

In some closeups the nail appears to wiggle as he lifts the gun from the table. That wouldn't happen with a real nail gun, even with the low air pressure that he would have to use to sink nails as shallowly as he does in the trick. In the nail guns that I have used, shooting a nail that shallowly would probably jam the gun anyway.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

wouldworker said:


> In the versions I've seen, Penn tells the audience that the whole trick is a scam and that there was never any danger (this is usually demonstrated by pressing the gun to Teller's neck and pulling the trigger). To be no danger there has to be no nails in the gun or, if there are nails in the gun, there is no compressed air so they can't be shot. I don't think that having two triggers (one that shoots a nail and one that doesn't) would count as posing no danger. If he pulled the wrong trigger he would fire a nail into his hand (or Teller's body) and he has promised that there is no chance of that happening.
> 
> In some closeups the nail appears to wiggle as he lifts the gun from the table. That wouldn't happen with a real nail gun, even with the low air pressure that he would have to use to sink nails as shallowly as he does in the trick. In the nail guns that I have used, shooting a nail that shallowly would probably jam the gun anyway.


Penn does end the trick by "shooting" into Teller's crotch and neck.

Again I think that the phony nails pop up from beneath the table, the gun never fires a nail the whole time.


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## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

There was a similar trick on some talent show (AGT?) and it appeared to depend on the orientation of the nail gun. I don't think I saw a similar pattern in P&T's trick.


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## nataylor (Apr 26, 2000)

The nails are magnetic. There's no point on them, they're just cut flat with a magnet on the base that is attracted to something hidden in the wood. The gun doesn't force out the nails, it just moves the next one to the tip of the gun. As long as he doesn't place the tip of the gun against something with metal, the nail won't stick to it. I suspect the gun is rigged so it makes a firing sound whenever the trigger is pulled, but the nail being advanced is triggered by a nail leaving the tip. In the one instance Penn fires at the board and doesn't get a nail, he's aiming at a specific spot that doesn't have any metal underneath it for the nail to grab on to.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

MikeAndrews said:


> That what he says but it can't work that way - for safety.
> For another thing a nail gun doesn't hold that many nails, and you never see the strip in the gun and see it advance.


Whatever _other_ show I saw him do this on, I would swear he _did_ show a nail gun strip showing some left out.

Again, maybe he's totally lying the whole time, but the "some left out" seemed plausible.. and IIRC, he had some better (alleged?) mnemonic for remembering.. It wasn't like he was remembering 4, 7, 13, 16, 18 were missing, they matched exactly with his patter or some music or something..


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

mattack said:


> Whatever _other_ show I saw him do this on, I would swear he _did_ show a nail gun strip showing some left out.
> 
> Again, maybe he's totally lying the whole time, but the "some left out" seemed plausible.. and IIRC, he had some better (alleged?) mnemonic for remembering.. It wasn't like he was remembering 4, 7, 13, 16, 18 were missing, they matched exactly with his patter or some music or something..


Yes! Penn shows a strip with nails missing "to show how the trick works," and then pretends that he lost the count, but that's NOT what's really going on.


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## wouldworker (Sep 7, 2004)

mattack said:


> Again, maybe he's totally lying the whole time


We know that he's lying because he ends the trick by saying that it's a lie:








> Most memorization acts are magic tricks. They're lies. We don't mind you knowing that, because Teller and I believe that it is morally wrong to do things on stage that are really [shoots into hand twice] dangerous. It makes the audience complicit in unnecessary [shoots into hand twice] human risk. [Shoots into table once] Any doubts about this [shoots into hand once] being a lie [shoots into table once] - [shoots into Teller's neck] I think that proves it.


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