Penn & Teller Fool Us Jen Kramer

hi my name is Jen Cramer and I live right here in beautiful Las Vegas Nevada so when I went to Yale I became a theater major because they didn't have a major in Witchcraft and Wizardry I figured Yale is basically Hogwarts I'll join the magic Society and I show up on campus and turns out there wasn't a magic Society so I decided to start one and I'm proud to say it's still going strong so when I was 14 years old I was dreaming of being in Las Vegas one day of performing on a big stage now that I'm doing my show here there will be girls who come up after the show and say you know I just I never considered magic but then I saw the show and you know now I think magic is so cool and that to me is so rewarding I love that about magic [Music] [Applause] this next performer went to Yale which is an adorable American version of Weill colleges like Oxford and Cambridge will you please welcome Jim Cramer [Applause] hi everyone thank you so much for that warm welcome it is wonderful to be here with you all I did just graduate from Yale University and now I'm doing thank you now I'm doing magic full-time or mom and dad if you're watching I am a brain surgeon just like I told you like I do these card tricks to keep my fingers nimble thank you and I'd like to show you right now one of my all-time favorite card tricks Jonathan would you join me on stage let's hear for Jonathan Ross Jonathan I have a deck of cards here in random order I'd like you to please take a look at that deck of cards all mixed up there now Jonathan I'm going to give you some very explicit instructions I need you to do exactly what I tell you to do can you do that John I will try my best excellent I know you can do it you're married right you know to follow instructions yes all right here's what we'll do we'll divide the cards for their half and half fish you're gonna take one half I'm gonna take one half which half would you like uh this half that half go for it give that half a shuffle if you would really mix it up well they're what you get them however much you'd like it's up to you your uncle great now I'm going to turn around so that I can't possibly see what you're doing Jonathan but what I would like you to do is please spread the cards out you can see just like this spread the cards out so that you can see all of the options yeah and then I'd like you to think of any one of those cards that you see okay have you got one in mind I've got most in my mind right now but uh I'll go back to just one okay I've changed it I've got one in my mind got one in your mind and you'll remember that card I'm gonna try my best terrific all right Jonathan I'll uh I'll go back the cards will shuffle them all together in fact and are you ready for your next instructions yes you've been doing very well following instructions so far make sure they're nice and mixed up would you hold out your right handed yes would you hold out your your left hand actually because I'm going to have you deal some cards okay all right terrific now this is so that the cards are entirely out of my control right now Jonathan you've got the cards rated power now what I'm going to ask you to do is please deal the cards face down onto my palm starting from the top of the deck until I faced off all right and by the way now that the cards are completely out of my control you can let everyone know what's the kind you're just thinking of I thought all the eight of diamonds the eight of diamonds yes all right well please go ahead and I'd like you to start dealing down cards there until I say stop oh stop it was quick but it was good while it lasted [Music] [Applause] I've heard that part too often in my life no Jonathan just tariqas here for a moment you looked at the cards you were thinking in your mind of a single card you shuffled the deck you dealt the cards absolutely right here the card you're thinking of Jonathan the eight of diamonds diamonds let's see how we did go for it Wow [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so can exhale having a talk and work out if they come look at how you did that I was kind of on top of it I couldn't see anything I had no idea let me know about your schooling bit though you speak four languages all right I do you what are those languages I speak English French Spanish and Swahili Wow well I can see why you don't learn some of them but why French I'm what what's the situation for you being a woman in magic what are the advantages and one of the disadvantages of that you know I think there are advantages and disadvantages um you know advantages being that I guess you sort of stand out just by nature being a woman disadvantages also being that things can be a little bit more challenging you know the magic books are written for for men and men's clothing and that type of thing I guess if you're wearing a big jacket then you could conceal stuff always even coming up with bare sleeves exactly yeah okay well I think they're ready now they've deliberated long enough then well you know the temptation because women in magic are so where is to talk about how refreshing it is to see someone with a couple of X chromosomes up there but I don't think that's the most interesting thing about this those interesting thing about this is not your gender but rather that what you did is a trick and the audience probably can't tell the difference what you did is a trick was predominantly intellectually and a lot of the people that come out here and do tricks it's finger flinging it's it's what I would call juggler a huge amount of physical practice what you were doing there is a huge amount of mental practice as a matter of fact when you got to the place when you had to do a shuffle that well but you had to do your shuffle ah you could see that that your handling of the cards was not as smooth as your handling of your mind I'm going to say a couple of names to you there's a great Spanish magician in one tampers and there's another great Chicago magician named Aronson and I bet that either of those two guides have a pretty good idea of the capacity you had and I want to tell you my favorite kinds of card tricks use this technique because I love it when it's up here instead of here you got a pretty good idea absolutely but I'm assuming that that kind of the codes and the names mentioned there that's enough for you to believe that they know what you were doing it was all done up here Jonathan old but up here yeah that's why I was so good well because nothing would be fantastic it blew us all away for sure you could even fool him Jam was one that was he Genco [Applause]

Channel: eufhaye

Views: 1,113,159

Rating: 4.6420131 out of 5

Keywords: Penn, Teller, Fool Us, Jen Kramer, #PennandTeller, eufhaye, #PennandTellerFoolUs

Id: jqveVcGryMA

Length: 7min 4sec (424 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 10 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/allseeinglama]

Ok, it's frustrating to see that the person who has it right has been downvoted to zero and the absurd guess has become the top comment.

Here's how it was done:

First of all you need to take note of how this trick starts off. The cards have been pre-shuffled. Rather odd, no? Why not just shuffle them there rather than before hand? Fanning out the cards is her way of avoiding a shuffle. Now, the magician is the one who makes the split. Yet, she lets Jonathan pick the half he would like. So, why not just let Jonathan split the deck? What does all this mean?

It means that her cards are arranged a certain way and she doesn't want them altered. Why? So she can make the split at the point she desires and be in control of where the pre-arranged cards are split.

Once Jonathan takes a half, all of a sudden she is OK with them being shuffled on stage by somebody other than herself. This is because she's concerned with what cards are in Jonathans hand, not their order, she knows which cards are there because like I said, she controlled them up to that point.

A couple more things to note. She takes the other half of the deck. Why on earth does she need to take the other half of the deck to let Jonathan pick a card from the other half... Why does she need to turn her back on Jonathan when the cards aren't even facing her? If she must cover her gaze, why not a blind fold? This is where the second trick happens. The random jump cut at 2:50 to a couple seconds later was probably to make it less obvious what she did (how many times has this show had random jump cuts mid-act?). While shes turned away she swaps out the corresponding half of another deck concealed most likely in the gap of her dress. She even later comments on how most magic tricks are designed for men's clothing (What a coincidence!) She might not know the order of Jonathan's cards, but she knows the order of these identical cards.

So, let's take a look at the last portion. The "maneuver" she does during the "shuffle" is painfully obvious, but I'll explain it step by step nonetheless. Again, take note that suddenly she has to shuffle the cards rather than Jonathan, even though ultimately Jonathan will hold them. First, she takes Jonathan's half and put's it under her half (which now contains the 8 of diamonds as well as Jonathan's half). You can see her hold a break so blatantly obvious that even in a blurry 480p video with the far shot and all, the gap between the cards can still be made out. She splits the cards from her break so that she can move Jonathan's half to the top. While obviously holding a break again she shuffles Jonathan's cards, this is a real shuffle since their order does not matter. She splits the cards again at the break she was holding and puts her half back to the top. This time when she "shuffles" the cards, notice how she's very carefully pulling off single cards from the top while closely eyeballing them? What happened to the nonchalant shuffle from 2-3 seconds ago? She's taking cards off the top so she can not only add to the illusion of shuffling, but also so that Jonathan doesn't have to draw 6-7 cards and she can deliver her little punch-line.

To sum it up:

• She has matching halves of the deck concealed and memorized

• Splits her in-hand deck to match the halves of the concealed deck

• Sneaks in relevant half of concealed deck in place of useless half of in-hand deck

• Uses a pretend shuffle to get concealed half in place

• Moves cards off top/stops Jonathan according to memorized position of card she needs

[u/[deleted]]

one half of the deck is the same as the other half
she takes one half and already has it memorized
gives second half to jonathan
doesnt really matter what jonathan does with his deck
she puts her half of the deck on top of his when they both combine decks
when jonathan tells her what his card is she does her memory trick

[u/unbridledspirit]

Here's how I see it to account for jonathan shuffling his half as well as allowing us to verify both halves are identical.. prep: two decks, both split in halves the same way. She hides two halves on her, and has one deck in her hands. Only the order of the hidden deck matters

1. she comes out and lightly shuffles the deck, careful to keep the two halves separate
2. she fans the deck out and all cards are unique. While she is doing this she confirms the two halves of the deck still match her hidden halves. At this point, if she messed up her initial shuffle, she can still fix it
3. she splits the deck into the same two halves as her hidden deck Johnathan picks one and she takes the other. Jonathan shuffles it but it doesn't matter what that looks like.
4. She turns around and fans the cards out. tells jonathan to do the same. She sees her half and and when the deck goes out of view she switches with the second half (the one containing all the same cards that jonathan has). She has already memorized the order of both halves
5. She takes jonathan's half and awkwardly shuffles her memorized half to the top. This is where she is weakest
6. Puts it into johnathan's hands and asks him to deal it out. she knows the order so it is not hard to deal it up

This is the only way to account for the fact that we saw both halves are unique. After her half goes out of view we are not allowed to verify the deck ever again. Also, only way that jonathan is allowed to shuffle and handle his half in whatever which way. It wouldn't have mattered if he dropped his half or riffled shuffle the deck afterwards

[u/matafubar]

Her slow shuffling makes it easy to see what she did. She memorized around half of the cards (At 1:48). When she fans out the cards, at 2:33, she indexes the start point of the cards Jonathan has. At 2:56 she shuffled the deck such that she knew the location of each card. When Jonathan told the audience what the card was, she'd have already known the location of each card and counted until it on her hand.

edit: How she handled Jonathan's shuffle. If you look at how he shuffled his cards at 2:19 then how she shuffled it at 2:22, you can see she used the exactly pattern. So she might've created a mental mapping of her half to his half then matched it that way.

edit2: My guess was wrong, look at /u/jiffy_pop's response for a more accurate answer.

[u/MisterEggs]

Interesting to read all the other replies of how it was done, the only thing that weired me out was i happened to pick the 8 of diamonds as well.

[u/energy4anarchy]

Magnets

[u/aumin]

Here is my humble guess:

The cards may look random when she spreads them but she has actually put them in a very specific order that she has memorized. When she splits them in two she acts as if the split was made somewhat random but the split was very precise and she knows exactly what cards are in what pile.

She has hidden two identical piles and somewhere around 2:37-2:52 she swaps the pile she took from the table to an identical pile to the one he chose in the beginning.

She then takes his cards and makes it looks as though she shuffles all of them but she only shuffles the ones he gave her and ends with putting her pre-organized pile on top. Or some variation of faking her shuffle. The end result is a deck with the top half being a copy of the bottom half only in a order which she has memorized.

She then asks him to reveal his card and then it's "just" a matter of remembering where in the top pile that card is.

She must have an amazing memory.

[u/jimbiscuit]

mirror ? not available in blegium

[u/konvictkarl]

If you look closely at the beginning of the trick, the 8 of diamonds is the 4th card from the right. Just sayin....

EDIT and probably 2 marked cards