This magic trick stumped Penn & Teller - here's how it was done
British magician Nick Einhorn stumped two of the world's most foremost magicians - but now his secret's out.
In 2011, Einhorn performed on the TV show Penn & Teller: Fool Us. The gist of the program is simple: Magicians show off their best tricks in an attempt to fool both the studio audience and famous comedy-magic duo.
Einhorn began on stage with three tables and three covered dishes. Then he asked a random woman in the audience to choose which dish would be placed on which table. Next, the woman chose three random men as volunteers. Finally, the woman assigned each man an envelope - either red, yellow, or blue - and chose which table each man would sit at. Then came the big reveal: Each man opened up his envelope and read a statement that correctly guessed both his name and which dish was on his table.
"We were fooled. I mean, not a clue," Penn said to the audience after Einhorn's trick concluded. "I mean, if you put a gun to my head and said, 'Take a guess. How did he do it?' I would say, 'Tell my family I love them.'"
Here's the full video of the Einhorn's trick:
Now, the video has resurfaced on Reddit, where a crafty user has revealed the secret to the trick.
It works like this: The magician has six sets of envelopes - one for each of the possible ways the dishes could be arranged on the tables. Once he knows which dish is at each table, he picks the corresponding set of envelopes. The next twist is that every envelope contains the same message:
TABLE 1 READ THE FOLLOWING: A man by the name of YOUR NAME will be seated at table number 1 and will be having Chicken Tikka Masala
TABLE 2 READ THE FOLLOWING: A man by the name of YOUR NAME will be seated at table number 2 and will be having a Burger and fries
TABLE 3 READ THE FOLLOWING: Finally, a man by the name of YOUR NAME will be seated at table number 3 and will be having Pizza
The magician knows which dish is at each table, and he selects the set of envelopes that correspond with that order. All that's left to do is make the volunteers read the statements and insert their names - pretty tricky.
For a more detailed debunking of the trick, check out the full post from Redditor NYChomie.