Francis Menotti on Penn and Teller Fool Us

Aired on CW 9/28/15 - Here, the trick is a fun puzzle, but Francis' focus is on continuously pushing the boundaries and breaking the rules of "typical" magic presentations. The fact that it actually deceived Penn and Teller was a pleasantly surprising honor.

[@ungovernableevilmonger4660]

Great act, but I was really hoping the word "lobster" was going to be in that envelope.

[@ChrisS-nj3ye]

That's what I was hoping too!

[@TheDogn]

That would have been utterly next level.

[@MrCoyot3]

Lmao watching these stoned is the best thing ever and if that letter inside the envelope said lobster I would have lost my mind

[@torohoro]

after watching so many tricks, I immediately noticed a strange movement of the hand with a pencil. at the end of the trick, I remembered this moment and it became clear that the first pencil simply did not write, and the second one was normal.

[@BL4CKB1RD50]

I love how penn and teller take a guess and if their guess isn’t right they don’t question anything afterwards no matter how sketchy it is

[@arthur112113114]

If they were right and dude lies, he wouldnt win. Since in order to get on the show. One of the people backstage(forgot the name) is another magician, he has to know the secret, so no one can lie. If you ever seen the episode where penn and teller are sure they got it right but the person says no, they ask for a third opinion and some back stages tell the guy if they were right or not

[@BL4CKB1RD50]

Arthur Arstamyan yea I’ve seen Alison and Jonathan both confirm with the “judges” but I just find it fair play that they only ask about what they guess .. even if they see something else sketchy afterwards they don’t question it.

[@Harry351ify]

@@BL4CKB1RD50 that's the rule of the game. They make it clear at the beginning they only get one guess. In fact, that's one way many magicians fooled them. They do a magic trick that seems common but using a much obscure strategy, persuading Penn and Teller to guess the much common strategy.

[@Allen-L-Canada]

the letter-loading part was so unclean.

[@MexieMex]

Love that he twice tries to give them the solution to how it was done, and they still didn't catch on LOL

[@320hp]

I'm positive they saw that he tried to give it away twice. Which is why my theory is, they knew they wanted him on the show no matter what so they chose to ignore anything he tried to give away. Which the envelope in the pocket solidifies the fact that they wanted him on the follow-up show.

[@giant-woman]

Penn and Teller only get one guess. Their guess was the book, which is why they were surprised when he handed that over. They can only ever look at what the magician lets them, otherwise no one would ever fool them.

[@apoc7]

@@giant-woman exactly, he didnt "try to give it away", they thought they caught him using a gimmicked book, they were wrong. of course we live in a world where their act obeys the laws of reality, so obviously they know something else is the gimmick after the fact lol.... their guess was wrong, they did not suspect a gimmicked tray until after they had suspected the book and were deemed incorrect, thus they were fooled

[@DustinPlatt]

I want to see that green plastic thing. I mean... I desire to check and appreciate the eco-friendly intent of the lawn colored components objective.

[@brokenbeforetime]

Magician: Tell me when to stop... Audience member: FORCE!!!

[@MrTheBarintokyo]

The cool thing is Penn and Teller will not be fooled if they know the trick in its entirety. When he told them not to look at the bag of letters and the rack (if there is something fishy regarding that), it became obvious regarding that. But, when they realized the tray was just a random tray and the scrabble dictionary was the real deal... they were fooled. Jonathan could've picked a word out of the possibility of over a 100,000 words, and yet he picked the word that could make the trick work.

[@OmicronCoder]

the word force is painfully obvious and they knew it

[@jf5618]

Well done! Would’ve been hilarious to say when opening the envelope “lobster” just to F w the audience ;-). Amazing man!

[@LarryJL]

If Ted Mosby was cool

[@JustinCoasters]

Better ending than How I Met Your Mother

[@georgsteinhauser6217]

I know words, I have the best words.

[@daniellebarker7205]

ok donald

[@RequiemDream]

2:50 Why did she painted herself brown? It is a brown human, why would you do that?

[@RequiemDream]

I googled it and it's actually not paint, she is really cute anyways :)

[@DMSG1981]

Nobody knows more about words than me.

[@grayskindablue]

I absolutely love this trick. I adore language, I adore magic, and those two together for what turned out to be really incredible was so great to watch. Amazingly rehearsed.

[@nicholsonfile]

Great title for a great trick. Thanks for leaving the mystery with us!

[@flaimins]

English sounds really hard now

[@AllAmericanOutlaw]

TherealAZ I know right

[@Blondie42]

Even without his fun word play, it is very hard.

[@markthomson4700]

The bothersome part of the trick is that we never see the letters on the tray, AND he's putting them onto the little green holder, again, so that we dont see anything. Golly, you're switching out the letters. The volunteers need only turn to each other.."Who got the O?" - "Who got the B?" and so on. "Uh, I got an X..."

[@MrXBT2000]

I doubt that they just got completely random Scrabble letters, too risky. By asking, he shows that one, and only one, of them got the L. If he did not ask that, he could just have had a bag of only copies of the letters in the chosen word. As long as they did not talk to each other, it would have been fine if he had switched the letters, since all of them could see their letter in the end. I assume they were face down on the tray, since he told the first audience member that only she was supposed to look at her letter. Also, if the devil was at work, I think that would have been very obvious for at least the last couple of audience members. He could have trusted that they would not reveal it though, as I think most people would just have played along, feeling honored to have been given such an insight into how the trick was done.

[@Allen-L-Canada]

in the bag, there are only 7 letter to draw: L O B S T E R

[@tomfurgas2844]

The envelope bit at the end is a classic example of multiple outs.

[@monteanderson7181]

My guess- the word was already circled, and he changed to the correct page when he turned the book over. A pencil switch, from a fake pencil to a real pencil before Jonathan initialed it. The letter tray is gimmicked so the tiles go behind a flip up word. (I'm 99% positive about the word being circled and the pencil switch. I've seen similar effects.)

[@Asmrfoodandfilters]

Jonathan have initial on the page where he circled the word. Don't act like a magic genius

[@monteanderson7181]

@@Asmrfoodandfilters well, that was oddly confrontational. It's a mentalism effect that's been around quite a while. I could explain it, but, alas, you wouldn't understand and would become more hostile, and, frankly, you aren't worth it.

[@akgbkc]

Very interesting trick with so many forces built into it . But if you sit back and analyse it , it explains itself . Some parts have already been shared below like the pencil, the book , the circled word . The word stand is gimmick so he can always bring up a lobster . The force is for L , at least one L has to come from the bag . That I guess is all about it . The commentary is well rehearsed and delivered . Beautiful trick .

[@Legitdupe]

How did he make sure there is only one L that is forced. What if there were two people who got L and raised their hand? How did he make sure only one person got an L when they were completely allowed to choose randomly themselves from that satchel?

[@khankhalil8574]

Anand Ghurye In an other video he came up with the word PRESENT.

[@AncientWisdom222]

@@khankhalil8574 Interesting. Link please.

[@robertdean4259]

That’s the only part I can’t figure out. How did he force one L without the possibility of a another L showing up?

[@chemicalfrankie1030]

@@robertdean4259 in the bag there are only letters for LOBSTER. he would ask 'who got an L?' only if someone picked one and there was only 1 (he look at them before hiding them in the tray). if there were 2 ppl he would not have asked, OR he would have asked for another letter that was unique. it is not a force.

[@kasimselamat7129]

Wow.. Now i obliged to witness the sterling cinematography of V for vendeta..

[@8672Danny]

3:25 he tells him to draw a circle in the book and then he takes the pencil and put it by his side and then brings it out again and tells him to sign it. The pencil he gave to him at first didn't actually draw and the circle is actually already on the page. How did Pen and Teller not see this?

[@jimmy20097]

but how did he get the audiences to select correct letters?

[@RobotMowerTricks]

This would mean that he forced the page onto Johnathan. It would be ruined if Johnathan said stop too early or late. THat's a big risk because that's a fairly thick dictionary, ti would be obvious if he needed to skip ahead to a page or back to a page if Johnathan didn't pick a page somewhere in the middle. I do agree with your observation about the pencil switch though. The one way to do it, is to turn to a different page after the fake circle, and before he had Johnathan initial the page. But unless they cut come time out (which ahs been done in episodes) there's nothing at all on video that shows him flipping pages (it would also be hard to not get caught doing that) We know that it's not a gimmicked dictionary with every page the same. They are selling the trick, and it doesn't come with the dictionary, they say you can use any dictionary. Plus Teller was looking for that, and didn't find it.

[@DFZapRowsdower]

Obfuscation.

[@Impostleable]

Watch when he's doing the page flipping, when he says STOP, a big chunk of pages gets jumped. That's probably the force.

[@stepfatherphil]

It’s the quarter force. He dropped his hand to hide the quarter.

[@keithnaylor1981]

Amazing! I’m lost for words!

[@KaiisKlips]

Wonderful trick. Though the best part about it was his knowledge of the English language. I know some ''big words'' myself but not enough to construct full complex sentences. I'd love to increase my proficiency at synonyms and just in general increase my linguistic skills. Would help with my short story writing and just to piss my friends off.

[@thisiscait]

Scripts and rehearsals are beautiful things!

[@adfasfuiuiui1056]

Lol, learning thesaurus doesn't give you "knowledge" of a language. Facts aren't science, and dictionary isn't English.

[@BriRog68]

He asked Penn and Teller if he could tell them what they could and could not examine but never said what they couldnt, but was very careful to move the green tile holder behind him on the table and then position himself in front of it and glanced back at it briefly...not sure if that means anything just something that looked suspicious.

[@juho1169]

Well yeah duh, he even did it in a pretty obvious manner and got a laugh out of the audience.

[@ddebenedictis]

Possibly it was subterfuge...a red herring. If it did not play a role in the trick but his behavior let P&T to think that it did, that increases the chance to fool them.

[@RobotMowerTricks]

I think he was just being honest out of respect for them.

[@Jermuuu]

such charisma!

[@thureintun1687]

yes, I aware that this dude has huge cap in charisma level! Girls would fall in love with that one FACT

[@officialoj_wayne2942]

They knew how it was done , they wanted him on the show .

[@Thomas0661]

Dear Francis, what an amazing trick. I hope I'm right when I say; You and I, have something in common. We both like Columbo. In fact, I think by not saying to much, the episode "Columbo Goes to the Guillotine", in that episode a "mentalist" played by Anthony Andrews, does a very very fine trick too.. Best Regards Thomas

[@Buc_Stops_Here]

He is now a consultant on ABC's Deception, on Sundays. The tricks on the show are designed by him. Difference is there he (the show) explains the tricks when they are pulled off. Makes for an interesting mystery.

[@GuitarGuyChrisB]

Nice performance, Francis! I remember you demonstrating this feat at a particular pool house / private "museum" in Grandview, Ohio several years ago with Rick Maue. Great work!

[@sarcastamusraconteur6881]

i like the look on penn's face ( 2:26)as our intrepid thaumaturge was extracting haughty multisyllabic words,no doubt hoping that a grandiose ostentatious display of his lexicon would help affect victory.

[@MrMARKKIND]

effect

[@paulkearns100]

It was the tile green holder...

[@jamesbevan9939]

Purchased this last week. It arrived yesterday. I think it's really going to blow peoples' minds.

[@BrendanWhelan]

It's a good thing Penn didn't ask to look at the letters inside the satchel.... pretty sure there's a bunch of lobsters in there

[@cubikanime]

What happened to Ted Mosby?

[@totalstickshow1407]

THANK YOU!

[@takobocchi6057]

He quit his job as a professor and Lily get him this gig as a Magician ofc Barney taught him the tricks.

[@TheMaara1]

It reminds me a one episode from Colombo.

[@ScarAnrew]

yes as he asked for the circle in the book that episode also came to my mind and I do belive (at least that part) works the same way

[@DL-kc8fc]

@@ScarAnrew The principle is that Penn and Teller never examine objects that are actually involved in the trick. A specific page of the book is reached in the STOP way (it is a forced choice) and anything can be drawn on the page with a pencil. It's not from Colombo - in the film, the pages were all the same and it was written with a broken marker. The most important are the letters that have been replaced. The single letter "L" coincided with the selection of a volunteer (lucky coincidence), which the magician used to the illusion that all letters have their owners. The magician did not ask the other volunteers what letters they had chosen. They are still silent to this day that their letters did not appear in the word at all. Penn and Teller know the trick (they did something similar themselves), but because of the show, they chose a book as an allibi so that the magician (friend) could win the trophy. )))

[@HectorR906]

Was that a pencil switch?

[@monteanderson7181]

Yes.

[@amrmetawie335]

i believe the top of the pencil was covered with wax and he took the pencil 3:27 he removed it so when he returned back to jonathan he could write with it

[@cooper6381]

Can someone please translate all of this?

[@XypherOrion]

This man invented Hyperbrobdingnagian, and I'm about that life.

[@keon3155]

After Francis walks off the stage Penn does look at the green tray!

[@mikkosandstrom4298]

I guess there are certain letters available in the bag and letters that can’t be taken. The visible letter N is among those that simply cannot be picked. There might be a double bag. Available letters are: L L O O B B S S T T E E R R. Thus, each combination of 7 letters certainly has at least one solitary letter. The question is, for example, does the last person in the line notice that he has only 8 letters to choose from. Think what Francis says about the person who got the letter L: ”You are first in line”. People laugh for some reason. I think it's a pretty crappy joke. And I believe Francis has some similar sentence for each position. For example, "I'll put you in the middle". This time he was lucky that L was a solo. What would have been the sentence if the combination had been LLOOBBT? Here my theory limps a bit. If the above is true. Francis only needs to change three letters at most with his gimmicked tray.

[@Michaelcyr5]

Johnathon signed the right side of the book, but when he points at the word later on in the show, its on the left side. Obviously forced the word

[@chilledandcool3918]

5:09 Penn n especially Teller look BORED AS FUCK!!! LOL!!! 🤣

[@elcheapo9444]

More than the trick itself, the envelope blew me away !!!!!!!

[@cherryclips8971]

There is a judge who sees all of the tricks and knows how they are done before they are shown to penn and teller. The judge probably told them that they were going to be fooled and to joke with the envelope. The best tricks have the ugliest truths

[@elcheapo9444]

@Paul Steinwall I was being sarcastic.

[@manuelwolff_intlcomedian]

Francis is basically telling Penn at 7:10 how the trick worked, and Penn still doesn't get it.

[@chuckcolsch874]

"Basically"? He was being patently obvious. What was odd, however, is that Francis' "strange" comment did not even interest Penn! It was as if Francis had said, "Well, you may Not look at the Scrabble tray because that would reveal my method."

[@notthere83]

Umm... this is Penn we're talking about. I'm pretty sure he noticed how awkwardly Francis was protecting the other tray before 7:10 already. But he probably intentionally ignored it because of a little thing called sportsmanship. They emphasize that on the show time and time again. They made their guess, they asked what they could inspect - they were wrong.

[@giant-woman]

Penn and Teller only get one guess. Their guess was the book, which is why they were surprised when he handed that over. They can only ever look at what the magician lets them, otherwise no one would ever fool them.

[@Rubixdecampo]

@@giant-woman Except at the very end you see Penn trying to steal a peek at the green tray..haha he was really curious.

[@user-cw8kz2ps6b]

From magic castle act. Awesome,from Japan!

[@annoneymouse5999]

Good trick dude you are a genius with words too

[@SeanK1684]

That was science 🤯🤯🤯🤯

[@davejohnson-yi2rk]

Pursuant to nothing, loved how that first tall woman with the black boots played along and the 6th blonde woman with the red-ish blouse = hot! But an excellent trick from Menotti, I see he has a lot of effects on Penguinmagic.

[@aldoparziale2631]

I've never seen them do a prediction, you "Fool Us" bit before, why did they do it for him and how/why were they so sure that he would Fool them and do it in a special way?!

[@jamesncastillo]

Jonathan could have always had the envelope there every episode, and P&T just tell him to pull it out if they get fooled.

[@YipYapYoup]

They like to have fun with how they tell people they were fooled, this was just a bit in case one of the magicians on that day fooled them.

[@PimpMacSlickBac]

So he uses the green one because its taller and blocks that hes microwriting on the backs? Steals a letter and loads the writing tool when they are handing the tiles to him. Maybe something when he asks who had the L. Validates Lobster and gives him time. Force on the book, sleight to get the tool, and maybe a swap of a tile that he didnt like?.. great trick. I doubt im even close

[@Legitdupe]

How did he make sure there is only one L that is forced. What if there were two people who got L and raised their hand? What if nobody got an L? How did he make sure only one person got an L when they were completely allowed to choose randomly themselves from that satchel?

[@Legitdupe]

Unless ofcourse there was no L in the satchel and the guy in the audience was in on it.

[@WingerSupreme]

Audience members are never in on it, and the producers always know how the trick is done as verification

[@9Kualalumpur]

Edited out (and I don't know if I got it or not), because I realized it's his channel, and it would be extremely rude of me to try and guess in the comments

[@profbfc]

THe trick is simple, jonathan didn't see himself that he circled. The word was already circled from before, that's why he didn't let jonathan see the book when he circled it. From there on it was just easy. How he came up with the word lobster is a bit tricky, but since he did not let penn and teller examine the satchel, I think it was rigged somehow with only letters from lobster.

[@davidmorrill6282]

+profbfc Ok but if they were only letters from lobster, than what if they got seven o's

[@graham464]

+David Morrill possibly only 7 tiles in the force pouch

[@znxftw]

+Booper Dooper You can see an 'N' in the beginning of the video at 1:50 with certainly more than 7 tiles. Unless he switched, it's highly unlikely.But you can see he returned the satchel with some left over tiles at 4:02

[@NakAlienEd]

So what I'm thinking is that the satchel has two layers, there are scrabble tiles placed in between the tiles that the people cannot actually pull out. Only the Lobster letters are able to be grabbed. After that, it's generally easy (for a magician) to force a page. The first pencil he hands is a fake and cannot actually write. The lobster word has already been pre-circled. Notice that he takes the pencil back before letting him initial the page. When he takes it back, he switches it for a real one so that Jonathan can initial the page.

[@OarenWraye1986]

+profbfc exactly but I can't see how he does it lol

[@PSCLKL]

He's such a Ted Mosby.

[@mrsnooz1]

too bad lily isnt hosting

[@Sixnipplesonebreast]

What a flex.

[@ZER0--]

if they hadn't fooled P&T then Penn wouldn't have ask Ross to pull out the envelope.

[@johnkean6852]

He'd already encircled LOBSTER Jonathan circled but did not inscribe a circle because the pencil only writes laterally in order for him to add his signature. Either he swapped the tiles with tiles in his pocket OR 7 of his friends (clandestine assistants) took the correct tiles spelling LOBSTER out of the bag well rehearsed previouslly? The giveaway was twofold; the first girl was too confident and knew the meaning of paroxismally.

[@MavisRileyJunior]

Jiohn kean stooges are not allowed so the 7 people were not involved.

[@johnkean6852]

@@MavisRileyJunior So with sleight of hand he deftly swapped the tiles using prestidigitaion surreptitiously?

[@bRadicalmagic1]

This illusion seemed relatively explainable to me .

[@fjmenotti]

+bRad “bRadicalMagic” Nichols Ah, well if it got you to think, that's good enough for me. :-) I've seen a LOT of online guesses as to all of the methods involved. Some have been close, but none correct so far. If you'd like to know for SURE, it's being released sometime this week (I think) by Vanishing Inc. as "WordsMyth." (We delayed its release, just so I could do it on the show.) Thanks for watching.

[@detodounpoco37]

+bRad Nichols “bRadicalMagic” You are not absurd enough. Now take your lobster and be happy.

[@DaeGlyth]

+Francis Menotti Nice act, I really loved it.

[@bRadicalmagic1]

+Pablo Amirá Pablo, you may want to stick with Spanish because your English is unintelligible! ! !

[@detodounpoco37]

Sorry, what?

[@noobsarecool1]

Your trick with the aces is very very similar to shin splint ...?

[@CardKiwi]

More like the other way around, its by dai vernon (waving the aces). Shin lim just made a fingertips version of it.

[@aerox_odyssey]

@@CardKiwi I believe it's Guy Hollingworth's work. Vernon did make twisting the aces, and this is guy's version of it, waving the aces.

[@polyorchid7104]

The envelope in Jonathan's pocket would have stayed there if he hadn't fooled them.

[@akra4680]

yeah that much i believe was just for the audience effect xD I'm sure they would have used it on whichever act they liked the most

[@ddebenedictis]

Literally my jaw dropped when I saw the word in the tiles matched the word Jonathan had chosen in the book. Such a great touch to have him select the word without looking.

[@thureintun1687]

If i was him, at that close to her eyes.... The pinky one is also beautiful. btw that guy's hairstyle is fabulous, I'll cut the style tomorrow

[@PDeRop]

1:42 and onward.. man.. I'm in love.

[@nativeteacher0025]

Scrabble, nouns not permitted?

[@user-lf7nf3kl7t]

Proper nouns

[@ekcivic7001]

Thats funny, my last has a s at the end. Im menottis from texas

[@platty9237]

They approach as the green contraption is slowly moved out of view.

[@AleksandarIvanov69]

4:00 - she the only one that made ocular contiguity and in a very deliberate manner with a slight twinkle... and that top... wowza! He didn't go home alone that evening.

[@AlexReynard]

Oh come on. This is obvious. You had a secret lobster hidden in your coat that you flashed at the audience members, thus subconsciously influencing them to spell the word out. Child's play!

[@tomfurgas2844]

He switched pencils at 3:28.

[@SquidandCatAdventures]

I think that Penn and Teller should have to make their guess before examining the props (even though in this case, they still let him be a fooler). I think that if they can't see exactly how it was done from their seats in one go, that shows skill on the part of the performer. They could always ask to look at the props after the guess.

[@RobotMowerTricks]

I think they expected him to just say "no" and then that would confirm they knew how it was done. It was an incognito way to hint at their solution. But since they had the wrong solution, he invited them to come up :P Notice their faces when he said to come examine the dictionary.

[@nickjeffrey8050]

Lol so if they saw the letter tray they would of got it 😂

[@dombowombo3076]

Children, this is the story of how i fooled Pen and Teller.

[@davidstefic]

6:47 hides printed word lobster, no tiles :)

[@davidstefic]

3:27 grabs pencil by graphite top and pulls

[@robertdean4259]

He had something covering the lead on the pencil, which he flipped off when the pencil was momentarily out of sight behind him prior to Jonathan signing. Afterward the pencil was examinable, and Teller did.

[@parakeet5065]

he reminds me of conan

[@rebelgamer94]

tray could be a mirror???

[@kiwicrafter]

Here is a hint for you all, do you not find it strange that he wanted 7 people to make a word? Did he not know, to start with, how many letters the word had?

[@jowildcat40]

would have been funny if it said "she will fool us"

[@definesigint2823]

Maybe the other pocket then 😊

[@artmartello]

It's the "initialing the page" that has me puzzled.

[@nuckelheddjones6502]

+Arthur Martello Trick pencil. He uses a substance to cover the tip initially when Johnathan makes the supposed circle without looking. Then he rubs it off and hands it back to him to initial it proving the pencil works. Pretty good bit of misdirection. People have said he switched the pencil but it is much easier than that. I initially thought he flipped it but I see that he hands it to Ross tip down in hos hand and that was the bit that told me it was just a simple thing like a tip cover.

[@tracyh5751]

Gilderoy Lockhart irl

[@kamathln]

Shashi Tharoor would be proud.

[@mrcolincox]

He said 'fartle'.

[@wallyohrel9086]

Are you wasting my time too⬇️

[@garricksaro1380]

That envelope could have been used for anyone. Worst trick for Penn. I still love Penn and Teller.

[@Kkasem11]

I lost 80 brain cells listening to this

[@Vasharan]

Either Penn and Teller were desperate to have guest acts in the early days, or they were a lot less perspicacious.

[@cpsmonroe1]

Manny Pacqiao 8:19😂

[@ptatohed4471]

Envelope, NOT Onvelope!!!

[@scottreacher4620]

The dude was getting on my nerves with his big words. It took from the trick.

[@techtitanuk5609]

Idisagree

[@proksenospapias9327]

maybe it's an inferiority complex or something.

[@vo8438]

Yah brah, his big words made it mad legit

[@imsickofreality4962]

He said it would. You didn't hear him?

[@DarkDesertMovies]

Cool and everything but surely being a wizard and using actual magic is cheating. I mean seriously WTF.

[@Blondie42]

He for sooth knows how to befuddle the mind.

[@mamaiqbal8551]

They R all fam of him ! Too fake! de

[@brotherdonald6944]

The principles involved go back as far as Annemann and probably a long time before...nothing original here