They've done the "go to the judges" thing in the past when there isn't an easy way to speak in code to the magician (especially if it's someone who doesn't speak English well) and the trick doesn't have an easily identifiable name.
One more on this -- they have also just sent Teller up to the stage to show their notebook to the contestant rather than say anything too giveaway out loud. But given what you said about Teller not actually being there, it's obvious why they went the way they did.
It sounds like Teller got COVID during the time they were recording this season, so he had to miss a couple of shooting days. They recorded those acts with just Penn doing the review and then recorded the segments with P&T sitting in the chairs after Teller returned.
That's why they didn't go up on stage to give him the trophy. It would have given away the fact that Teller wasn't actually there.
They've done the "go to the judges" thing in the past when there isn't an easy way to speak in code to the magician (especially if it's someone who doesn't speak English well) and the trick doesn't have an easily identifiable name. He will often make a "guess" where he reveals a lot of information about how he thinks it's done, but those are almost always when the act is a fooler, so he's not actually spoiling anything.
I was surprised they were fooled by the act that fooled them this week. It was a basic math trick, which they knew, but somehow overthought it (or underthought it).
He started by asking Alyson to choose a month (number between 1-12) and multiply by a date (number between 1-31). Then, take the result and divide by a four-digit year (any four digit number from 1000-9999).
The maximum the product of the month and date can be is 372 (12 x 31). Regardless of which 3 numbers she chooses, the end result will be a decimal that's less than 1 because the year will always be greater than the product of the month and date.
Next, he mentioned how Las Vegas zip codes all start with 891 and end with 2 random numbers, then he asked Teller to indicate a number with his hands. This essentially forces it to be a number between 1 and 10. That makes the "zip code" he creates a number between 89101 and 89110.
He has Alyson subtract the zip code from the original decimal number. The result will be a negative number between -89100 and -89109 followed by a decimal and a string of numbers.
Finally, he has her divide the resulting number by the address of the Rio, which is 3700.
No matter what the random seed numbers were that Alyson and Teller chose, the end result is going be -24.08 followed by a bunch of additional digits, but he ignores them because they will change depending on what the random numbers were.
As Penn said, in any math trick, you have to somehow remove the audience member's chosen numbers from the equation. In this trick, he made the chosen numbers so small relative to the numbers he provided as to make them worthless when the final result is trimmed to 2 decimal places.
Penn & Teller knew the answer, but somehow didn't see it when it was put into action in this trick.
I was surprised they were fooled by the act that fooled them this week. It was a basic math trick, which they knew, but somehow overthought it (or underthought it).
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Penn & Teller knew the answer, but somehow didn't see it when it was put into action in this trick.
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