As I’ve mentioned before on the blog, QI is one of my favourite shows on television.
For the uninitiated, QI is a panel game show in which erudite Stephen Fry asks the comedian contestants almost impossible questions. Points are gained by being funny and interesting.
ABC in Australia show the 2005 episode ‘Cheating’ this Wednesday night.
Here is taste for you.
This story on ABC news in the US looks at carnival games, sending a sharpshooter to try and win the shooting gallery.
He doesn’t and the reporter implies the game is fixed.
What you have here is a classic ‘alibi store’ - a game of skill that is almost impossible. The flatty can demonstrate the game is possible but the mark has little chance of winning.
So how to beat the shooting gallery?
In this game, the mark has to shoot out a star in a piece of paper. If there is even the smallest piece of star remaining, the mark doesn’t win a prize.
The key to winning is to shoot around the star and not through the middle.
It’s pretty unfair to accuse the carnival workers of being cheating and putting them next to crooked con artists.
I’ve had three separate emails from readers asking questions about the film Inception.
Without spoiling too much of the plot for the four people who have not seen it, Inception swaps back and forth between reality and the dreamworld, leaving the viewer and the characters unsure as to whether they are trapped in the real world or a dream of someone else’s construction.
One of characters, Arthur - played by Joseph Gordon Lovett, carries a loaded casino dice as his totem.
Since only he knows the unique weight and feel of the dice, he simply needs to handle the dice to know whether he is in a world of someone else’s creation.
The question I’ve been asked repeatedly is, can you load a casino dice?
For many people, the answer to this questions has serious philosophical and extensional ramifications for the nature of the film.
These people also have serious opinions on Stargate and Rubik’s Cubes.
Worst. Blog. Ever.
According to Scarne on Dice, the bible for all things bones, a loaded dice is any dice with a weight in it.
Since casino dice tend to be constructed from a clear celluloid, one would assume it would be impossible to load a professional, Vegas style dice.
It’s an idea that has continue to this day, with many people, even casino professionals, assuming it is impossible to mess with a clear dice.
However, this fallacy is based on the assumption that casino dice are completely clear.
Few people notice that the spots on a dice are made by counter sinking small holes in the dice and then filling them with the solid white.
Within months of the introduction of the new, supposedly foolproof dice, a clever scam artist figured out he need simply drill out the spots on one side of the dice and fill them with thin, yet heavy, metal plates.
The metal is then painted and the dice looks 100% real yet will weighted so that the opposite side of the slugs wins.
Obviously, different metals can be used, but popular choices include gold, aluminum and platinum. To give you an idea of the work involved, a set of two dice will set you back around $200.
If the dice maker wishes the dice to roll the chosen number more often, he simply drills a deeper whole and puts in more metal. He may also drill deeper holes on the other sides and fill them with matching paint.
If you use a magnetic metal, you can also juice your dice. These dice would feel and roll normally until a strong magnet is placed under the table.
Clear dice can also be bevelled, rounding the corners or edges to make one side roll more often.
Or they might be shaved, with one side sanded down and respotted.
An expert could tell the difference between them, but only just.
I could on and we could talk about baking dice, suctions, raised edges and slick dice but who knows how far down the Inception rabbit hole that might send you….
Just received word that BBC3 in the UK is showing a series called “The Real Hustle Around The World”
Robert Webb takes an entertaining look at the six different countries that have made their own versions of the hit show The Real Hustle. Featuring the best and worst scams from Russia, America, Israel, Belgium, Germany and Australia.
If you get a chance to watch it, you might just catch me, Adam and Clare, swindling suckers in Sydney.
If you enjoy it, please email Channel 9 and ask them to show the full Australian series.
Swindling dancers with a fake audition. Notice the neckerchief.
This classic series in which being a good gambler is somehow a superpower was a hit in the early 80’s and made a star of Chow Yun Fat.
The theme is continued in the God of Gambler’s series a few years later.
I had an email this morning from a TV show in the UK wanting some history on the Melon Drop. The Melon Drop is a classic scam perpetrated against Japanese tourists.
The tourist is tricked into accidentally breaking a melon which they are forced to pay for. Since Melons are often quite expensive in Japan, the victim pays over-inflated prices for the cheap fruit.
‘The Melon Drop’ has become short hand for any similar scam. Here is my reply:
Hi –
You’ve asked a bit of a loaded question there!
The idea of tricking a victim into ‘accidentally’ breaking an item is as old as time. It was particularly popular in the middle ages.
However, ‘The Melon Drop’ involving Japanese tourists and expensive fruit is far more popular as a story than it is as an actual real-world scam.
Most of the reports are anecdotal rather than from verifiable sources. I can tell you the following…
It most likely started in San Francisco in the early 1970s. After the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, Japan lifted the country’s strict post-war travel restrictions, allowing Japanese citizens to travel abroad far more easily. The Japanese have had a long history of ‘travel for pleasure’, stemming back to the seventh century, and huge numbers of middle- and upper-class Japanese were eager to travel for the first time.
A large number travelled to San Francisco, which has always attracted Southeast Asian people going back to the gold rush in the 1800’s. The modern Fortune Cookie comes from San Francisco, and the city is one of the few in the US to have a “Japantown”.
Most of my resources suggest that it was here that the scam first involving melons and Japanese tourists occurred.
I hope this is of some help!
All the best,
Nicholas
Ben Whimpey and Tim Ellis have put together a great sizzle reel for The Catchpenny Club TV show. Check it out below…
Hope you like my awful, awful magic tricks.
A few days back, Australian broadcaster Derryn Hinch admitted in an article in the Herald Sun to being scammed. He called it a
“…clever internet scam that made those Nigerian banking fraudsters look like amateurs.”
It wasn’t.
Essentially, Hinch sent $4000 to a New Yorker who had offered to rent him an apartment for a few weeks. The scammer didn’t really own the apartment and took off with his money.
Never, ever send a stranger money via Western Union. Using Western Union is like having unprotected sex. (now you have images of Hinch having sex). It’s convient and easy but, eventually it will end up getting you in trouble.
Picture this man having sex. Go on.
