Here's a trick you can do anywhere, with anything! - The Criss-Cross. This week we've got one of the most versatile puzzles we've ever shown: The Criss-Cross. All you need are six... things. These things could be coasters, matchbooks, iguanas, whatever. The Puzzle: Designate 7 spots on the table. Put 3 of your things (we used matchbooks) on the far left 3 spots. Put the other 3 things (we used sweetener packets) on the far right spots. The goal is to get all 3 of the matchbooks to the far right, and all 3 of the packets to the far left. Thus, Chris-Cross. The Rules:

This card trick is seriously addictive! The trick: have your mark pick a card. Shuffle the deck, and have them cut the deck into three piles. Show them the bottom card on each pile and put it on the table face down. Tell them that they did not cut to their card. The bottom card on the 3rd pile will be their card, but don't let them tell you that it is. Ask them to pick a number between 1 and ten. Bet them that their card will be that number of cards from the bottom of the deck. Since they know that their card is on the table and not in the deckl, they'll take the bet. Then count out cards and show them that the card that they picked has somehow ended up back in the deck.

Puzzle The First: Starting from 100, get CAT by moving only two matchsticks. Puzzle The Second: Split a very unsymmetrical shape into two equal halves using one continuous (though not necessarily straight) line. This one broke Brian's soul, so you'll have to watch the video for the oh-so-simple answer.

Suck at darts? you can still make BANK with this simple scam. Here's the scam: Pin a $20 to the dartboard, and offer it to whomever can hit it 3 times following your simple rules. The first toss must be from the line. The second toss must be from one step in front of the line. The third toss must be from one step behind the line. Charge a buck a turn. Watch the Washingtons roll in as your trusting dupes fail over and over at this deceptively hard challenge. Eventually, odds are that someone will win the twenty, but we're betting that you'll be well in the black by then.

Here's the scam: get two marks. Tie the first one's wrists together manacle-style with a rope. Tie their wrists loosely "for their comfort," but tell them they can't take the rope off their wrists. Tie the second mark's wrists together, linking his rope with the first one's. Challenge them to unlink themselves without untying the ropes. With any luck, your marks will try all sorts of Twister-style moves to get themselves unhitched. With a little more luck, a large crowd will gather and laugh at their tomfoolery. Bonus points awarded if someone videos it and uploads it to Youtube.

How to scam anyone with this card trick based on a simple mathematical principle.

Got a friend with an iPhone? Here's how to scam an easy free drink off them. This week's trick caomes to us all the way from Argentina! It's a simple yet baffling trick you can play on anyone who has an iPhone or an Android phone. First, write down a prediction. Then as your marks for a string of numbers: their birthdate, address, dress size, anything numeric. Multiply them all together. Hit equals, and show them the result. Then show them your prediction: the very same number. Baffling!

Watch this before you buy one of those "power bands" you see on latenight infomercials. Those special power bands you see in latenight infomercials and on the wrists of sports stars everywhere? Well, we can't say for sure that they don't work. Mostly because we don't enjoy getting sued. But we have some fake placebo bands that we put through some tests, and you know what we found? They work just as well as the real deal. Dan 3.0's Dan Brown joins us on this expedition of science, my6stery, and drunk people falling down.

Brian takes on Dan Brown in an impossible challenge. Impossible unless you have a tasty kosher snack handy. Dan Brown joins us once again to try to solve an impossible puzzle. The puzzle: Supply 3 "houses" on a 2-dimensional surface with 3 "utilities." Houses 1, 2, and 3 must all get power, gas, and water without crossing any lines. On paper, this looks impossible. And guess what? It is!

Learn how to fool even the toughest audience with this easy "memorization" trick. At first, this one looks like the same old "pick a card, any card" key card scam you've seen before on Scam School. Your mark picks a card, looks at it, and puts it back, and cuts the deck. Then you look at the whole deck, "memorizing" it in a mere 10 seconds. At this point, ask the mark to move his card somewhere else in the deck. Then you shuffle the deck, which means it couldn't possibly be a key card trick! Unless...

This week we have a three, count 'em three tricks for the price of one. And they are all better than anything we've done before. In fact, they are new and improved versions of some of the best tricks we've ever shown. First, we have The Static Shot. A viewer wrote in to tell us that this amazing feat is possible even when your shot is blocked by a pint of beer! Next up, The Jack-O-Lantern. A particularly evil viewer suggested doing this trick as a contest. Without telling your mark how it's done. Ouch! And finally, The Hot Seat. Add some appearing ink to this disappearing ink trick for added applause!

It is a well known fact in high-end theoretical topology that you cannot tie a knot in a rope without letting go of one end at some point. But don't let those high-falutin' topologists tell YOU what you can and cannot do! With this simple trick, learn to simulate a perfect overhead knot with a few simple maneuvers... and a bit of cheating.

There exists in this world a secret order, a legendary group of intellectuals and savants known as the Potentates of the Rose. Their ways are shrouded in mystery. All that we can know for sure is that they know something you don't know. And for once, we're not going to spoil it for you. Watch the video and figure it out for yourself. Cheaters will be stoned.

This week, we have two family-friendly gags. For the first, we challenge our marks to guess how many dimes can fit in a shotglass full of water. Hint: it's way more than you'd think. Our second gag definitely won't win you any free beer, but it might work as a pick-up line. Take a dollar bill and fold it down the center of George Washington's face. Then make vertical folds at the corners of his mouth. if you look at it from the right angles, George will either frown or smile.

Hate math? You'll hate it even more after you try to solve these impossible puzzles! This week, we have 3 unbeatable math puzzles... that don't involve math! Well, maybe just a little math. -Puzzle the first: Add one, and only one, line to the equation 5+5+5=550 and make it true. -Question B: Use one number 3 times to add up to 60. The solution CANNOT be 20+20+20=60. -The last one: Make a true statement using the following numbers and symbols once and only once: 2, 3, 4, 5, +, = Assignments are due at the end of class. Please show your work.

Two classic scams made EVEN BETTER! Plus: toxic smoke! This week, we take the wayback machine all the way back to The very first episode of Scam School 3 years ago to re-examine The Human Chimney. Ah, to be young again and able to huff toxic match fumes without a care in the world. What could be better? Our friend Daniel Garcia has a suggestion: pair The Human Chimney with a great trick called The Homking match for a truly mind-blowing effect. Jumping forward a year and a half, in our Ultimate Card Cheat episode, we said it was possible to make an opened deck look like it was never opened. But did we show you how? No, that would be too easy! Finally, here are the simple instructions on how to re-seal a deck without anyone being the wiser.

LIVE! at Stubb's Bar-B-Q for SXSW 2011, Brian performs his infamous nail-in-the-eye trick, smashes a concrete block over his head, proves that time travel is possible, and breaks not one, not two, but THREE World Records!

What's better than card tricks and math? Card tricks, math, and free beer! Check out today's episode for another amazing trick from Brian. Friend of the show and amazing mathematician James Grime has given us another incredible Pi Day trick: The Fitch-Cheney Five Card trick. For this one, you and a friend can astound others by using four cards to guess a fifth card. Can you figure out the secret?

This week we show you how to make 4 rows of 10 coins add up to some serious mental perturbation. Use this trick right, and you will: A.) Convince your friends that you are a sleight of hand master. B.) Use the power of math for sinister purposes. C.) Have people begging to give you free beer just to know how you did it. This trick may be a little confusing at first, but watch the show a couple of times, practice for a bit, and in no tome you will be able to watch your friends' brains oozing out their ears in befuddlement

Have you always wanted crazy Rain Man math skills, without the annoying People's Court fetishization that comes with it? This week, we teach you a card trick that will make your friends think that you are a card-counting genius! Definitely a genius. Shuffle the deck, and deal out two cards face down, one for you and one for your mark. Tell them to open their mind as you quickly run through the remaining cards. Let them try to guess your card. Look at your card, and give them one more quick peek at the other cards. In just those two quick peeks, you can easily determine what their card must be. Alcohol-induced autism? Nope, it's just simple arithmetic. Watch the show to find out the solution!

Can you solve the mystery of the Soggy $20? This week, we have two tricks, both of them involving potential inundation. Trick 1: A $20 bill, stuck in two glasses of water, one on top of the other. It's all yours, if you can get it out without spilling the water. Trick 2: Once you have the $20 out, remove the water from one of the glasses, WITHOUT touching the glasses.

Can you guess WRONG all the way through the deck? This week, a probability conundrum: if you go through the whole deck guessing what card will be next, will you be wrong or right more often? Obviously, you have a better chance of being wrong. But how much better chance? Could you go through the the whole deck without guessing right once? The odds might shock you!

Can YOU figure out the secret behind this trick? It looks like sleight of hand, but look again! This week, we teach you how to predict not one, but TWO cards at once. Is it sleight of hand? No. Darkest black magic? No. Cunning card manipulation? Maaaaybe... Plus, a bonus coin trick!

Fool your friends into thinking you're a math whiz! With this simple trick, you can add up 10 numbers in your head way faster than a calculator. FAKE looking like you're SMART! This week you're going to look like you're brilliant, when in fact you're nothing but a big, fat liar. Let's get started! THE SETUP: Have your friend pick two one-digit numbers, and write them above each other at the top of the page. Have them add up those numbers and write the sum underneath. Now add up the 2nd and 3rd number to get a 4th, and so on until you have a list of 10 numbers (none of which you could have known in advance). THE CHALLENGE: He's armed with a calculator, and you're armed with nothing but your mind. Propose a race. Whoever can add up the numbers fastest gets a free beer. Imagine your friend's surprise when you get an answer almost instantly, SMOKING him in the challenge!

Challenge your friends to a drinking race you're guaranteed to win. It's all about physics, man! -The Setup: grab a couple of bottles of beer (or soda) and a bendy straw that's at least as tall as your bottle. Set pint glasses next to them and set up the following challenge! -The Challenge: without moving the bottles (imagine they're glued to the table), the object is to be first to get all the beer from your bottle into the pint glass, and you *must* use the straw.

Think you have a good memory? Put your brain to the test with this psychology experiment. Listen to 24 sentences read out loud to you, then see if you can correctly remember what you heard.

Try to figure out how high a stack of quarters is by just eyeballing it. It's a guessing game that fools them all! Bonus trick: how many drops of water can you fit on a nickel? This week we've got two ingeniously simple scams, both of which take advantage of awesome and strange gaps in our perception: For the first one, stack 10 quarters and place them on some kind of pedestal (like your cell phone). Then in front of them on the table, place (in order) a 50-cent piece, a quarter, a nickel, a penny, and a dime. Ask your mark which coin, when placed on its side, will be as tall as the stack of quarters. For your next scam, grab the nickel from scam #1 and ask them "how many drops of water can I place on this nickel before the water overflows?"

This week we're joined by total badass Rich Ferguson (creator of the awesome iPhone calculator trick in episode 153) with an unbelievable trick you can do anytime, anywhere... even surrounded! The Setup: Grab a business card, playing card, or coaster and fold it in half. Place a bill from your wallet inside, pulling the outer flap down. Finally, place a pen, knife, or any other stabby implement in the center of the bill. The Trick: Have your friend stab the pen down, all the way through the bill and card... pull it though and show the hole right through the middle of the bill and card. Finally: open up the card to show the bill totally restored, while the card remains torn!

Watch Brian go from scammer to "scam-ee" as his pals Andrew Mayne and Justin Robert Young try to predict how many cocktail napkins he can stuff in his piehole. This week special guests Andrew Mayne and Justin Robert Young of the Weird Things podcast join us with a killer 2-for-1 trick. Not only do you get to punk your friends, but you'll totally fool them as well! Setup: challenge your friend to stuff as many napkins in his mouth as possible (while still being safe). Before they begin, promise you're going to make a prediction of what the final number will be by sending your friend a text (which they can verify has arrived either by tone or vibration). With their phone still face down, let them run wild and stuff as many as they can... Effect: ...when they finally run out of steam, take note of how many napkins they ended up with and then reveal your texted prediction: "You will have a very dry mouth." They'll probably be pissed and feel like a fool, but their annoyance will turn to amazement when you turn over the very next napkin to reveal a handwritten prediction "you will stop on number 27"...the exact number they stopped on!

How do you dupe five people into thinking you can read their minds? By correctly guessing which card they've MENTALLY chosen! Watch and learn... This week we have an amazing 5-way miracle from MisMag822 on YouTube! Make sure to check out his new website: thecardtrickteacher.com. Effect: a pack of shuffled cards is dealt into 5 poker hands. Each player shuffles up their cards and mentally selects one of them. As the cards are returned, they're shuffled together, then re-dealt into five face up hands. Each player then picks up a hand containing their mentally-chosen card, yet our scam-artist correctly guesses EACH of their mentally chosen cards!

Can you guess what card your friend picked out of a deck by putting them through a bizarre interrogation? Maybe - or you can try this much easier and much more devious method! The Setup: Couldn't be simpler. A borrowed deck of cards is totally shuffled, and a random card is selected. There's no marked cards, no forces, and the sucker truly does have a free choice of their card. Next, you begin asking a series of questions about their card, about which they can choose to lie or tell the truth... amazingly, it doesn't matter what they say, as you're ALWAYS able to tell when they're lying!

Brian scams the Hak5 crew! Watch them learn this classic trick where three objects are stolen and three thieves are rightfully accused. The Setup: Grab 3 random friends and 3 random objects (we'll refer to the random objects as A, B, and C here). Dump out a container of exactly 24 Tic Tacs, matches, or coins (it's important that you have exactly 24 counters, but it's equally important that you act like you don't even know or care how many there are). Next, pass out a few of the Tic Tacs so one of your players has 1, one has 2, and one has 3. Next, turn your back and ask that each of your players "steal" one object and hide it somewhere you won't find it.

The Ice Breaker himself - aka Rich Ferguson - is back with a card trick that even fooled Brian! This week Rich Ferguson is back with a KILLER card trick, guaranteed to melt the brains of even talented magicians... and the best part? It takes no sleight-of-hand skills, whatsoever! The Setup: Start by pulling out all the 6's and 7's from your deck, and set up the top of the deck so that every other card is a 6 or a 7. Have your friend cut the cards into two piles. Spread the bottom pile and ask him to choose any card. As you spread through, count off six cards and keep them in your right hand. Wherever they pick their card from, make sure it's returned in the gap underneath the six cards in your right hand (so it's 7th from the top). Square up the cards in this pack, and have your friend sit on them... here's the part where it gets good. Pick up the top half of the deck, and begin to deal face down, one card at a time. Let your friend tell you to stop any time he or she likes. Now here's the important part: as you deal down, keep track of whether the card you're setting down is a random card (nope), or a 6 or 7 (yep). ...This should be easy to do since every other card is a 6 or 7.

Brian's "Weird Things" podcast cohort Andrew Mayne is back with the sweetest trick - how to make sugar disappear before your very eyes and then REappear on your iPhone. This week we're back with Andrew Mayne and Justin Robert Young of the WeirdThings.com podcast, with a quick-and-dirty way to use your iPhone to make objects vanish from inside your hands. The setup couldn't be simpler, and the phone plays an integral part in really selling the trick!

Minds will be blown when you orchestrate a crazy, coincidental reveal using matches and a shuffled deck of cards! This week you create an amazing coincidence -- grab two buddies and have them totally shuffle up a deck of cards. Meanwhile, dump out a matchbox full of matches, a fist-full of coins, tic-tacs, or anything else that can be used as counters... just make sure you have *exactly* 21 of them. Have your friends divvy up the counters between them (they can have any number of them each, as long as none are left over), then deal out the cards from the shuffled deck in a face-up pile, counting off each card as you go through them (the first card is "one," second card is "two," etc.). By the time you reach the mid-twenties, each of them should have a card that corresponds to the number they picked earlier. THAT's the card each of them need to remember. Finally, scoop up the face-up cards and place them back on the deck. Run off 10 cards and place them in your left hand, then cut the remaining cards in your right hand into two piles on the table. Place the 10 run-off cards on top of the bottom half. Now: tell each of your volunteers to watch for their card, as you flip over the two top cards of each pile simultaneously, one at a time. If you've followed the directions correctly, no matter what number or card they picked, both of their hands will shoot up at the same time, as both of their cards are turned over simultaneously!

Figure out who stole your cash with the simplest interrogation ever! Trap a liar! Read minds to catch a thief. This week we have an unbelievable logic trap that comes from the genius mind of one of the worlds leading mentalists, Banachek. In this incredible game, both players can lie or tell the truth... Yet just by asking two simple questions, you'll be able to figure out who is who.... And who stole your 20 bucks!

Rich Ferguson is back with two more gems from his bag o' tricks! All you need is some toothpicks, a playing card and a pair of scissors to blow your friends' minds! This week we're back with Rich Ferguson and more bar tricks from his book "Tricks to Pick up Chicks." You'll learn not only how to pass two matchsticks through each other, but an impossible-sounding trick with the simplest props! Make sure to visit Rich at www.theicebreaker.com to get his book and learn more.

What's Brian's second favorite card trick of all time? Watch and learn!

Two brainteasers -- one diabolically simple, the other mathematically impossible. This week we've got 2 puzzles that are PERFECT to take down your most competitive friends. One of them is really, really hard, and the other is simply IMPOSSIBLE. The best part: they won't know which one is which! Check out this week's video, and take the challenge: after you learn the puzzle, press pause and take on Brian... see if you can figure out which is the impossible puzzle, and how to solve the other one.

Belly up to the bar with your smartphone at the ready! In this episode, Brian is joined by Hak5's Shannon Morse, as he shows you how an obscure statistical principle can be used to score free drinks!

Brian gets tons of trick submissions every week, but are they any good? Find out as he performs a few of them before a panel of judges, including Tekzilla's Veronica Belmont. Tune in next week for Part 2! In this episode, we get 5 tricks for the price of 1! And all of them were submitted by Scam School viewers. Try these out on your friends and let us know what you think. Tricks 1 & 2: These might be fun to try simultaneously. First, grab an ordinary wooden kitchen match and place it just beyond the first joint of your index, middle and ring fingers (middle finger on top, and the index and ring fingers below the match). Try to break it using ONLY the strength of these 3 fingers - no leverage alllowed! Second, grab a rubber band and stretch it over just your pinky and index fingers and try to get it off your hand WITHOUT using your thumb or rubbing it on anything else. Trick 3: Grab 9 notecards and write the letters I, E, G, P, E, C, Y, A, and T on them. Try to spell three words horizontally and three words vertically using only those letters. Give your friends a time limit of 5 minutes to solve the puzzle. Trick 4: Grab 7 notecards and write the numbers 1 - 7 on them. Arrange the numbers so they add up to 12 horizontally, vertically and diagonally. Again, set up the challenge with a time limit. Trick 5: Using 10 sugar packets, try to arrange them into 5 rows of 4 packets each. See how long it takes for friends to solve this one!

This week, it's more viewer-submitted Scam School ideas! Join Brian Brushwood, Tekzilla's Veronica Belmont and Brett Rounsaville as they continue to find out which scams make the cut.

Get ready to impress your friends! This week's trick requires no sleight of hand, elaborate math-magicry or fancy moves. It's so easy, it even fools the performer! Watch Brian and learn.

You can try to guess how many cards are in a stack based on how thick it is, but there's an even better way to do it. Watch this episode and learn about a clever deck-stacking method used by magicians for centuries!

Leave your friends utterly confused and amazed! All you need is a partner in crime and a few random objects to trick them into thinking you possess the power of black magic and the ability to read minds. Plus, a bonus trick that Brian calls "Sticks" - see if you can figure out the rules and the results!

In this episode, we've got two new tricks to add to your arsenal. The first involves a book of matches that reveals a secret number when burned. The second is a coin puzzle; see if you can divide 10 coins into 3 glasses, with an odd number of coins in each glass. BONUS: a mind-blowing card trick from Brian!

With this easy peasy trick, you'll make spot-on predictions every time and fool your friends into thinking you're a mind-reading wizard, when really you're just a dude who's prepared for all the possible outcomes. Watch Brian lay down the basics and see if you can perform this yourself, with your own unique twists!

How do you make a playing card magically appear out of your iPhone? Watch Brian's buddy and fellow magician, Daniel Garcia, teach Mark Watson this badass trick! Visit http://revision3.com/scamschool/icard for the tool necessary to pull this trick off.

Okay, these are not card tricks. BUT you will need a deck of cards to perform them! First, can you build a house of cards sturdy enough to balance a wine glass full of water? Sounds impossible, but there is a solution! Next, balance a quarter on a card on your index finger. See if you can remove the card from under the quarter (while keeping the quarter balanced on the tip of your finger!) by touching only one edge of the card.

Brian matches wits with the Stanford Chess Club to put one of his favorite chess scams to the test! It's based on a classic tale where a con man tells a room full of chess players that he'll play each of them simultaneously and manage to win or draw at least half of the the games. Can a Stanford chess whiz pull this off or is it just a theoretical puzzle? Watch and find out!

A trick so nice, we did it twice! Blow the minds of your friends when you show them that the cards chosen out of a shuffled deck perfectly MATCH the serial number on a dollar bill! It's super simple to learn this one! Watch two different groups get scam-schooled by Brian's buddy and fellow magician, Daniel Garcia.

Here's a gag that will either make you totally bad ass, or totally wet! The challenge: using only one hand and no outside assistance, see if you can drink the water out of an upside down pint glass, spilling no more than 10% of the water inside. Check out Brian's elegant solution, or try to come up with one on your own!