[ music plays in the background ]
[ theme song cuts in ]
This episode of Scam School, brought to you by Domain.com
Welcome to the show that's all about achieving balance, during a field sobriety test.
Scam School! The only show dedicated to social engineering at the bar and on the street.
[ Brian's voice fades out, while Bryce's VO fades in ] Hello beautiful citizens of the Internet, I'm Brian Brushwood and this week we have
a challenge from over a hundred years ago! It's back from the grave to grab you by the dominoes.
[ jazzy bass track ramps up as the guests toast ]
All right, back again. We of course have my co-host from Hacking The System,
Mr. Jason Murphy. - Howdy!
And hanging out with Charles Rubach.
A lot of the best ideas for Scam School are as old as dirt, and Matt Pilcher wrote me
recently including a copyright-free book of parlor amusements from 1905 that had one challenge,
I want to see if you guys can pull it off.
A standard set of double six dominoes come with twenty-eight tiles. My challenge to you
guys is to get a complete set of tiles all balanced just on one.
You know, I don't trust Brushwood.
[ Brian stammers ]
Okay, fair enough! Fair enough!
When Brushwood does that, we do that!
Can we do it, like that?
Now I will say this much, you could just stack twenty-eight straight up on this one, face-down.
But I'm just going to say, I think you can stack them any way you want, but the bottom
one has to be standing up vertically.
Oh really?
I was seriously going to be Jackass Jason and just go, “All right, well let’s just
stack these up like that!”
Because sometimes Jackass Jason has the right answer and he doesn’t do it because he thinks,
“Well, I knew that Jason but you’re being an ass.”
Go ahead and try it! See how tall you can get, like that.
Oh we can totally- we can totally do that, right?
Yeah, sure!
Sure! Yeah, this’ll work.
The good news is, you get a couple beers in, you get steady hands. You’ve got surgeon’s hands.
[ Charles laughs ]
Yeah, absolutely. If I don’t have a couple beers in, I start shaking!
Okay, this is fifteen.
Sixteen.
Hmmm, no.
Oh you were going to reinforce it?! Yeah?
I was going to put bracers but then I thought, I’m going to get filthy dominoes falling into my beer.
This would be, a full set of twenty-eight- sorry. I’m screwing up your thing.
Bri-Brian?
I’m fine. I’m fine! It’s all fine.
All you gotta do is balance that on that. I don’t see what the big deal is, gentlemen!
All right, ol’ steady hands murphy.
[ Brian laughs ]
That is what they call me.
Ol’ steady murphy. I swear to god, if you do this and screw up
the trick for me by winning, then…
Now do you want me to adjust the bottom piece?
Yes, Charles. Please help contribute.
[ Brian laughs ]
Woooah!
It’s staying!
Okay okay okay, all right.
All right. All right. Holy crap, I might be buying you guys drinks.
I might be buying you drinks!
I don’t know if you’re aware, Brian, but I just go up and say, “Yeah, just, Brushwood.”
So you’ve already bought me like, a lot.
I’m going to lift my drink, I’m not going to be accused of interfering.
Oh my god!
Nope.
Ooooohh noooooo!
[ Brian cackles uncontrollably in the way that Brian does ]
- Okay, yeah. Let’s rethink this. - I’m thinking of- I’m thinking of things.
So the brute force didn’t pay off.
I’m thinking of like, a reverse pyramid funnel system.
So what’s your thinking here?
Uhm, just keep doing this until there’s applause?
[ Brian laughs ] It’s like, “I’ve seen your act, Brushwood!”
Okay, all right.
All right, but it’s just one. So, that’s how it’s gotta start.
This is the key to it, there’s just twenty-six more to go!
And keep in mind, there’s not just one right way to do this.
You may ask, “Now Jason, why did you put one in the middle there, to do that?”
I just thought it was a good thing to do.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Okay, Charles here should be coloring with the flat-sided crayon, because he clearly
doesn’t even understand what the hell is going on.
This could work.
See [stammers]
My ire of your idiocy! The first one has to be upright, Charles.
That doesn’t mean I can’t pick this up. Grrrrrhh!
How many do we have? Five, ten, that’s only eleven?!
- I’m at sixteen right here. - Oh yeah? Really? See what happens, go ahead
smart guy.
You’re about to get got.
No I’m not.
You’re about to get got. Nope. Nope. Nope!
He, he got got.
Man, I don’t know. Maybe Jason’s on to something.
Aaaugh!
All right, I’m letting you guys off the hook. Toast me and I will reveal what is known
about the ancients in a pre-internet era.
Wow! Great job, everybody!
Honestly, honestly I think that's probably our best episode yet.
Everybody's going to love it. Let's take five, we'll come back and finish it up.
- A whole five, Jon! - Dude yeah, sweet!
- Five whole minutes! - Sweet!
- Awesome. - Yeah, dude high five!
[ vocals trailing away ] This could also serve as us leaving, if you wanted to.
[ the door latches closed ]
[ ominous strings set a distinctly foreboding tone ]
[ Brian, still dubbed but now by Brandt ] All right, look guys. I don't have much time!
Brandt is telling me that this is how he wants the shows to be from now on!
I want my freaking voice back!
The only way it can happen
is if you buy a domain. Now I've set everything up.
Our friends over at Domain.com, they have domains that are fast, easy, reliable.
You get the credibility of a dot com or a dot net!
And best of all, if you use promo code SCAMSCHOOL at checkout, you'll save 15% off!
I'll get my actual voice back and we can go back to normal freaking Scam Schools and make--
Oh snap, here they come!
- Last high five? - Let's get back to work! Yeah!
Here we go!
[ cash register sound ]
I just realized that I’m going to be put on the spot now, because I actually have to build
this tower. Charles was 100% right.
What?
His inverse funnel-
Inverse funnel system!
-is the key.
Now the problem is that you tried to build your inverse funnel all at once.
Okay.
And what you’ve got to do is you gotta build it with a roof on top each time.
So you notice that by creating pressure both on top and on bottom, if you can get them
all aligned, and by the way it does help if you can keep your elbows rested on the table.
Ohhhhhh, now it’s coming together, right?
So that’s ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen.
And we’ll do the same thing here.
Is this how it showed you to do it in the book? Or are you just kind of freestyling?
No well, well the book was from 1905. It had a picture of the finished results.
Domino science has come a long way in one hundred and ten years.
Just like we did before, side by side. There you go.
And two on top.
- Twenty-four! - Twenty-four!
Aggh! All right, all right, all right, all right.
So, in the original photo it actually did
all the way to four wide.
What?!
- Yeah. - I knew it!
So let’s try it. I want you to take these two-
Rrraaggh!
Let’s do three, I thought we were going to do three across!
It’ll always be-
That’s going to be a problem later.
No it won’t. Everything will be awesome. So the idea is, we’re as wide as possible,
we can be as short as possible so we’ll wobble as little as possible.
If you do it just as...
What are we at? What are we at? How many is that?
Twenty, twenty-one. Twenty-one. Twenty-six!
Is anyone else concerned that a couple of these look like they have blood on them? If
you do the right combination, are you going to summon a demon?
Maybe, here. We’ll put demon horns on this.
Beautiful!
Aaaaaaaaagggh! Demon horns!
Now that you’ve built your satanic tower,
Yeesssss.
There’s very little keeping you from being burned at the stake. Okay?
Yeeeeaaaahhhhh!
You making a demon domino tower is not helping.
Dun dun, dunna daaaaah.
Good job.
What are you trying to- what was that? What was that?
What? What?! It was the Texas Tap.
[ everybody talks over each other like a bunch of jerks ]
[ school bell rings ]
So before you guys say it, yes, I know there's a dozen different configurations that this
will work with. In fact, send me pictures of you pulling off this stunt and hit me up
over at twitter.com/shwood, there is no "c" in shwood.
And of course if you want to suggest your favorite bar scam, write me directly at brian@shwood.com
Don't forget to join us next week, because we're going to show you what happens when
you eat a pizza that landed on sixth street. The answer is you die, you die of germs and
pizza.
You just tippled, errh toppled. Tippled?! Tipple! Tipple! Tippled in my ire!
I... I get toppled. Your Irish is coming out.
It toppled because of my tipple.
- I feel fine with that. - What a bizarre ending.
[ laughter ]