How Did Neil Patrick Harris Predict The Oscars? - 5 Possible Solutions To His Magic Trick

3. Multiple Envelopes

If a needlessly complex envelope is a bit too hard to accept, maybe this down-to-Earth alternative will provide a more satisfactory possible solution. Harris has admitted that "every single thing we said on the show is true", which, if you take him at his word, means the box wasn't tampered with and heavily implies the envelope Harris read out was the one he gave to PricewaterhouseCoopers before the show. But there's no proof that there was only one envelope - all tweets involving the trick focused on the briefcase, never revealing their contents. It'd be easy for Harris to have made several sets of predictions, picking out the correct one on the night. The logistics of this are mind-boggling - even with the use of plants and odds-on-winners there's so many permutations of events that make this a rather unpredictable method. Still, with carefully picked choices (and maybe a trick envelope like in the previous point) it's an easy way to deceive the audience without ever once lying to them.