Memorized Deck Poll
/Hey kids,
I’m not 100% committed to this idea, and I won’t necessarily be going with the popular vote. But it’s an idea I’ve been tossing around and I wanted to get your input.
Speaking of memorized decks, my friend (who is a stack aficionado and—for god knows what reason—has three different stacks memorized) ordered a Stack Watch from Ellusionist for his son. He received it yesterday and immediately facetime’d me to show it off. I have never seen anyone laugh harder in my life. Then he brought his 13-year-old son in and he lost his shit laughing as he tried to find a card and then rotate the bezel to a certain position and we were imagining this taking place during a trick. Watching him go from patter to looking at his watch for 16 seconds in an attempt to find the card, then jumping back into patter was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen. We were all crying. I want to thank Ellusionist for this because I love watching people laugh. It was one of the most joyous moments of my year. And in my mind it fully justified the existence of that product.
Here’s a game you can play. Tell someone to go to look at the picture of the watch on Ellusionist’s site and show them the cards around the bezel. Then say, “Find the seven of spades.” I played this with a few people. The shortest time was 10 seconds. The longest it took was 58 seconds.
Now, perhaps as you use the watch a lot you would become more familiar with where the cards are. Sure. I buy that. But that would be the most scattershot way of familiarizing yourself with mnemonica. It would take much less time to actually memorize a stack. And you wouldn’t have to be the type of person who walks around with a knock-off Rolex on your wrist.
Here’s the thing, if there was really a way to put a memorized deck crib on a watch in a way that was useful, readable, and not obvious to someone else looking at the watch, I’d be all for that. My criticism of this product is not, “Don’t be lazy. You should just memorize the deck of cards.” Why would I give a shit if anyone other than me is lazy? I don’t think it’s “lazy” to not memorize a deck. It’s just might not be your priority. And that’s fine with me. We all have different priorities. If you buy a pre-made cake at the grocery store instead of making one from scratch, I’m not going get on your ass about that. But Ellusionist isn’t offering a pre-made cake. They’re offering a bag of flour with a spoon in it and suggesting it’s about the same thing.
The ad says that it requires no work and no memory, anyone can find a card and its position with “one quick glance.” No. No, you can’t. In fact, it would legitimately be a magic trick if someone who didn’t know the stack already could find a card on the watch with a “quick glance.” I’d probably be more impressed by that than having a card at a number I named.
To be fair, I don’t know what Ellusionist’s definition of a “quick glance” is. If it’s at all similar to the “quick glances” magicians give to any chick at a magic convention showing a centimeter of skin, then I guess 10-60 seconds does fit that definition.
On a different subject, I will give Ellusionist credit for their new PIcasso Pro effect. I don’t have it yet, but it looks pretty good. (There are definitely some people who seem to be having issues with it though. So it’s better to do some more research before picking it up rather than just being swayed by me saying it “looks pretty good.”)
I would probably buy my own URL and forward it to the required page… assuming that’s possible. Otherwise you’re at the mercy of the trick’s URL staying secret.
Speaking of URLs… here’s a note for Ellusionist regarding this trick. I’m not going to mention the main URL here, so that it doesn’t show up in anyone’s google search who you wouldn’t want it to. But shouldn’t the main URL go to a generic landing page? Why would you direct them to a subdirectory that’s identical to the main page? This may seem nitpicky, but if anyone does question the site itself, isn’t the first thing they’re going to do be to look at the main page? And wouldn’t it be strange that it’s the exact same as the page you sent them to? It’s just an odd design choice, in my opinion. But maybe no one really gives a shit about any of this.