An Odd Card Trick
chalkdustmagazine.com
An Odd Card Trick
1–10 of 46 posts
Re: An Odd Card Trick
#2Just performed this trick for my partner and she was very underwhelmed. There’s probably a good delivery to figure out.
Re: An Odd Card Trick
#3Just performed this trick for my partner and she was very underwhelmed. There’s probably a good delivery to figure out.
Yes - it boils down to “there are 10 cards. Pick some number of cards, give me the rest, and I’ll tell you how many you picked”. The addition of “more cards” very thinly disguises the basic fact that you are subtracting a number from 10. It’s not obvious to me how this could be done in a way that seems impressive.
Re: An Odd Card Trick
#4Just performed this trick for my partner and she was very underwhelmed. There’s probably a good delivery to figure out.
For an impressive self working trick I can recommend this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EW8w7uXkb1M .
Re: An Odd Card Trick
#5https://web.archive.org/web/20211122214741/https://chalkdust... since it has the Hacker News hug of death.
This is such a ridiculously obvious trick I'm surprised any audience is impressed by it. But that happens for me with a lot of magic tricks... I guess a lot of people just choose to shut off basic thinking (and in this case don't have an intuitive understanding of conserved quantities).
Re: An Odd Card Trick
#6Just performed this trick for my partner and she was very underwhelmed. There’s probably a good delivery to figure out.
The magician term is "patter", and it's just as important as the technique. Often some of the best tricks are just very good stories, and the technique is the storytelling device.
Re: An Odd Card Trick
#7Just performed this trick for my partner and she was very underwhelmed. There’s probably a good delivery to figure out.
Probably have to add some elaborate narration and then some sort of routine in the process of flipping your own cards so they forget how things started out.
Also, given that you're on HN, you've probably chosen a partner who is at least somewhat intellectually stimulating and thus significantly more likely to think this through than the average person.
Re: An Odd Card Trick
#8https://web.archive.org/web/20211122214741/https://chalkdust... since it has the Hacker News hug of death. This is such a ridiculously obvious trick I'm surprised any audience is impressed by it. But that happens for me with a lot of magic tricks... I guess a lot of people just choose to shut off basic thinking (and in this case don't have an intuitive understanding of conserved quantities).
> I guess a lot of people just choose to shut off basic thinking (and in this case don't have an intuitive understanding of conserved quantities).
Or maybe these people just want to be entertained and not waste mental energy on something like a magic trick.
Re: An Odd Card Trick
#9https://web.archive.org/web/20211122214741/https://chalkdust... since it has the Hacker News hug of death. This is such a ridiculously obvious trick I'm surprised any audience is impressed by it. But that happens for me with a lot of magic tricks... I guess a lot of people just choose to shut off basic thinking (and in this case don't have an intuitive understanding of conserved quantities).
> I guess a lot of people just choose to shut off basic thinking (and in this case don't have an intuitive understanding of conserved quantities). Or maybe these people just want to be entertained and not waste mental energy on something like a magic trick.
> Or maybe these people just want to be entertained and not waste mental energy on something like a magic trick.
Yes, presumably that's why they choose to shut off basic thinking
Re: An Odd Card Trick
#10Just performed this trick for my partner and she was very underwhelmed. There’s probably a good delivery to figure out.
TFA explains the trick somewhat oddly, to make the math angle more obvious. Here's a (random) video of someone doing it a more usual presentation of the effect:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xau8Ng4aQ6Y
Not the world's greatest magic trick or anything, but I don't think it's as transparently obvious to figure out as several commenters are suggesting.