Gimmicks

When buying a safe, you might notice that manufacturers never make any guarantees that the safes are unbreakable. There is an understanding that given enough time and sufficent tools, all safes can be defeated. Instead companies offer estimates on how long it will take to be cracked.

“Examinable” and “unexaminable” are implied to be disjoint categories but there is in fact a continuum of examinability. The term “fully examinable” was invented to imply that the gimmicks are so good that no spectator would ever be able to figure out the secret. I’ve never really liked the phrase “fully examinable” because I think a sufficently motivated attacker with the right tools will be able to uncover the gimmicks, but I might just be being pedantic.

I recently bought a bunch of playing cards to make my own gimmicks for Alex Elmseley’s Dazzle. It was harder than I thought.

Some playing cards are straight up impossible to split cleanly. The printed layer is too thin and will simply rip instead of separate from the middle layer. I’ve been forced to just glue them together and suffer the extra thickness.

Some playing cards can only be split from one side. I guess they use different papers on the face and back. One side will to be easy to grab and pull and the other will just rip.