If you can solve a Rubik’s cube, normal people will think you are a genius. On the other hand, actual cubers correctly assess that I am a dumbass if they see me do it.
Right? I can solve one in a minute to minute and a half. By normal people standards, impressive, by cyber standards I’m laughably slow.
I’m cool with that
To be fair, this is how most skills are in the internet era. It makes it way too easy to feel like you’re not good enough just because it’s so easy to find content from highly talented people.
OP here. In this case, I also just don’t give enough of a rat’s ass to learn to do it a better way, even though I probably could. I can solve a Rubik’s cube reliably in a few minutes, as far as I can tell that’s peak ROI for this form of toy proficiency.
I’ve learned how to solve in 3 minutes or less since the Reddit blackout protests. I have a friend who said his personal best was a minute and 10 so that’s my target, and my personal best is a minute and a half as of last night.
It’s not 3.1 seconds like the WR but since nearly everyone I have come across in the last couple months can’t solve a cube at all, I’m quite impressive to them.
I sit and solve my cube on my break at work, it’s literally to stop me spending all my time on my phone. It’s a newish job so now everyone thinks I’m quite intelligent, which is nice.
I know exactly one party trick based on mathematical group theory, which I have actually used to impress non-mathematicians at a party.
There’s a concept called the “center” of a “group”, which is the set of operations that commute with every other operation in the group. The center always contains the identity operation of doing nothing. The group of scramblings of a Rubik’s cube happens to contain exactly two elements in its center: the identity, and a move called the “superflip” which takes a little bit of effort to memorize how to do, but it’s not so hard. Much easier than actually solving a scrambled Rubik’s cube. It’s like you do a simple move repeated 4x, and then you do that whole 4x set 3x with some rotations in between. Not terribly complicated. Importantly, once you memorize it it’s not difficult to do just by feel, since it’s a fixed sequence of mechanical motions.
So, the party trick goes like this:
You have a Rubik’s cube that is exactly a superflip away from the solved state. You hand it to an unsuspecting party guest and say “go ahead and make one or two turns” (it’s important to say something like “one or two” because if they do 3 the trick becomes challenging, and if they do 4 or more it might become impossibly difficult unless you’re actually good at solving Rubik’s cubes, which I am not). They take this obviously unsolved cube and make a couple more moves so now it appears even more scrambled.
You take the cube back and do the superflip behind your back, without looking at the cube.
Then you move the cube out from behind your back, and at the same time (trying to be slick about it) you undo the one or two moves remaining before it is solved. Everyone gasps and say “omg he solved it behind his back” (when really you did no such thing).
This works because if S is the superflip and X is the simple moves they did to it, S X S is equal to just X because S commutes with everything. (S is also its own inverse, so that S S = 1.)
Damn, that’s neat. I might have to practice that.
I know exactly one party trick based on mathematical group theory, which I have actually used to impress non-mathematicians at a party.
Clearly, we just need more group-based popular toys. I would definitely buy a monster group cube, and then probably get crushed by it falling over on me (how many generators does that thing need, anyway?).
https://mathoverflow.net/questions/142205/presentation-of-the-monster-group mentions a presentation of the monster with 12 generators.
Creating a physical rotation puzzle that implements the monster group would be quite a task!
Wow, that’s a lot less than I thought. I’m just noticing now there’s also a (giant, terrible) 2-generator representation mentioned in the wiki. It’s always cool how simple these huge structures can turn out to be.
I learned how to do it purely to get free food at a restaurant. The idiot proof method takes about a day to learn and a bit longer to do reliably. Recommended!
Maybe not impressive but it is funny to draw 2 pounts at specific locations on a hand and then “eating” stuff by moving the “middle” thumb joint ud and down so it looks like a mouth.
You’re right, that’s certainly not impressive.
Just tell them, “talk to the hand,” sloooooowly raise your hand to eye level, and start using it like a puppet.
Okay here’s my favorite super easy card “magic” trick. Works best prefaced by “I’m not very good at it but I hope it works”
You fan a deck and tell somebody to remember the card. Then ask them to put it back on top of the deck. Make sure to remember the card on top of the deck first. Then you give the cards a very shitty shuffle, but enough so they can see their card go into the middle of the deck. If you look really awkward and unskilled, this will work even better. The card they picked and the original top card should remain together.
You then just start flipping cards off the top of the deck, 1 by 1. at some point you will flip the card that was on top of the deck, meaning the card just before it is the card in question. Keep flipping a few cards. Then (make sure you look hesitant and unconfident), say “Okay if the next card I put on the table is your card, you down your drink. If it’s not, I’ll down my drink” If your performance has looked shitty enough so far, they will be sure to agree, since they already saw their card be flipped.
But instead of flipping the next card, you go through the pile, find their card, and put it back down on the table.
I’ve done this one before and it’s always worked for me. The one difference I do is after they put the card on top of the deck I give them the deck and tell them they can cut it as many times as they’d like. By cutting the deck it’s incredibly unlikely they’d separate their chosen card and the top card. Plus it makes them think they have more control over things
That’s risky depending on how adamant they are about cutting. If they’re cutting a random spot each time, at 10 cuts there’s an ~18% chance they’ve split the two cards up. Your odds are 50/50 at 35 cuts.
Wow I love that you did the math! That’s really surprising it gets to 50% relatively quickly how neat. I can definitely say no one ever cut more than 10 times when I tried it but I can certainly see that happening if someone wanted to have a laugh with it
‘Card throwing’ a card and sticking it into an apple. 1 afternoon of practice and you can likely get it done in 3 tries.
Opening a beer bottle with a lighter, a second beer bottle, your teeth (not recommended), the corner of a table (don’t actually do this unless you know the table can be scratched up or chipped), or other random objects.
That’s actually just a basic skill in Germany and far from impressive. Even myself who basically can do nothing with his hands can open a beer bottle with many objects that have an edge.
Not saying that it might not be impressive in other parts of the world, but dont overestimate its effect in Germany. ;)
Edit: Just remembered that I knew a guy who opened bottles with his eye socket…crazy shit.
i have two roommates who cant open it by themselves and still buying those bottles without having an opener…
In most cases i still need a lighter because i dont like beer ant those bottle caps are annoying to me
Playing ‘Alle meine Entchen’ on various instruments.
I can already hear it
alle meine Entchen fahren Motorboot
fahren Motorboot
fahren 180
sind se alle dout
Contact juggling. Making empty (or full) bottles spin “weightlessly” in your hand, rolling an orange over your fingers like David Bowie… not that impressive, maybe, but a lot more impressive than it is hard to learn.
There are some dead-simple magic tricks if you have a deck of cards laying around. YouTube it
If you smoke, the smoke waterfall is neat and easy.
Take your pack of cigarettes and pull the cellophane down to create some space between the cellophane and the box. Using your lit cigarette, carefully melt two holes on the lengthwise ends of the cellophane, and then push the cigarette lit end first into one of them. If done right, the smoke coming off the cigarette will make a little waterfall and pool of smoke.