It's mostly because I'm lazy, but I'd like to think that I wouldn't become a serial killer anyway.
I've talked to idiots before. I don't mean "people who disagree with me." I mean people who can't follow an explanation I give and can't explain why not.
There was this one guy in college a year or two ago who showed me a couple card tricks and was trying to remember the order of the cards for a certain trick. The dealer holds a stack of ten cards at the start and spells ONE. At O and N, he takes one card off the top of the stack and puts it on the bottom, and at E, he flips the third card over to reveal an ace. With the ace on the table, he spells TWO similarly and lays the deuce on the table. Then he spells THREE for the trey, and so on up to NINE, where he's left holding the ten.
Now, I didn't quite recall the order either, but I knew how to construct it. I started by laying ten random cards from the other 42 facedown in a row on the table, so as to keep track of the positions within the deck. This was about where my mood started sinking, because the magician asked what I was doing and I tried to explain it.
"Well, I've arranged these ten dummy cards to represent the pile--"
"But that's a row! It's completely different from a pile!"
"Um, pffff... not too different. Look, I just need the cards spread out so I can see where to put them in."
"What? The whole idea is to take cards out, not put them in."
"...I guess normally I could agree with you, but we don't know the order. So if we take cards out, we can't remember where they started. That's why they're going in."
"Huh. I guess that makes sense."
"Good. Now, for the ace, I had to count three empty spots and put--"
"Hang on. We're counting cards, not spots."
"I... what? I mean, that's what the upper row's for. Those are the cards as they initially appear to the audience, and the lower row is the actual labels."
"Eh, sounds kind of hinky, but go on."
"Sheesh. Well, okay. Here, we see that ONE goes in O-N-E position three. Then TWO goes in position six. THREE would have gone in position eleven except there are only ten spots--"
"Come on. I know that."
"You need to know that I know it too. But anyway, since THREE can't go to position eleven, it wraps around to position one."
"Stop there."
"Excuse me?"
"Cards don't wrap around."
"But... but they keep moving to the bottom of the deck!"
"What does that have to do with it? And shouldn't you have to move those cards around?"
"I don't have to move anything. All you need to do is move through each card in a loop. It's basically the same order the whole time, just with different cards on top at some points."
"Then it's not the same order."
"Forget it! I'll just finish this and you can check whether it works when I'm done." [several seconds of angry card dealing]
"Actually, that looks a lot like the right order. How'd you do that?"
[looks at above wall of text] "I used math."
"Hey, cool. I can't really get my head around that stuff."
...Obviously.
Well, I only brought this up because I tried to explain metapuzzles to my dad about three weeks ago. That brought up the above bad memory. But fortunately, I was able to explain it more clearly two weeks ago. So that's another rare frustration managed by my inaction.
Hmm. I'll get a puzzle up later today. I promise.
There was this one guy in college a year or two ago who showed me a couple card tricks and was trying to remember the order of the cards for a certain trick. The dealer holds a stack of ten cards at the start and spells ONE. At O and N, he takes one card off the top of the stack and puts it on the bottom, and at E, he flips the third card over to reveal an ace. With the ace on the table, he spells TWO similarly and lays the deuce on the table. Then he spells THREE for the trey, and so on up to NINE, where he's left holding the ten.
Now, I didn't quite recall the order either, but I knew how to construct it. I started by laying ten random cards from the other 42 facedown in a row on the table, so as to keep track of the positions within the deck. This was about where my mood started sinking, because the magician asked what I was doing and I tried to explain it.
"Well, I've arranged these ten dummy cards to represent the pile--"
"But that's a row! It's completely different from a pile!"
"Um, pffff... not too different. Look, I just need the cards spread out so I can see where to put them in."
"What? The whole idea is to take cards out, not put them in."
"...I guess normally I could agree with you, but we don't know the order. So if we take cards out, we can't remember where they started. That's why they're going in."
"Huh. I guess that makes sense."
"Good. Now, for the ace, I had to count three empty spots and put--"
"Hang on. We're counting cards, not spots."
"I... what? I mean, that's what the upper row's for. Those are the cards as they initially appear to the audience, and the lower row is the actual labels."
"Eh, sounds kind of hinky, but go on."
"Sheesh. Well, okay. Here, we see that ONE goes in O-N-E position three. Then TWO goes in position six. THREE would have gone in position eleven except there are only ten spots--"
"Come on. I know that."
"You need to know that I know it too. But anyway, since THREE can't go to position eleven, it wraps around to position one."
"Stop there."
"Excuse me?"
"Cards don't wrap around."
"But... but they keep moving to the bottom of the deck!"
"What does that have to do with it? And shouldn't you have to move those cards around?"
"I don't have to move anything. All you need to do is move through each card in a loop. It's basically the same order the whole time, just with different cards on top at some points."
"Then it's not the same order."
"Forget it! I'll just finish this and you can check whether it works when I'm done." [several seconds of angry card dealing]
"Actually, that looks a lot like the right order. How'd you do that?"
[looks at above wall of text] "I used math."
"Hey, cool. I can't really get my head around that stuff."
...Obviously.
Well, I only brought this up because I tried to explain metapuzzles to my dad about three weeks ago. That brought up the above bad memory. But fortunately, I was able to explain it more clearly two weeks ago. So that's another rare frustration managed by my inaction.
Hmm. I'll get a puzzle up later today. I promise.