GLOMM Industry Standard #4

The GLOMM Industry Standards were introduced in this post. Today I’m introducing a new standard.

GIS #4—Examinable

Don’t advertise your trick as examinable if the item in question is only examinable after it is switched out. This is a meaningless statement. It applies to every trick in existence.

“So you’re telling me that if I take the completely gimmicked, tricky item and secretly exchange it for an identical normal version of the item—without anyone noticing—I can then let people look at the normal item?”

Yes. Of course. This isn’t fucking news. It’s essentially built into the definition of a switch: the dirty thing goes away and the clean thing takes its place. This statement can be true for every trick.

It’s true of Cigarette Through Quarter.

It’s true of the Invisible Deck.

It’s true of a Metamorphosis Trunk.

If you forge the Mona Lisa and then secretly switch it for the real one, congratulations: your forgery is now “examinable” too.

“The pen goes through the bottle cap, and the bottle cap is examinable.”

For this to be a meaningful statement, the bottle cap the pen actually goes through has to be examinable. We already know a bottle cap you secretly switch in afterward is examinable.

What you can say is something like, “Includes a matching ungimmicked bottle cap.” Or, “Routined so you can end clean.” Or something that suggests you’ve given some thought to the examinability issue and have a solution for it. But you can’t say it’s examinable unless the actual item in question is.

Saying something is examinable because you switch it for something examinable is like saying your Rubik’s Cube is edible because you can switch it for one made of cake.