Subject: Dice Stacking World Record From: Wolfgang Schebeczek Date: 1996/11/15 Newsgroups: rec.juggling

The Dice Stacking Book by Todd Strong

Gundemarie Scholz  wrote:



>On Saturday there was a tv-show (Wetten dass..?) where a guy built a stack 

>of nine dice. He even tried twelve, but they fell when he took off the 

>cup. What is the actual world record for dice stacking?



There is a book written by George Schindler ("Zack stacks", Magic

Workshop c1986) which describes James "Zee" Zachary's dice stacking

routine. The climax of this routine is a 14 dice stack and from the

description it becomes clear that no means of deception are used to

build up this stack. Just the "ordinary" dice stacking methods are

used. I don't know if this his best and of any other "high stackers".

But since the 14 dice stack is part of his standard routine I could

imagine that James "Zee" could go even higher if he just wants to set

a new record which he has not to repeat day by day.



Having a look to other dice stacking books it seems to me that this

kind of "numbers dice stacking competition" is not of interest amongst

dice stackers. (Maybe a wise decision.) So it will be hard to find out

a "world record". There is another point which has to be taken here

into consideration: If I remember right the dices the guy in the

German bet tv-show used were not his own but supplied by "Wetten

dass...?" and this was part of his challenge. In any case he used

*ordinary* dices while performers (and also James "Zee" Zachary)

usually use casino dices. The latter are not faked but they are not

rounded at the corners. I am no dice stacker but I was told that this

fact makes dice stacking much easier. The dice stacker in the tv-show

also did not use the standard pick up move feeding the dices one by

one but put the cup over the heap of all dices and built the stack by

just moving the cup on the table. I understand that this method is

well known amongst dice stackers but I do not know if it makes it

harder to build high stacks or not. So it is possible that there has

been set some sort of new record. What me made a little bit suspicious

about this is that the guy clearly used a good portion of showmanship

to make things look harder than they are.



Speaking about making things harder: My favourite "record" is

performed by an Austrian magician named Gerry. He stacks only four

dices but he does not use a table. He stands on one leg puts the dices

on the (other) upper leg (he wears ordinary jeans while doing this)

and does the pick up from there and also erects the stack on his upper

leg.



BTW there will be a new dice stacking book written by Todd Strong. I

don't know if it covers the "numbers record question" but I had a look

to some chapters of the manuscript in Grenoble. From there I can tell

you that it's interesting and fun to read even if you are not

interested to learn how to stack dices.



wolfgang





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Wolfgang Schebeczek

Vienna, Austria

wsch@ping.at