I know a bunch of my recent posts have been about that competition, and I promise this is the last one, but what you need to remember is that I don’t really do much because of the state of my physical health. Annual magic club competitions with 6 amateur contestants are basically all I have. That and this here website.
In the scope of my life, The Pentacle Club is Hollywood, the close-up competition is The Oscars and this blog is Variety magazine.
Which means this article youre reading right now, as far as I’m concerned, is the scandal of the century. Maybe your club has suffered the same issue and you didn’t even know. I guess you’d better keep reading…
In my last generic post about competitions I talked about the judging part and how to deal with bias. Not unfair bias, like a lack of impartiality, rather bias in the sense that they really like one act. All that happens after the actual competition though, the smooth running of a competition requires other processes to be freed from the foibles of the spongy and inaccurate human mind. Next on my hit list is timekeeping.
The Duties of The Timekeeper
In a magic competition the timekeeper typically has two things to do.
- Record the duration of each act
- Signal to participants when they are nearing the limits of their allotted time
You all watched my act, so you know that it was 9 minutes and 51 seconds long. But I only learned that fact after I watched the recording, because our timekeeper told me that it clocked in at 11 minutes 40, a mere 20 seconds shorter than the 12 minute limit.
Not to suggest anything nefarious was going on, but clearly sintering went wrong. Maybe the clock was started too early, maybe it was stopped too late, maybe it was running fast or he just misread it. No one else saw the time so we have no way to know.
Which brings me to the other thing.
There are 2 ways club competitions typically indicate to participants that they have crossed certain time thresholds. Some clubs ring a bell when there is one minute remaining, and another at the maximum act length. The Pentacle Club has a minimum act length as well as a maximum so when I wrote up the rules I stated that the time keeper would have 3 flags. When participants passed the minimum time they would get a green flag, when they passed 10 minutes they get a yellow flag and if they hit 12 minutes they are disqualified and get a red flag. Its a simple system… Which is why its baffling that having spoken to almost all of the participants, no one recalls having seen a single flag during their performance.
A Solution
For all these reasons I have added a new web app on MageTools.
The Competition Clock
It has a number of really useful functions, which I will list now.
Configurable Display
The intent of this clock is that it can be displayed on a screen at the back of the audience so the performer may check it, so the font size can be adjusted to fill any screen you display it on. You can enter a font size directly or just tap + and – to adjust it by eye.
Configurable Timing
The Pentacle Club competition has a minimum and maximum length, with a helpful flag for the exact sweet spot between those 2 times, as such the timer lets you input those durations for your own competition. what they equate to in real terms is that the timer starts blue, turns green when it passes the minimum, amber when it passes the second, and red as it passes the 3rd. The timer will of course keep ticking beyond that for contests like the Ipswich Magical Society’s Hickson Cup where instead of disqualifications, contestants have points deducted for every minute they overrun¹.
Initialisation Darkmode
After configuration, the timer enters a full screen big display with a black background for easier to read text, perfect for projecting onto a big screen for maximum readability.
Restart Continuity
This is my favourite feature. How many times have you seen a magic routine where it seemed to end… Then there was an extra bit where Derren Brown runs back onto the stage to point out he predicted the final outcome from the very start?
Imagine trying to time a competition act like that if you didn’t know it was coming.
With this timer if you hit stop but the act keeps going, so long as you didn’t reset it, when you hit start again it not only continues counting but adds on the time it was paused for. As such it still records the true length of the act from beginning to end.
Like all the shit I post here its free and open source so feel free to use it and or repurpose it for your own club comps
¹ Yes they still use the raw points of the judges to decide a winner. I may be the President at time of writing but without some kind of scandal they have no reason to change the rules, and its a very chill club. We haven’t had a scandal since the time the previous secretary REDACTED a bunch of REDACTED and threatened us with legal action if we tried to REDACTED. Half the committee quit in disgust, and thats how I became the secretary, and later, the president.