[guitheengineer]

Imagine if the magic trick was:

1. They pour a large bowl of rice onto a table

2. They reveal the exact number of grains

Would this feel exciting as a card buried under the ground? No

Does this still require a lot of effort to count every grain? Yes

Applying a huge amount of effort doesn’t equal achieving the desired result (in this case the suspense, surprise and magical element)

The direction one is going is often even more important than the effort applied

[randallsquared]

The problem is that it requires the same effort to verify that the magician isn't just lying, and if there's some way to effortlessly verify the number, then that same method could have been used by the magician ahead of time. To capture the sense of something magical, the reveal has to be immediately obvious, but in a way that (seems like it) can't have been used by the magician to set things up.