How to break a world record

Some world records mark noble achievements. The best of what humans can do. Striving to be faster, higher, stronger.

Many are silly and ridiculous, and some fall somewhere in between.

My world record attempt is towards the silly end of the spectrum.

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Guinness World Records is not a UN agency founded for the greater good of humanity. It's a business. Initially focussed on publishing the eponymous book beloved by children at Christmas. More recently though it’s had to evolve due to declining sales of physical books and has effectively become a marketing agency helping people and brands get publicity from breaking records.

Incidentally, it does indeed originate from the very same Guinness as the beer. In the 1950s the Managing Director of the Guinness Brewery came up with the idea to publish a book of facts to settle pub debates.

There are far more world records than ever end up in the printed book. Plenty of the records found in the database are what you might think of as 'proper' records, like the fastest 100 metre sprint or the tallest building. These are typically added to the book after being verified by a third-party arbiter such as the International Olympic Committee or the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.

And then there are records like the fastest five metres on a scooter by a parrot and most watermelons chopped on the stomach in one minute.

We can't all get an Olympic sporting record, but maybe we can taste a little bit of that sweet nectar of success by becoming a world record holder some other way.

That thought certainly enticed me. If you'd have told a ten-year-old me that one day I might have a Guinness World Record certificate I would've been absolutely over the moon. As Guinness World Records put it, that would make me Officially Amazing™.

My record attempt

At the start of this year I set myself a challenge to break a world record. I figured it would probably be to do with making something, as that's what I think I do best. I wrote before about my thought process behind what record I went for.

I decided to try and make the smallest deck of playing cards in the world.

The smallest playing cards in the world?

I'm not sure what I expected, but the process of applying for the record was probably more arduous than I thought it would be. I suppose that shouldn't be a surprise because the integrity of the records is kind of important to the whole concept.

Guinness World Records sent me a load of documents outlining what I needed to do to attempt my record. Some were generic rules and guidelines, but there was also a specific list of things just for my record - 37 pages in total.

Guidelines for evidence

These are the specific criteria that applied to my attempt to make the smallest playing cards in the world.

• This record is for the smallest pack of playing cards, based on the area of a single card.

• This record is to be attempted by an individual or a team of unlimited size.

• This record is measured in square millimetres (mm²) to the nearest 0.01 mm², with the equivalent given in square inches (in²).

• For the purposes of the record, a 'pack of playing cards' is defined as a set of 54 rectangular pieces of paper or other thin materials, used for playing card games. The deck consists of 4 suits (spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs) with each suit containing 13 cards (Ace, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, Jack, Queen, King) and an additional 2 Joker cards.

Witnesses

Some friends assumed that someone in a Guinness World Record blazer would come along and verify my attempt. That is indeed an option, but it's a paid-for service (and not cheap I might add!).

So to ensure the validity of the record attempt I had to get two witnesses to see the finished product and also a surveyor to accurately measure them and independently confirm my assertions.

The witnesses could be "local attorneys, government officials, accountants, and police officers." And the surveyor could be "a land surveyor, an expert from the construction industry with extensive experience in taking measurements, an architect or a professor of land surveying."

I was able to find a magician and a surgeon to be witnesses, and an architect to be the surveyor. I even had to upload the architect’s professional qualification certificate to prove he was a real architect!

Measuring, measuring, measuring

Compared to a lot of record attempts, this one is pretty objective. Although I guess I could have made the whole thing up, especially in the age of AI images and videos.

In addition to getting witnesses to measure and sign off my finished product, I also ran the project as a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to get 100 limited edition decks of the World’s Smallest Cards made. I now have 100 people around the world who will actually own a deck of these cards so it would be hard for me to cheat the system.

Furthermore, I also kept aside a deck to donate to Guinness World Records. This wasn’t a compulsory requirement, but I was happy with my work so I wanted them to see the real thing. And who knows, maybe it will end up in one of their exhibitions or something.

I’ve already been approached by a playing card museum in Sweden who would like to get hold of a deck of these, or even just one single card.

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In a world of infinite and sometimes-dubious information on the internet I think there's something great about there being one source of truth when it comes to breaking records, from the noble to the ridiculous. It’s a much more romantic and reliable way to settle pub debates than asking ChatGPT.

Guinness say there are more than 40,000 records in their database. Ignoring multiple record holders that’s about 0.0005% of the global population who can call themselves a world record holder.

If you’d like to have a go at becoming one of them yourself, you can start here: www.guinnessworldrecords.com/search/applicationrecordsearch

And if you’d like some help with Kickstarter to make it happen, please get in touch with me.