I performed Socks for my family (err, for one of my kids only) and he went crazy for it! I have both the regular and holiday edition and it was Christmas, so holiday socks were adorned.
If you're familiar with the trick, this post's kind of a review and alteration idea. If you're not familiar with the trick, well, it involves socks.
I've always disliked the idea of having the cards "fix themselves" as the kicker; it's neat, but in my opinion once you show your socks matching, you've directed the spectator's attention away from "cards". I was thinking that a better presentation would be to break it up into multiple phases.
Phase 1 - A Matching Pair
The first phase would have the spectator finding a matching pair of socks from a shuffled pack. That's one pack, not one from the left pack and one from the right.
Having both packets of cards put together, there are different ways to have this prepped to go into the full routine later but I think the easiest is to just have the original right and left packets setup and "offset" from the get-go, and then just place one of the packets on top of the other. They'll look shuffled, mostly because you'll be showing the audience a deck that has pictures of socks and not numbers with pips.
You'd need to be able to force two cards, one from the top half of the packet and one from the bottom. They would be in known-number positions, assuming you set up the deck ahead of time and didn't mess up any false shuffles, so you'd have plenty of forces to choose from.
So phase 1 would end with the spectator -- or even two separate spectators now that I think about it -- selecting two identical socks!
It would be easy to leave that pair out of the deck after they select them; otherwise, you'll need to replace them into the exact places they were removed from.
Phase 2 - Matching the Pack
The second phase would have the pack split into two, shown to be non-matching, and then magically "fixed" so that each card from both packets match.
Continuing directly from phase 1, you can false shuffle the entire deck if you want and then split it into two. If you remember what the bottom card of the top packet should be, this shouldn't require any counting or even a faro check, just make sure it's the right sock and you're good to go.
At this point, I would run through the regular handling and display of the trick. Showing the top card from each pile at the same time, setting aside the two cards the spectator stops you at, and then running through the rest of the cards. Then, you can start revealing that the piles have somehow magically sorted themselves while saying something like "I like your style! Personally, I take the easier way out and pre-sort all of my socks ahead of time, but you go head first into the chaos." I would very likely adjust what I say based on who I'm performing for, but this would be the general idea.
Also, I've disliked the whole "showing every single card individually" as the reveal. There are a lot of cards! I'd probably just flip over the first 5 one at a time and then flip both packets over and spread them -- like the "out of this world" reveal. Not sure which would be better, but I know that I don't like the drawn out reveals myself.
Phase 3 - Socks!
The third and final phase is the big reveal. It's not even a kicker really, and I think that's fine. Phase 2 ended with the deck being shown all matching, but there are still two face down cards that were selected by the spectator earlier.
Drawing attention back to the two face down cards, say something like "With how much time I've spent at the laundromat, it shouldn't be a surprise that I can make all of the socks match. But before I did any of that, back when it was chaos on the sorting table, you selected two cards. One from each shuffled packet."
Then, do the reveal like in the original trick itself.
In my opinion, I think that this would be a stronger way to present the trick overall. Don't get me wrong, the trick works well as it is, but -- and this may 100% be because I'm mainly a card worker -- the revelation of real, physical socks matching randomly selected cards is way stronger of an ending than showing the packets of socks matching.
Inspiration + Crediting
I bought Socks shortly after seeing Michel Huot perform it at Magifest a few years ago, however, he didn't do the trick you'd buy online, he did a larger stage version of it. It ended with the revelation of, you guessed it, the socks on his feet. When I received the trick and watched the presentation and tutorial of what I received, I immediately felt what I described above -- that something was off with the ending.
However, I never really performed the trick even though I always wanted to. Heck, I even wore the socks to a couple events just in case an opportunity presented itself. But, it didn't. This holiday season, however, I decided to force the situation and I did ... at least, at home. I wore them to another event afterwards, but that one didn't pan out either (it wasn't the right venue anyways, so I'm not upset).
Anyways, after I performed it at home, I felt great for finally showing it off ... but my suspicion was confirmed. The "kicker" was good, but it turned the jaw dropping sock reveal moment into a more relaxed "wait, what?" type of thing.
A couple days later, I was sitting in an airport waiting for a flight and catching up on reading The Jerx and came across a post: Mailbag #155. In the post, someone's asking Andy about an older post. One that describes an alternative handling for Socks. Sure enough, it exists!
He calls the original post Mending Socks, but honestly, that could be a name for the different handling of the trick overall -- at least, the way his trick idea goes.
I could actually see myself performing the trick sort of how he outlines it too; however, the main inspiration I drew from his post is something I didn't think prior: combining the packets into a single deck (e.g., my Phase 1). Well, that, and the confirmation that at least one other person out there thinks the trick could be stronger by moving the sorting to before the big reveal...