Québec CityWhen Simon Coronel—a jigsaw puzzle designer and former IT consultant—stepped on stage to perform his magic trick, he looked out onto the most intimidating audience a magician can face: hundreds of other magicians. For five days, the crowd had sat through dozens of magic acts, one after another. The stage where Coronel stood could launch a career or kill it. “This is like going into the Colosseum with the gladiators,” said one magician in the audience.

But over the next few minutes, Coronel did something that left the magicians in stunned silence: He sliced a hole into reality.

With a craft knife, he cut off the outermost edge off a playing card in one piece, as if removing the frame from a