A 15-year-old boy from Kolkata has set a new Guinness World Record (GWR) for creating the "world's largest playing card structure". According to the official site, Arnav Daga spent 41 days using playing cards to create four iconic buildings from his home city - the Writers' Building, the Shaheed Minar, Salt Lake Stadium, and St. Paul's Cathedral. He used around 143,000 playing cards and zero tape and glue. His finished project measured 40 feet in length, 11 feet 4 inches in height and 16 feet 8 inches in width.
According to a blog GWR, Arnav broke the previous world record held by Bryan Berg, whose playing card structure of three Macao hotels measured 34 feet and 1 inch long, 9 feet and 5 inches tall and 11 feet and 7 inches wide. Talking about his project, the 15-year-old said that before commencing the card construction, he visited all four sites to study their architecture and work out their dimensions closely. He then viewed around 30 places to find a suitable site for his own "card-chitecture".
Arnav's "technique involves using "grids" (four horizontal cards stood at right angles) and "vertical cells" (four vertical cards inclined towards each other at right angles)," GWR said.
The teenager said his 41-day process was slowed when the Shaheed Minar kept falling down. He "improvised" a lot. "It was frustrating that so many hours and days of work got wiped out and I had to do it all over again, but for me there was no turning back," Arnav recalled.
The 15-year-old struggled to balance his schoolwork and record attempts throughout the 41 days. "It was very tough to do both, but I was determined to overcome all difficulties," he said.
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According to GWR, Arnav has been card stacking since he was eight years old. He began to take it more seriously during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, as he found himself with a lot of free time to practise his passion. Due to having limited space in his room, he began by creating smaller structures, some of which can be seen on his YouTube channel, arnavinnovates.
"Three years of hard work and practise in making smaller structures improved my skill and gave me the confidence for attempting a world record," Arnav said. "It is definitely overwhelming and feels like I am living my dream which I saw back in 2020," he told GWR.
