Reply To: Shas pin test

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Sam2
Participant

PBA: Even Zilberman guys can’t do pin tests, unless they’re geniuses to begin with, in which case they didn’t need to go to Zilberman’s.

WIY: I have met several people who can do passably well in several Masechtos (one guy is up to half of Shas and will probably be able to do all of this some day), but no one who can do the whole thing. I’m sure Rav Ovadiah could though. I do know someone who knows good chunks of Shas word for word Ba’al Peh, but his memory isn’t visual so he can’t do a pin test.

It should be noted, though, that modern inventions have made the pin test actually feasible. On an old Gemara, it was impossible because the same page in different Gemaras could come out differently, either by the binding being off by a little or the page not being printed at the same precise angle and things like that (look at two versions of an old Tal-Man Shas and start comparing, you’ll see that the same Dapim are a little different some times). Laser print and Gemaras like Oz Vehadar and Vilna have fixed that issue.