Count every ' F ' in the following text:
FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTI
FIC STUDY COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS...
Answer: (you only get one shot, so don't check until you are certain)
HOW MANY ?
WRONG, THERE ARE 6 -- no joke.
READ IT AGAIN !
Really, go back and try to find the 6 F's before you scroll down.
Explanation:
The brain cannot process 'OF'.
Incredible or what? Go back and look again!!
3 is normal, 4 is quite rare.
Anyone who counts all 6 'F's' on the first go is a genius.
I see this every time and I fail every time. Is there a particular reason why the brain cannot properly process that?
Yes. I got it easily. It did not occur to me to skip the uses of'of'. That is categorically not an indicator of genius, as there are multiple intelligences.
I am actually a genius. My particular mental talents are in visualisation in three to six dimensions. I am in the top percentile for mental manipulation of imaginary shapes, but I don't know my times tables. I have mild dyscalculia I can do topology, but not basic arithmetic. I am also dysgraphic, having to concentrate on every letter of every word I write. I almost never make spelling mistakes, but writing is exhausting for me. I could never finish an exam in school, despite getting fifteen minutes extra time for every hour of the exam. I knew the answers, and was simply unable to commit them to paper in time. Typing is no problem whatsoever, because different neurological heirarchies are at work. I make fine sculptures as a hobby. It is easy for me to visualise a work, then make clay fit what is in my head. I can also run games without miniatures if the players trust me enough, and I can close my eyes and visualise scenes in fine detail.
Genius is over-rated.
Interesting...
Man, I only got 3. I knew it had to be a trick of some sort, but I just didn't see the ofs. I actually went over it three times before answering. Nice test.
Then again, I've always have trouble looking at those pictures where there's supposedly another picture embedded in it (Mallrats, anyone?). And then there are those who are color blind that are not able to make certain distinctions that others take for granted.
It's an interseting test, but it also exposes how some people are wired differently than others and not necessarily a sign of whether they're geniuses.
Well, I missed it, but then I'm not surprised. I don't read letters, I read words. It's not just of. I had to really strain to find the three Fs I did see. It's just how my brain works. I was reading at a fifth grade level before I learned my alphabet. I'm just weird. :P
Somehow I got seven.
Got all six, but then I did just scan the text backwards.
wow...
Contributor
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I got 5, but that's just because once I knew it was a test I read every individual letter out loud and kept a count on my fingers. I missed the last "of".
@Taliesin Hoyle - I'm utterly fascinated by what you describe. How do you visualize something in 6 dimensions? I can get to 4, a three dimensional object moving through time, but am not even sure what 5 or 6 would be. How does that work? Fascinated.
His pseudonym is Aldous Huxley.
:P
There were 'F's in that sentence? Oh, I'm embarrassed.
Actually, I managed to count 5. I missed the second "of".
I counted all six, and I am not a genius, just suspicious and more observant when I know something is a test, see it written in ALL CAPS, and broken up in a block.
I got all 6, but I have the advantage of having done these before. Not this specific one, I must admit the formatting almost made me miss them, I started to focus on the broken spacing, but then I caught myself and found the OFs. I was a GATE kid...
"Anyone who counts all the 'F's' on the first go is a genius."
...or an editor. :)
I got 5 the first time and get 5 every time. Where the heck is the 6th??? /boggle
EDIT: ah, the second "OF"
Got it. I'm a genius. Already knew that, 'cause I shop at Paizo! ;)
I got 5 the first time and get 5 every time. Where the heck is the 6th??? /boggle
EDIT: ah, the second "OF"
Yeah I missed that one as well. Got the other 5 though. I think one issue that might come up is that, on these boards at least, I have seen instances of people typing in the same word both before and after another word where it would only need to occur either before or after (such as if I'd put the word "same" both before and after the word "word" in that last sentence) and some of us might start unconciously filtering out things like that to a certain extent. I don't have any evidence about that one way or another, so that is just a speculation.
Went around my office with this printed on a piece of paper. No one has gotten it on the first try yet.
Neat test - it totally tricked me. Why do many of us skip the 'of's?
Neat test - it totally tricked me. Why do many of us skip the 'of's?
Possibly because many people read phonetically, and "of" has a "v" sound instead of an "eff" sound.
Got all 6 but not a genius, I just tend to break down things into components when I examine stuff so I don't miss things. I didn't even read or understand the sentence at first.
Which is what might qualify you...you didn't just read it LoL
My totally uniformed answer: The ofs are being processed automagically by your brain and then ignored because they are a short common word with a simple meaning.I don't think spotting them is a function of intelligence.
Exactly. If you're a genius for spotting all six Fs, then you're also a genius for constantly being aware of the pressure of a normal shirt on your shoulders. To me that's setting the bar so low the word is worthless. In fact, performance here could be inversely correlated with verbal ability since it's through education and long practice that words like of become trivialities we blip right over as we focus on the more substantive parts of the sentence.
Now if you want to say that a person who gets all six gives more attention to detail, or is more able to de-contextualize sensory input, that's a fair claim. But in the absence of a rigorous definition of general intelligence, I'm in the habit of treating genius as a facility of processing, not exhaustive data collection. Anybody can brute-force something. Devising an optimal strategy for avoiding having to do so is to me the superior achievement.
My totally uniformed answer: The ofs are being processed automagically by your brain and then ignored because they are a short common word with a simple meaning.I don't think spotting them is a function of intelligence.
Exactly. If you're a genius for spotting all six Fs, then you're also a genius for constantly being aware of the pressure of a normal shirt on your shoulders. To me that's setting the bar so low the word is worthless. In fact, performance here could be inversely correlated with verbal ability since it's through education and long practice that words like of become trivialities we blip right over as we focus on the more substantive parts of the sentence.
Now if you want to say that a person who gets all six gives more attention to detail, or is more able to de-contextualize sensory input, that's a fair claim. But in the absence of a rigorous definition of general intelligence, I'm in the habit of treating genius as a facility of processing, not exhaustive data collection. Anybody can brute-force something. Devising an optimal strategy for avoiding having to do so is to me the superior achievement.
If you took an hour to find all 6 Fs, that would definitely not qualify, if you found them in 15 seconds or less, perhaps.
Neat test - it totally tricked me. Why do many of us skip the 'of's?
Filtering out meaningless info is a process I haven't heard much about since college psych, and it's escaped me. Maybe one of my betters will explain or linkify.
Related to this: another one I love is when you mix up the letters in words EXCEPT for the first and last letters. You'll find everything remains readable as long as no new words are introduced.
As for finding the Fs. Sign of genius? WTF?
