I want you to follow the directions on the sign below, and be honest with yourself. Count how many F’s are in the sentence and write it down. “DON’T LOOK TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST UNTIL YOU’VE DONE the EXERCISE”.
Seriously, you won’t be able to test yourself if you read the answer below. So give this a honest attempt and come up with your number for how many “F’s” you can find in this sentence…
So how many “F’s” did you count in that sentence?
Please post your answer in the comments, and please be honest. Then scroll down to find the answer…
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
If you are like most people, you’ll count 3 or 4 f’s. Of course, you are wrong if that is the number you came up with. There are actually 6 f’s in the sentence. Yes 6. Go back and read it again and see if you can spot them.
Truth be told, it took me about 4 minutes to find the damn letters. I sat in the museum and watched each person approach the brain tease just so I could see them fail too. I really wanted validation that I wasn’t that dumb and unobservant. Apparently, many of us are pretty oblivious to obvious things right in front of our face. ie my lost car keys, only to find out they are sitting in my pocket or worse yet, in my hands. How many times have you looked for your sun glasses and they were on your head?
I’m really keen to find out how others do with this exercise. Of course many are going to lie to themselves and pretend they were able to spot all the letters, but they will only be fooling themselves. If you were able to find all 6 of the “F’s” then congrats. You did better than I.
There are a ton of things in life that pass us by because we are non observant or think we already know it all. Myself, I passed right over the words “of” in that picture because they seemed irrelevant. But are they?
Sometimes it’s the little things that matter. Don’t forget to pay attention to things that may be right in front of your face.
Cheers,
Jason
You inspired me with your Interview with David Wolfe. I posted it on my blog.
I counted “5” F’s . Drat I missed one
FIRST!!! LOL
At first I counted 5. Then when I read the rest of your post and saw the number was 6, I went back and recounted and got that number too.
Nice.
6. But I almost missed a couple 🙂
Dinner – you’re just a rock 😉
also 5
A similar thing happens when you use the same word at the end of
of a sentence and the start of the next one.
Most people, when not expecting a trick, wouldn’t notice.
clever Rich
I got 4.
OK, Here’s another one:
The vacation we
went on took us
to Paris in the
the spring.
How many “the”s did you read?
Most people say two.
Are ya sure about that?
Read that sentence again.
I’ve seen this test before many years back so I was happy to report I got all 6 this time around.
The reason most people don’t get it right is because the ‘of’ registers in the brain as an ‘ov’ sound so you miss the f there.
wow.
you hit the nail on the head.
i reread it carefully,
like with a fine toothed comb,
and still came up with 3 f’s.
of course,
i missed all the “of”s,
all 3 of them!?!
lol.
6, but probably only because i was recently reading a bunch of blog posts from raptitude.com on how not to let life pass us by and how to take things slower, be more observant, present, etc. 🙂
Shoot I missed the one in “lift” aarrrggghhh!
6. I only read it once but my brain was alerted into ‘look for the easily glanced over’ mode. So right away I knew most people would miss the f’s in the ‘of’s’. 🙂
DAMN! I counted 5…
Well, I’m always up for puzzles, but this one makes no sense.
There are 6 Fs on the whole card, but the sentence between “read this sentence” and “now count all the Fs” only contain 3 Fs, not 6.
What am I obviously missing? haha
I did that too Brian… look at the word “of”
(F)inished (F)iles Are The Results o(F)
years o(F) scienti(F)c
study combined with the
Experience o(F) years.
=6 ‘F’s.
I got 6. Missed the one in ‘lift’ too.
I spotted 6. Only because I have seen tests like this before. The key is to not read the words, but rather read each letter. You have to train yourself not to read the words.
Here is a cool one
http://richardwiseman.wordpress.com/2010/08/18/can-you-spot-all-of-the-errors/
6
I think we’re sub-vocalizing as we read, and don’t coun’t “of” as having an “f,” because it’s voiced, and has a “v” sound.
Oops. I counted 6, because I caught that “v” thing.
I counted 6… now I’ll go check the results and report back again.
Ah okay, so there really WERE six. You know, this isn’t really a reflection of intelligence or even observation skills. When you’re told yo read a sentence and count how many F’s there are (at least for me) it’s a warning to pay attention and really focus on counting the F’s.
Oh yeah, about this line…
“Truth be told, it took me about 4 minutes to find the damn letters.”
Use the stop watch feature built into your cell phone or use one built into a wristwatch and actually time what about 4 minutes is really like. Once you do, I think you’ll revise that number WAY down — you’re not a total retard, there’s no way it would really take about 4 minutes to find all the F’s! (be more fair to yourself!) lol
Damn the “OF” was completely invisible!
I guess I must be awesome Jason because I counted 6 without any problem! Actually it’s one of the few things I seem to have gotten right this week so don’t anybody rain on my parade alright? LOL
Cool test though man.
Jim
I got six. But I used to be a proofreader for a newspaper in college for a year and a half, my brain got used to doing letter-by-letter readings.
Wow! I looked right over the 3 of’s too. I’ve always been a scanner and skipped small connecting words like the, of, a, etc. Good lesson man.
counted 6
Three first time but I’m not 100 sober at this moment in time : )
I got 6 on the first try. But maybe I cheated. I sounded out all of the words so that my ear could *hear* any “Fs” that my eyes missed. I probably would have only gotten 4-5 otherwise.
There are 6 “F”s.
Drats!!! I counted 3 and went over three more time until I spotted the 6! Sneaky!
5! ;o(
and I was so proud of myself that I was going to get ALL of them! I missed the last ‘of’, which is extremely embarrassing especially since I was looking for those words in particular! ;o)
So funny, thanks Jason, YOU ROCK! ;o)
Cheers…Amanda van der Gulik…Excited Life Enthusiast! ;o)
I counted 6 all together
If we makes the right choices in the today and now there will be no f’s in the future.
I only counted three the first time. I guess if we can make the right choices today and now there will be no F’s in the future.
I got all 6 but I almost missed one uv them.
“because they seemed irrelevant”
Nothing is irrelevant
I counted 5 F’s Jason. This was a cool test and I have seen stuff like this before but still couldn’t get all the f’s I needed. Look at all of us running towards the F’s and in school we all ran away from them lol:)They have some pretty cool pictures that are brain teasers as well. Glad to see things are turning around for you and your back posting. Keep up the good work buddy
Here’s some food for thought.
My 10 year old son who has Asperger’s counted 6 on first try. I counted 3. He didn’t see what the big deal was!
That’s amazing Mike! I wonder why that is? I counted 3 as well on my first 8 times reading it until the OFs popped out.
Very cool… I only got 3. Missed all the of’s. I have an excuse though… I’m in lake Garda in Italy at the min and have enjoyed to much wine. Always time to check the email though lol
I conted 6 f case i am smarts.
I counted 5 the first time…and the second….and the third….and the fourth.
I was seriously doubting that there was 6 until I realized the last “of” :-p
Totally missed half of them. The “of”s went right over my head 🙁 damn! lol
I get the point of the blog bro! I did get 6 first time round! And the Second and the third and… OK I know I was only suppose to check it once but hay I wanted to be sure!
Stay well Jason
I found 6 after almost missing the ones in “of”
I didn’t get 6 until the third go around… duh!
Ha. I said 3. Then I looked back slowly… still 3. Then I looked for the trick. I counted all of the Fs in “read this sentence”… still no Fs.
then the “of”s stood out like a champ. i say that i saw them, just with my subconscious!
so… 6. good post.
Addison, I did the same thing. I started feeling mentally challenged after going through 8 times and counting 3. Finally I read the sentence really slowly and the “OF”s popped out. I thought I was reading slowly the first 8 times.
Dam, I only got 4 the first time and then I got 5 the second.
I had to go 3 times before I got it = pretty bad on my part, lol
All-in-all kept me thinking
I first got only three, and realized I must be missing a ton. Then, a couple of seconds later… ‘OH.’ I think it’s mainly about the mind taking the prepositions as ‘part of the scenery’. Anyway, thanks for the much needed mental exercise on a Saturday morning. 😉
Had 4 initially, then 5. If I recall the explanation is that we ignore words like “of” which never get capitalized in titles, and are only 2 letters in length. Where you hiding that other F’in F!?
That was a great one. Good message too. I found only 3 til I tried to count them backwards. Doh!
I counted 6 on the first try, but only because when asked to look for the “F”s, I broke down all of the words into letters and stopped reading, looking only for an “f” and discarding everything else.
Had the question not allowed me to go back through it and just remember the sentence, I probably would have only got 3.
After 3mins and reading through 5 times I finally got it! Maybe its too late here 🙂 Brains switched off!
Really good message..i found 6.
The first time I did this, I counted 7. Impossible? Not when someone types EXPERIFNCE.
Here’s another ….. count the number of passes between only the players in white jerseys. a pass can be either toss-to-player or bounce-to-player. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo