[Elianna]

Jlall, on Nov 8 2007, 04:52 AM, said:

I got 6, I don't really understand this lol.

Me too.

If you said it outloud, and asked me to count as you said it, I can understand getting less.

[Gerben42]

Quote

I got 6, I don't really understand this lol.

The idea is to read the sentence, not to read the words. Those who exceed a certain level in English won't notice the "of" and will count less than 6 f's. If a Finnish text were given, we would all get the correct number.

If you read a book you don't have time to count all the letters either. Pattern recognition helps there.

[whereagles]

I got 6. But I've did the test before (though not with this exact sentence).

[FrancesHinden]

whereagles, on Nov 8 2007, 04:20 PM, said:

I got 6. But I've did the test before (though not with this exact sentence).

Me too, for the same reason.

[Fluffy]

I knew some similar problems and still got 3. (1 of them was preciselly in english about the word of)

When I saw many posts for 6 I reread and still got 3.

When I read everyone talking aobut 3 being wrong I read again and still ot 3.

After someone explained why 3 is the correct answer because scientific has an 'f' I recounted and got 3.

Finally when I read about the 'of' word being there I though, why do they talk about that word, it wasn't on the sentence, so I reread and found someone cheated on me and put the word 3 times on the sentece GRGRRRRRR. Then I counted 6 finally.

[barmar]

I got 5. I'm usually pretty good at these kinds of things, and I knew it was about the little OF's that are often overlooked, yet I still managed to miss one of them. I think it was the second of the two OF's that were close together (separated just by the word STUDY) -- they apparently blended together in my mind.

When I was doing it, I was actually more worried that I might miss an F buried in the middle of a long word.

[han]

I've also seen a similar test before and I got 6, not surprisingly. I don't remember if I "fell for it" the first time around. I'm also not sure if falling for it is bad, doesn't it suggest that the way you read is efficient? I'll leave that question for the poets and statisticians.

[han]

Fluffy, on Nov 8 2007, 11:33 AM, said:

I knew some similar problems and still got 3. (1 of them was preciselly in english about the word of)

When I saw many posts for 6 I reread and still got 3.

When I read everyone talking aobut 3 being wrong I read again and still ot 3.

After someone explained why 3 is the correct answer because scientific has an 'f' I recounted and got 3.

Finally when I read about the 'of' word being there I though, why do they talk about that word, it wasn't on the sentence, so I reread and found someone cheated on me and put the word 3 times on the sentece GRGRRRRRR. Then I counted 6 finally.

If I were you I wouldn't admit to it in public.

[barmar]

I agree with Hannie that falling for it probably suggests that your reading skills are good. But it also suggests that your willpower is not strong enough to overcome your automatic reading mechanisms -- you only see the forest, you're unable to see the trees even when you want to. There's something to be said for being able to take conscious control of what you're doing, not always running on autopilot.

[foo]

sceptic, on Nov 7 2007, 01:29 PM, said:

Quote

Is it too late to say I feel really F-ing dumb

Just to help there are 3 normal answers to this test

3 is the norm, this is because The brain cannot process "OF".

4 is rare (this is what I did)

6 is genius or you have seen the test before

6 is also the answer you get if you read the sentence backwards because you want to avoid pattern based bias...

(I've never seen the quiz before. Was surprised anyone got any answer other than 6.)

[GeeGee]

Voted 5, oh oops 6

[mikestar]

My 82 year old mother has a large collection of humorous stuff, obscene stuff, and brain teasers obtained in various offices over her working life--the material is in scrapbooks in chronological order. This specific test is on one of the very earliest pages. That makes it World War II vintage and there is no guarantee that it was new then.

By the way, she tried the test on me when I was in Kindergarten and I correctly counted 6 the first time out.

[helene_t]

I once heard that when Danish publishers want to have an old book on digital media and it's too bad quality for scanning, they send it to Korea to be retyped by typists who are not used to reading in the Latin alphabet and don't know a single word Danish. The reason is that Danish typists will persist in correcting apparent spelling mistakes no matter how often you tell them not to.