Try this - it's really weird?!?!

[bubblerock]

Got this via email today, I haven't seen it before, it's really weird!! (sorry if it's already been posted - haven't been around recently)

How many F's are there in the following text?

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE-
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIF-
IC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE
EXPERIENCE OF YEARS ...
(see below)

Managed it ?
Scroll down only after you have counted them, okay?

Do you think there are three?

Wrong, there are 6 !!
Read it again.
The reasoning behind it is further down.

The brain cannot process "OF".
Incredible or what ? Go back and look again!!
Anyone who counts all 6 "F's" on the first go is a genius.
Three is normal, four is quite rare.

d'oh missed the last OF

God no! The only G & T in my life would be the alcoholic variety.

Well, if you changed the G to V and the T to - ah feck it just pass the voddie.

also sure i'm not a genius, just don't read it. start at the end, and treat it like a wordsearch, don't look at what the words are. it's also harder to spot individual letters if they're at the end of a row.
btw, BETTER readers tend to 'skim read', ie don't read unimportant words like 'of', so maybe not a good genius guide.

3 the first time- 6 the second. DS2 (16) got 3 twice until I pointed it out then told me "of isn't a word"

That really is bizarre.

Either that or I'm just plain dim.

How odd !

I have actually seen something like this before sent around where I work by email but still I didn't realise and still only counted 3.

I too am not sure if I am dumb or it is weird.

I got 6, but I am very anal about these sorts of puzzles!

I only got 3 first time, then could only see 5 even though I knew there were 6! Am amazed as I have done a proof-reading course and am usually v. good at these sort of things!

I could only see 3 even though I read it and looked closely twice

Got 6. Didn't read it, just scanned the text looking for F. Thought there might be a trick round the line breaks.

I have seen something like this before, though, so I counted really carefully.

3 and I've done this before...