Math Is Fun Forum

This is THE most baffling optical illusion I've ever seen!

My brain absolutely refuses to see this unaided...that the shading on squares A and B is identical!!

Try these simple proofs...you'll be amazed!! :-

Copy the image (the full one, not the thumbnail) and paste it into MS Paint.
1.
- Use either the "Select" or "Free-Form Select" tool to select a portion of square B, making sure your selection stays within the square's boundaries.
- Move the selection to the white area (holding down CTRL while you move it copies the selection instead of removing that area from the canvas).
- Do the same with square A and place it next to square B.
- Compare the two shades!

2.
- Paste the image into MS Paint again.
- Choose the "Pick Color" tool, left-click on square B to select the colour, select the "Fill With Color" tool and left-click somewhere in the white area...which then changes completely to square B's colour.
- Repeat 1...and squares A & B disappear into the filled area, leaving just the two dark letters visible there!

3.
- Instead of moving the squares off the checker board just select a portion of square B and move it onto square A.
- Watch B's shade appear to change along the way!! (works the other way round too...moving A onto B).

4.
- Select a portion of square B, delete it (which should leave a blank, white patch), use the "Pick Color" tool on square A and fill B's white patch...with the 'different' shade!

You left out "therapy", quittyqat.

I got the same answer as Bobby. Nice logic...took me a while to spot.

-evoking

youth's

Bobby, I think your word should have started with "d", which is the last letter of the last word.

I wonder if there's one such word that retains MathsIsFun's "wonderful".

That was a nice puzzle, uzurpatorul!

It took a bit of head-scratching before I could find an algebraic solution, but I finally got there.

Same answer as Bobby.

Sorry, Tigeree, I couldn't find any pics...but I dug up some info for you:

According to Ebers Papyrus, which is "the oldest and arguably the most important preserved medical record of antiquity" (dating back to about 1552BC and apparently being "a complete record of known Egyptian medical knowledge"), the ancient Egyptian remedy for stopping a baby from crying was to give it a medicinal paste made from a mixture of spn seeds (whatever they are) and fly dung, which were strained and fed to the baby on four consecutive days. The crying was meant to cease instantly. (EB.782)

(I can think of a very good reason why the crying would cease instantly! And if I were that infant I'd make very sure I stopped crying before being fed that paste!)

According to a forensic source, fly droppings "are composed of a material homogeneous, amorphous, transparent, uncoloured, swollen, dissociated by, or dissolved in, water. They're "a yellow brown, some with a greenish reflection, others with a reddish reflection, faintly pronounced. They all strongly refract light, clear at the centre, dark on the periphery, as fatty bodies; also like fat granules, they're insoluble in water and in acetic acid and almost all dissolve in hot alcohol and in ether. Some small crystals in the form of short needles of undetermined chemical composition accompany them."

I'd avoid eating that pizza and the meatballs at all costs, the favourable weight of probabilities notwithstanding!

Hi bobbym,

Here's my code:

Hi bobbym,

Yes - that's the right answer to Part A.

What method did you use?

So far I've come across 3 quite different ones:

I've just re-read my first post and have realised that in the excitement of the occasion of that important posting event I told a lie. @'.'@ 

I didn't compose Part A - a good friend of mine did, and had it published in a puzzle magazine...which also published her solution strategy. She was quite interested to find out that I'd added a Part B to her puzzle, but sadly she's also very interested in avoiding trying to solve it!