It's not a joke, just a little test. Count the numbers of "F"s in the following text:

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE-
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIF-
IC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE
EXPERIENCE OF YEARS

Managed it? Scroll down only after you have counted them! Ok?

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

How many? Three? Wrong, there are six - no joke!
Read again!
The reasoning is further down...

.

.

The brain can not process "OF".
Incredible or what?,br> Anyone who counts all six "F" on the first go is a genius - three is normal, four quite rare.

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2000

Answers

What are you if you got 5?? (Missed one in the 2nd row)

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2000

B$ll$cks it upm a bit by not putting enough spac between question and answer ;-P
Good performance though Steph. I reckon women will be better at this than men. They tend to read more thoroughly (if not a lot slower...ever had to wait about 5 minutes for your wife to read a teletext page when your itching to move on to the next ;-) )

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2000

Gotta disagree with you there Windy - my husband conplains that I turn the pages too fast for him to read!

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2000

This was published in New Scientist a few years ago along with some interesting observations. Apparently non-native english speakers and people with learning disorders do better at this test than 'normal' native english speakers. Something to do with how english speakers take those little linking words like 'of' for granted.

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2000

Hey, Steph, Tom's accusing you of having a learning disorder ;-)))


-- Anonymous, October 04, 2000

Only 3 I'm afraid!!! That is really strange though!!! (;o)

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2000

Try this problem:

You are driving by car to a particular destination, and our only assumption is that you are free to drive at any speed you choose - no traffic jams or anything like that. For the first half of the journey (i.e.half the distance) you drive at 20 miles per hour. You then realise that this is all taking much too long, and that you are going to be late. You therefore decide that you will increase your speed so that your overall average speed for the whole journey will be 40 miles per hour. How fast do you have to drive for the remaining part of your journey in order for your average speed for the whole journey to be 40 miles per hour?

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2000

60 miles per hour.

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2000

Nope, try again :-)

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2000

20 mph for one hour(20 miles driven), 60mph for next hour(60 miles driven). 20+60=80miles over two hours, 80/2=40. Am I missing something?

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2000

Yes, half the distance not half the time.

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2000

Wouldn't he have to go infinitely fast? Say the journey was 40 miles long, if he were to average 40 mph, it would have to take him 1 hr. If he went at 20 mph for 20 miles, that would have alteady taken him an hour.

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2000

Hurrah, well done :-)

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2000

I need some paracetamol......

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2000

That's trully amazing, I couneted them three times and came up with Three.

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2000

God help you Rik.

I tell you one thing it's made me decide I need a screen filter for my screen I've never concentrated so much on a computer screen, there was no way I was going to miss out on counting 10 f's.

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2000

I got 6. Honest. Straight up. But I've jest come back from the bar and it took me 20 mins to count them. Slowly does it, eh?

-- Anonymous, October 04, 2000

Mrs gus reckons this is the biggest load of B@ll@cks she has ever seen. There are NO scientific tests or research carried out over a large enough test group to make any of these statements believeable.

Oh by the way I got 6, she got 4.

go figure, Scientists eh?

-- Anonymous, October 05, 2000

I got six, nee shite..I did.. Spose I,m a friggin genius I am, like millions of others I spose....

-- Anonymous, October 05, 2000

Windy, Sorry to put a dampner on things, but I knew what I was looking for, 6 nee problem, of obviously. how?, near 50 years ago that was a party piece, read the back of a old Woodbine packet to count the `F`s Scientists bah

-- Anonymous, October 06, 2000

Buff - no apologies needed mate. Not trying to claim it's original or anything ;-) In fact, now you say it, I have these vague memories of my Grandfather doing as you say, on the lid of a pack of tabs. Sad thing is, I couldn't remember it like you, and I fell for the 3 F's only hook line and sinker.

-- Anonymous, October 06, 2000