I’ve acquired a new superpower
Daniel Wirtz
21 hours ago •
Status
Slug
Desciption
Featured
Cover Video
Cover Image
Social Image
Publish date
Last edited time
Created time
URL
Yesterday, I was browsing Reddit. Midway through my feed, I stumbled upon a video from a German TV show, where a 9-year-old girl demonstrated her ability to quickly identify the difference between two seemingly similar images.
In one example, she was presented with two images of hundreds of coffee beans spread out on a table. To my eye, both images looked exactly the same. But it took her only a couple of seconds to call out that one coffee bean was missing on the left side of the image.
She repeated this with other images, always almost instantly calling out the differences. I was baffled. How is this possible?
I turned my attention to the comments to see how Reddit reacted to this genius of a kid.
The top comment immediately caught my attention:
Wait, what? This can't be the case.
I paused the video, trying to cross my eyes, but without luck. To give it another chance, I googled for "simple spot-the-difference puzzle" and tried again.
For a moment, the images just seemed to blur over each other. But then suddenly, the images seemed to lock together in the middle, creating a third image between the two others that I was able to focus on.
And the top Reddit comment was right. In the third image, some parts of the image stuck out. They looked a bit like they were shimmering or being lifted from the page. I was instantly able to call out the differences.
I went back to the more difficult images from the video. Having trained to cross my eyes helped. It took me a second, but I was able to cross my eyes and get the third image to lock in. And again, I instantly spotted a shimmering detail in the image—the one small difference between the two images.
In high anticipation, I demonstrated my newly found skill to my fiancée. She wasn’t as impressed as I thought she would be, but it still felt like I had just drunk a magic potion and gained a special superpower.
Try it out yourself
Down below, you will find an easy, hard, and superhuman spot-the-difference puzzle.
Practice on the easy one first, then work your way forward.
Here is the step-by-step technique, that worked for me:
- Get a bit closer to the screen so you can see both images clearly.
- Now, cross your eyes and aim to overlap both images.
- When the images are overlapping, try to focus on the image in the middle.
- At one point, it should come into focus, and you can relax your eyes.
- Now look at the image, and the shimmering details should stand out to you.
Easy mode
Solution
Hard mode
Solution
Impossible mode
Solution
Update: I’ve posted this on Hacker News and it sparked a thread of interesting comments and stories. Here a link to the post.