This world is all a fleeting show, For man’s illusion given -- Thomas Moore

October 23, 2003 11:11 AM

Grand Illusions: Optical illusions, scientific toys, visual effects, brain teasers, and (perhaps) just a little bit of magic!
posted by anastasiav (15 comments total)

Note that sections of this website have been linked to MeFi before, but (in my opinion) the sum of the website is of greater interest than the glimpse we get by simply looking at its parts.
posted by anastasiav at 11:12 AM on October 23, 2003

I can only see 6 people in this. Anyone?
posted by widdershins at 11:32 AM on October 23, 2003

Souveneirs.. novelties.. paaahty tricks...
posted by PenDevil at 11:33 AM on October 23, 2003

widdy, I count eight so far: four faces on the gate (three profiles and one straight-ahead that overlaps with one of the profiles), the old man, the mother, the child in her arms and the big bald guy with the facial hair .... Do you suppose they're counting the dog, or is there something somewhere in the masonry?
posted by blueshammer at 11:40 AM on October 23, 2003

i've got the same eight as blueshammer , still looking for the ninth...
posted by dolface at 11:43 AM on October 23, 2003

widdershins and blueshammer, there are 4 faces on the left side of the gate (the flying bird makes the eye of the 4th) and one on the right. The rest are fair obvious.
posted by Wulfgar! at 11:45 AM on October 23, 2003

got it! the small bird to the right of the big bird is an eye, the place where the bird's feet meet the stone make a nose.
on preview: what wulfgar said.
posted by dolface at 11:45 AM on October 23, 2003

Ahh, thank you Wulfgar! et al.

There is no spoon.
posted by widdershins at 11:54 AM on October 23, 2003

Actually, if you consider that the pooch might be David Bowie dressed up for the cover of "Diamond Dogs," that makes 10.

(btw: thanks, anastasiav! I love sites like this.)
posted by scody at 1:25 PM on October 23, 2003

This quiz is supposed to have been written by Einstein. He said that 98% of the people in the world cannot solve the quiz. Could you be among the other 2%?

There are 5 houses, each is a different colour...

Wow, so Einstein was not only responsible for reshaping our conceptions of time, space, and energy, but was also a master of banal logic puzzles? Amazing!!!
posted by jeffj at 2:09 PM on October 23, 2003

I got the Einstein question in "two brainteasers", and the u2 one with the clue.
posted by signal at 3:20 PM on October 23, 2003

I'd seen the U2 one before, but hadn't tried to solve it until now. I got it without the clue... but it took me an embarassingly long time. Next up: the Einstein one.
posted by evinrude at 3:28 PM on October 23, 2003

I like the CARBON DIOXIDE one. I feel so retarded now :-)
posted by milnak at 3:54 PM on October 23, 2003

I'd solved the U2 one years ago, but didn't know there were supposed to be two answers. The 2nd answer is pretty easy once you know the first.
The Einstein one took longer, but I got it.. Their method of answering it with tables makes a hell of a lot more sense than the pseudo-code data structures i used.

Good site, thanks anastasiav.
posted by duckstab at 5:52 PM on October 23, 2003

that triangle one had me stumped for a while.

and of all the bonehead things, i saw the one person in the 9 people picture that some others were having trouble with, but i missed the freaking baby.
posted by juv3nal at 11:19 PM on October 23, 2003