#6. Brain teaser: can you count the Fs in this sentence?
September 10, 2006//
Quick! Count the number of times that the letter F appears in the following sentence:
“Finished files are the result of years of scientific study combined with the experience of years.”
—
How many did you find?
Solution: Most people say three. Why? We often don’t correctly process the word “OF” for two reasons. First, the letter F usually makes the “f” sound, like in “fox”. However, in the word “of”, it makes a “v” sound. Second, you have probably read the word “of” so many times in your life that you process it as one unit, overlooking the second letter/ sound.
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There are 6
ha, this test will fail on South Asians where ‘of’ is usually pronounced as ‘off’ and not ‘ov’
Hello Shahzad, you’re right. Feel free to propose other teasers you have seen may work better with South Asians!
I counted 7.
I FOUND 7
Take you time.. there are 6.
6 f’s
i found 6 easily
i found six!
There are 9 f’s
there are defin. 6 f’s in the sentence. it’s the f’s in the ‘of’ we humans find it hard to count.
too many blonds are reading this
Hey its terrell owens and i counted 6
I’m blond & I counted 6. If you count the preceding sentence there are 9.
d
Yeah I found 6 quite easily. How did you guys get 7, I’m curious?
There Are 6! Greetings from Great Serbia
I wonder if it’s also true that we tend to ignore little words without much meaning or emotional content.
There are 6.
Whitne: good point. You can try this other exercise to see how we tend to ignore little objects without much meaning…
Can you, from memory, draw a penny (or any other small coin) and all its elements? Try to do so…and then compare with a real one.
I counted 1 (one).
I reckon if we need to count the “following” sentence then the sentence to be counted is [How many did you find?] = 1
Hello Adrian, very good to think out of the box, but that would be the “following paragraph”, wouldn’t it?
A very interesting cognitive skill is called “theory of mind”, in which one can ascertain the intentions of other person. Which “sentence” do you think we mean?
Hi Alvaro, thanx for the reply. I’m a bit rough on grammar but I thought anything after the colon would be considered the ‘same’ sentence, not the ‘following’ sentence. Maybe I’m thinking too hard about this one. Cheers.
Helo Adrian-well, thinking hard is more than welcome in this blog :-)
There are 6 as it clearly states “..in the FOLLOWING sentence..”
i found four f’s. i promise you there are four f’s.