Better Optical Illusions

Mon, 25 Aug 2008

Which direction does each grey line slant?

Which rectangle is larger?

Do the two lines curve in or out?

Does the bar go from light to dark or dark to light?

Answers

Check with a piece of paper (cover up the distracting bits) or open it in a graphics program.

The Annoyance

One of the things that always annoys me with optical illusions is that typically as soon as you read the question, you know what the answer is. e.g. "Which line is longer?" (they are the same length) "Are these two squares the same colour?" (yes). Are these lines parallel? (yes).

So I made these illusions such that you can't really guess the answer just by reading the question. In some of them, what your eyes see will actually give you the correct answer (just your eyes are seeing an exaggerated form), other times they will be right off.

It doesn't include any of my favourite illusions, because they are too hard to make.

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