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Brain exercise: brain teaser

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? Check the solu­tion and expla­na­tion.

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Categories: Brain Teasers, Professional Development, Uncategorized

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45 Responses

  1. Cynthia says:

    There are 6

  2. Shahzad says:

    ha, this test will fail on South Asians where ‘of’ is usu­ally pro­nounced as ‘off’ and not ‘ov’

  3. Alvaro says:

    Hello Shahzad, you’re right. Feel free to pro­pose other teasers you have seen may work bet­ter with South Asians!

  4. Liss says:

    I counted 7.

  5. KAREN says:

    I FOUND 7

  6. Sheri says:

    Take you time.. there are 6.

  7. me says:

    6 f’s

  8. miss says:

    i found 6 easily

  9. zeda says:

    i found six!

  10. Shenaye says:

    There are 9 f’s

  11. liam says:

    there are defin. 6 f’s in the sen­tence. it’s the f’s in the ‘of’ we humans find it hard to count.

  12. kylie dimock says:

    too many blonds are read­ing this

  13. terrell owens says:

    Hey its ter­rell owens and i counted 6

  14. Diana says:

    I’m blond & I counted 6. If you count the pre­ced­ing sen­tence there are 9.

  15. Aaron says:

    Yeah I found 6 quite eas­ily. How did you guys get 7, I’m curious?

  16. Sasa bacic says:

    There Are 6! Greet­ings from Great Serbia

  17. whitne says:

    I won­der if it’s also true that we tend to ignore lit­tle words with­out much mean­ing or emo­tional content.

  18. Alvaro says:

    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.

  19. Adrian says:

    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

  20. Alvaro says:

    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?

  21. Adrian says:

    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.

  22. Alvaro says:

    Helo Adrian-well, think­ing hard is more than wel­come in this blog :-)

  23. dcghk says:

    There are 6 as it clearly states “..in the FOLLOWING sentence..”

  24. mariah says:

    i found four f’s. i promise you there are four f’s.

  25. valesh says:

    there is actu­ally only one ‘F’
    rest five are’f’s
    see in the ques­tion he aasked ‘F’s but not ‘f’s

  26. The per­son who makes me has no need for me The per­son who buys me doesn’t use me The per­son who is using me doesn’t know What am I?

  27. Tasha says:

    six. the rea­son peo­ple were meant to count less is because our minds aren’t sup­posed to trans­late the F’s in the word OF

  28. Nicky says:

    I found 6 first try and actu­ally when I ini­tially started count­ing I glossed over the of but then stopped, went back and included the of’s in the count THEN read the expla­na­tion and had a chuckle. Quite the lit­tle men­tal trick!

  29. NATACHA says:

    NEED TO PRACTICE AND GET SHARPER.

  30. Joan says:

    six it is

  31. Kiara says:

    i counted six

  32. Craig says:

    It is never good to com­pli­cate a sim­ple thing. How about we change the intro to say,… “read aloud, the words you see below.“
    “Finished files are the result of years of sci­en­tific study com­bined with the expe­ri­ence of years”… Then ask how many times the let­ter after the let­ter E in the eng­lish alpha­bet is used in what you just said?

  33. Rontre says:

    Hello from the Bahamas.
    There are 6 f’s in the sen­tence. It’s basi­cally here to say that the human brain doesn’t take in the word “of” as a word with f because it is said as “ov”.

  34. rach says:

    i found 4

  35. rach says:

    no wait i found 8

  36. ali says:

    6. There are only 6. Show me the others.

  37. Olivia says:

    At fist I counted 3, not even acknologing the F’s in the words like “of”. I then recounted it, and I counted 6.

  38. Dimwit says:

    I found 16

  39. kex says:

    Whats the answer to the rid­dle. tasha

  40. Dickface says:

    i cant count :(

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