Look carefully at the image above. Stare intently at the centre of the screen as though you were penetrating far beyond its shallow depth of however many centimetres. Try not to blink for at least thirty seconds. If you have to blink then do it several times quickly, shut your eyes for one minute, then resume viewing.
Have you spotted the number yet? If so you are one of a select group which at this very moment comprises just eight percent of the world’s people. Congratulations! You might hardly believe it, because if you can see the number, the whole thing will seem all so natural. But consider yourself part of a privileged bunch. You’ll be a better companion at night time, you can interpret offhand even complex and faraway signs, you’ll never go out in a clashing wardrobe, and you probably also have synesthesia, the artist’s delight.
If you still don’t know what the big fuss is about, look instead at these alternative images which offer unbelievers a chance to experience precisely the same sort of thing. Here’s the illusion in a mosaic pattern.
And here it is dark and with squiggles like rubber bands.
Can you spy the number if the image is brighter?
Finally here is the number in its natural state.
Did you chance at the answer before the final reveal? Did you hazard a guess at the number 19? The period of the Metonic cycle, that which the Quran regards as the number of angels guarding Hell? In fact the number hidden among the above images, visible to only the most esteemed and colour-coordinated 8%, is the number 19. If that’s the number you guessed, as Jimmy Stewart famously says at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life, ‘That’s right, that’s right’.
