Maybe you’ve seen the scrambled-up word puzzles where a word is hidden inside a bunch of similar letters. This type of scrambling is called typoglycemia (jokingly), which is a neologism for the most recent discovery of purported cognitive processes involved in reading text or the written word. The way it works is that only some people can comprehend the text that has a bunch of jumbled up words. Inside the puzzle are spelling errors, misplaced letters, and random letters designed to throw people off and make the puzzle more challenging and fun. The phenomenon was discovered in 1999.
Graham Rawlinson, a professor at the University of Nottingham, discussed a Ph.D. thesis he wrote in 1976, where he references the phenomenon. The way it works is this. When your brain responds to how words and letters are arranged, the brain is deciphering every word quickly and subconsciously. According to Dr. Lars Muckli, the human brain is continuously anticipating what we see and preparing to translate it. In the image below, the word “float” appears once. Can you find it? Give it your best shot and we’ll share the answer on the next page.
Did you find it? I admit this one was very difficult for me. However, I eventually found it. Head over to the next page for the solution.