Eyeball Benders - the Art of Giving Hints

Eyeball Benders are a visual puzzle consisting of close-up photographs of semi-common household objects. They are exceptionally easy to create, yet oddly difficult to create well. Given a close enough close-up, the photo-reality really does remarkably little to help you identify the object in question. It is all too easy to make an Eyeball Bender that is all but impossible to solve. The Eyeball Bender shown here is one of the easier ones that I found on a site called "The 5-minute BOF Eyeball Bender Page."

I first came to know about Eyeball Benders when I was a contributing editor for Games Magazine, o so many years ago. The only trace I could find of this on the web is the 1994 edition of Games Magazine Presents Eyeball Benders. The apparent scarcity of Games Magazine's Eyeball Benders may in fact explain why there is a comparitive plethora of the same to be found on the web. I even found a quiz called "Animal, Vegetable, Mineral" that's based on the eyeball-bender concept.

One of my favorites, and most instructively exasperating, is theImage.com CloseUp Gallery. Favorites, because the interface allows two levels of clues (extreme close-up, and somewhat less extreme). Most instructively exasperating because even with the clues, many of the objects are close to impossible to identify.

The art of giving hints is a fine one. It takes us many years to understand all the nuances. I devoted many pages of my Well-Played Game to exploring that very nuance. The art of creating a "good" puzzle is very much dependent on the understanding of creating good hints. As you attempt to solve these eyeball benders, you will learn a great deal about the art of puzzle making. In some cases, perhaps a bit more than you want.

Speaking of hints, did you guess the Eyeball Bender in this article? Did you think for a moment that it was a picture of a bunch of vitamins? Or did you know right away it was a collection of game pieces? Did you know what game? Did you think maybe Monopoly? Or did you know right away that it was one of those games whose name has four letters? A synonym for "taking a chance."