Vanishing Girls Optical Illusion

Here’s one that has me puzzled for days! Even though we successfully cracked both the Mad Professor and Irish Leprechauns puzzle, I can’t seem to understand how this one works. As a reminder, these sort of vintage puzzles were quite popular back in the old days. They originally came sliced in multiple pieces, and could be put together in different ways, where each setup worked. Depending on how you connected the pieces, different amount of people/objects is seen. In the example below, you can end up with 15 or 14 pin-up girls. But I still don’t understand from where did that extra lady come from? Looking at both pictures simultaneously, I can see each of them present in each setup. Please help me figure this one out! Visual examples are more than welcome – I encourage you to attach them along with your comments… Thanks!

Have you ever tried to count moving objects and ended up with a different number each time? Did you sit there and try to recount them, always ending up with different numbers? How quickly did you assume that you were not quite awake or that you had to be missing something? How long did it take you before you wanted to start marking each one to make sure you did not miss one somewhere? Often times we quickly assume that we are not awake yet or that we must be missing the “elephant in the room” when the answer is right under our noses.

There’s a saying, “Seeing is believing.” It is easy to quickly believe something you can see in front of you. However, when you are faced with a tricky picture, your perception may not be as clear as you think. Our perspective can often be clouded by our need for a logical answer or from daily activities, stress, not enough sleep, or other events causing chaos. Even when we think out perception is as clear as looking through a window in our home, there is always something that changes our focus and ends up making our vision like that of a side mirror on a car. We’re all seen the warning on car mirrors, “Objects in mirrors are closer than they appear.” Some tasks in daily life and images such as this should read, “Optical illusions are trickier than they appear.”

Look at the pictures again. Focus on the picture. Now recount each of the vanishing girls. How many vanishing girls did you see? Do you still end up with 14 and 15 girls? Where has the vanishing girl gone? Has she simply vanished without a trace? Do you believe that it is possible? Does she dance right off the page or is she simply hiding behind another girl?

The magic in this illusion is that the change is so minimal it’s hard to notice. When the change is right in front of your face, it can often be the hardest to see. Unless you are aware that there is a change and a logically reason behind the missing lady, it is hard to feel like you are not the brightest. Our brains naturally fill in blanks, often confusing us even more when we are trying to find the difference in pictures or when it comes to counting. Unless we are able to pick apart an image, it is hard to see exactly what happens.

Were you able it figure it out?  Did you find out where the 15th girl, the vanishing girl goes?  Were you able to notice a change? Do the vanishing girls still have you confused?

Want to exercise your brain with more? What about the human brain made of people, mind blowing puzzles, and other brain exercises? Completing puzzles like this will allow your brain to learn how to see the difference and not to only see what it is supposed to see. By doing more puzzles, you can train your brain to be aware of changes and notice when things are not the way the are supposed to be.

Our brains are trained see what is supposed to be there and not what is really there. Without practice and extreme concentration, the images would appear the same and we would not ever notice that there different numbers of vanishing girls in each pictures. Until you pick apart and look at each specific aspect of the picture, you are unable to find where the logical explanation comes into play and how it can be the same image. However, the more you practice these logical brain teasers, the sooner you will be able to spot how these types of changes are made.

266 Replies to “Vanishing Girls Optical Illusion”

  1. A little slice of height difference (less) is introduced on each girl in the bottom picture.

    The central ‘ballet’ girl has her hair tie broken into two peices in the top picture and placed in the far left and right edges of the picture.

    This means that becuase every girl is shunted down a bit in the bottom picture, the girl on the towel can be used without requiring any corresponding image on the bottom half of the picture.

  2. On the top image, look at the far left and far right – there’s half of a bow that’s floating in the air. In the bottom image, it’s on one of the girls’ heads.

  3. The extra head comes from two corner smudges at the bottom of the top half strip in *VanishingGirl1″ (14 girls). The extra legs come from the one girl in the 15 girl strip who does not appear at all in the lower half strip.

  4. It’s easy…

    The pieces can’t go just anywhere.

    The top right panel is in the wrong position in the top picture.

    Each panel has 3 girls each so there is a bow which is supposed to be on one of the heads, but is just floating

    It was supposed to be the second from the left.

    3×5=15

  5. think what every girl has in common??? except 1. she becomes the extra girl in the picture by having no bottom to match with. the 13th girl from left to right in second picture.

  6. it’s the girl on the top right of the bottom image. she’s only on the top panel, so when it changes, she isn’t on the other one at all…

  7. it’s the bit’s of bow. the bit’s of bow aren’t used on top, but on bottom the are, which means that the full bow can complete someone else. you are finishing a girl whit something that wasn’t being used before. you have a whole new girl finished and that makes it so that the girl who is entirely on the top is counted all on her own. it’s kinda hard to explain, but that’s what it is.

  8. that is trippy!
    the secret lies within the bow of the 6th girl from the left (in the blue). In the first picture, her bow is split up in the corners of the picture (belonging to no one). Then in the second picture, it is put on her head. This allows for one girl in the top row to be free from a bottom half (ie the sitting girl who seems to have appeared from nowhere in the 2nd picture).
    I believe that is the solution.

  9. It’s all about the full body lady at the top.
    She is in the long top piece and is the third one from right to left.

  10. If you look at the bottom picture, you’ll see that the woman on the towel has no part in the bottom half of the picture, she is entirely contained in the top half. In the above picture, she has the added bit of fabric.

    In the top picture, on the far right, you’ll see a feather that is the top half of a woman. It’s small so it’s easily skipped. If you look at the bottom picture, little feather is the top part of the sixth girl.

    In essence, there is one more girl part in the top half of the pictures than the bottom, when the feather is without it’s match, you ignore it, and the girl on the towel looks perfectly fine alone.

  11. the one in the first picture at the top in the middle blond hair is taking up a skirt in the first one but in the second one she is not, which adds another spot to put another girl in

    hope that helps i get it but its hard to explain

  12. I think it may work based on the fact you have too many parts on top than the bottom.

    she is missing a bottom in the second picture. thus 15 on top 14 on the bottom.

    if you look at the first picture this is the same. correct me if i’m wrong, but don’t the blue little edges on each side form someone’s head in the second picture? this would than make 14+1/2+1/2 = 15 on top and 14 on the bottom.

    either way it seems you have too many on top.

  13. I guess the illusion is because when you arrange the cards one way, you get 15 girls. But if you change the cards you get 14 girls.

  14. In the first picture, there is a 15th “girl”, but she is not aligned, and is actually composed by those two black floating dots. This is important, because the 15th girl is not just “created” on the second image, she is present on the first, but is not recognized. In the second image, those black dots will become the hair of the sixth girl, freeing the 7th to become the 13th girl, since she is the only ONLY ONE that has her entire body (head+body) on a single panel (top). So, effectually, she is the 15th girl, because she is independent on any other part of the bottom panel.

    I believe the images will help.[img]http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/4892/vanishinggirls11.jpg[/img]
    [img]http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/8895/vanishinggirls2.jpg[/img]

  15. Clever. You’d think that when they are switched, that the top and bottom are ‘assigned’ to each other equally because they have an equal number of objects per picture, but that’s not so. If you track all the women you find that they have been shifted and one’s place is replaced by this tiny bit of a bow (top short row, lower-right corner has a tiny blue smudge). In other words the top row has just one more object than the bottom (the bow), but because it is so unnoticeable, when it replaces one lady’s place on the bottom it displaces her as her own individual object (just as it was previously its own object). I know I hashed the explanation but I hope you can understand.

    1. To try and clarify my answer, basically you have just one more object in the top row than the bottom. It is merely a hidden bow split into two parts across the two pieces. The bow is not attached to anything in the lower row, and therefore it is sort of “independent” of the bottom. However, when it replaces the place of a girl, it becomes dependent and attached to an object on the bottom row. This changes the replaced girl to become an “independent” object in that it is no longer attached to an object on the bottom. By doing this, instead of merging two girls to make one you effectively get two girls because the hidden blue bow takes the place of one of the girls. Hopefully that makes sense. I would add my “solution” picture that shows the answer but I don’t know how to (sorry!).

  16. I can see it clearly, but it’s a little difficult to explain…

    In the top picture, every “body” has a “head feature” (x14) and a “leg feature” (x14): Total number of girls = 14. In the bottom picture, there is an extra “head feature” that is created when the two panels are put together in that order (basically a bow on the 6th girl), and the “extra” girl does not have an associated “leg feature”. This means that in the bottom pictures, we have 15x head features, and 14x leg features, with one girl not having an associated leg feature…

    A more mathematical way to look at these is that every girl on the bottom is “shorter” than the girl on the top. The total area covered by all the girls must remain the same (nothing is getting erased by rearranging the picture), so the extra “bit” that is lost from every girl adds up.

    It reminds me of the optical illusion where a triangle is cut up in a number of pieces, and when the pieces are rearranged to form another triangle, the area covered by the new triangle seems to have changed. The trick there is that the “triangle” shape isn’t really a true trangle: The long side of the triangle is bowed up or down depending on how the pieces are arranged, and the difference in the area caused by the bowing is what gives the illusion of different areas.

    I think the Mad Professor and the Irish Leprechauns illusions can also be explain in exactly the same way…

    hopefully, it makes sense for you…

  17. If you look at them as diagonal lines and look at the last line , there are 2 girls in picture 1 and 3 girls in picture 2 . The girl laying down is what changes the amount. To me, it looks like se dosn’t look right in #2 because she doesn’t belong in that place because rhere is no bottem peice to herwich creates the extra girl.

  18. Well, your site just refreshed and erased my entire comment. I’m not rewriting my whole explanation. Here’s how I found the missing/extra head: firt of all, don’t count bodies, count bodices. If you count pairs of breasts, you’ll find one figure has hers right on the dividing line, and gets counted twice if you try to match bosom for bosom between the two pictures. There is also a three-way swap if you try to do that counting pairs of eyes, and one of the figures involved in this–one of the one with eyes on the dividing line shares a ribbon in her hair with the 6th woman from the left. The thing about her is that the only thing that moves on her is the ribbon–and in one of the pictures, it’s just a couple of green spots at opposite sides of the puzzle. That’s the vanishing top of the head, which when shifted with the vanishing pair of eyes and the vanishing boobs ends up adding up to an extra head, eyes, and top of the body.

  19. It’s the tiny black “head” pieces that are in the corners that are reused to form the ballarina’s head in the bottom version. They become black corner pieces rather than another head in the top version.

  20. This is a very cool illusion. If you count along the bottom you’ll see there are 14 bottom-halves. Now count along the top (note the bow that gets split and hidden on the margins) and see that there are 15 top halves.

    This illusion works by chaining the girls together to “hide” the 15th girl by slicing up a tiny bit of her into each of the other 14.

    Start with the girl who is sitting on her knees – in the 14-up she doesn’t have a bottom half. Now swap configurations and follower her to see the new girl she makes – then follow the bottom half to see it’s mate, and so on to follow the full chain. You can see that the seam in the image crosses each girl a little lower down, until the very last girl is the one with the blue bow (which gets thrown away in the 14-up arrangement). Also notice that in the 14-up arrangement, the girls are stretched ever so slightly near the seam in the middle, while in the 15-up, they are squashed a little bit. That extra stretch is the “extra girl”.

    Here is an image illustrating – it’s each of the “30” girls that gets created when you shift back and forth, lined up along the seam in the middle.
    [img]http://afternoon-coffee.com/thirty-girls.jpg[/img]

  21. I think it has to do with the cutting out of the girl in the blue ballet outfit in the center. Notice how part of her bow is floating with nothing attached to it in the top panel. She is located on the outside, or the center…I believe that is where the trick lies…or maybe I’m completely wrong.

  22. [img]http://dorogon.com/miscellaneous/puzzle.jpg[/img]

    Notice the women in the green circle can be displayed by herself or with a continued dress.

    Notice the hat in the blue circle splits up into to, making it vanish.

    There are always 14 body bottoms on the bottom strip. Hat 15 splits up to two.

  23. i figured it out, the top is two peices, one with 2 girls one with only onethe peice with two girls on the top is on the left, the one on the bottem id on the right, the big peice doesnt have a bottem half for the far right girl in the peice with 2 top halves it appears to be one more girl but there are the same amount of top and bottem halves both times just rearanged so that a top and bottem half now make their own entity

  24. The top one..the girl one the far left has an extra set of legs and the top of the bellerena’s head is on the on the outer edges unattached.

  25. The “extra” girl in the second picture is the third from the right, and that is the only girl in the whole picture that does not comprise of two pieces, one in the top part and one in the lower part. To make the illusion complete, on the 14 girl picture there is a small dark blob on both the bottom left corner and the bottom right corner, and these together comprise parts of the hair on the sixth girl from the left.

  26. The girl sitting on her knees. In the second set-up she creates an extra next to the blond on the right. In the first set-up there was no girl in that position, hence the difference.

    Awesome illusion. The vintage ones always have such character.

  27. It’s pretty clear. In the picture with 14 women, each woman is slightly taller. Look for example at the 2nd woman from the left – in the top picture she has a proper neck. In the second picture her head is sitting on her shoulders. The drawings are carefully placed so that each of the 14 women in the upper picture have a 1/14th extra sliver of body. Or the lower ones each have 1/15th less. You don’t get an extra woman in the bottom picture, you get an extra 15 15th’s.

  28. If you look at the seam in the top photo, you have two sides of a head on the edges.

    All of the girls in the top photo consist of a head and legs. In the bottom image, the girl above the ball on the right lost her legs with the switch.

    The extra head turns into a girl with no legs.

  29. It’s the girl 6th from the left in the picture with 15. Since the only thing on her head is a bow, there is nothing there that is needed, and when the top pieces are swapped to make the 14 girls half the bow is on the far left and half is on the far right so that it is not very noticeable.

  30. In the top image, 2 halves of an extra head top are seen at each end (they look like green marks to me). That becomes the top of the head for 6th from the left in the bottom image. In the top image, the girl 7th from the left is sitting on a towel. The towel no longer has a bottom in the bottom image. Therefore, an extra top & an extra bottom in the top image becomes an extra girl in the bottom image.

  31. it seems from the first to the second, the tops have been rearranged while the bottoms stayed the same, there’s only one of them that’s entirely on the top, and that’s the one that’s suddenly in the row on the far left that had two people in the first that now has three, also, in the second picture, one of them has what appears to be a blade of grass in her hair instead of a bow like she did in the first, and i can’t seem to find that blade of grass anywhere in the first picture.

  32. Hi,
    Maybe i’m totally stupid, but try comparing each of the girls in each picture and the placement of the dots. Top right there are 2 girls bottom right there are 3. When you look at the pictures quickly to find them they disappear, until you concentrate only on the particular person. their clothes also have been changed and posture. Quite cool though. You’ll never spot it if you didn’t know that it was an illusion.

  33. It’s the 6th girl from the left. Her hairpiece (ribbon or something) is barely in both top pieces, just in the corners… so when the pieces are switched, she’s unaffected.

    Looking at the bottom arrangement first, you can see that the first piece places the top part of 6 girls, noticing the last one is right at the corner.

  34. SPOILERS:

    Think of all the portions on the top half as heads and all the portions on the bottom half as legs. As you can see in the two pictures, the number of legs is always 14.

    On the top picture, there are 15 heads counting the disembodied head in the corners (the bowtie.)

    On the bottom picture, there are also 15 heads counting the disembodied head third from the right (the girl in the bikini with no bottom half.)

    So what happens between the two pictures? The first disembodied head (the bowtie) is paired with a set of legs, and, though the subsequent swapping of heads and bodies that results, we are left with the disembodied head in the second pic (the extra girl.)

  35. The girl that “disappears” doesn’t have any pieces on the bottom row in picture #2. So, when she’s lined up as in #1, she’s a composite of a top and bottom piece. In #2, she’s just the top piece (note the little free-standing hair bit over on the far right).

    Think of it as number of half-girls. There are 15 half-girls on the top half, and 14 on the bottom half; when the girl is “vanished”, there is a top piece without a corresponding bottom piece (the hair). When she is “visible”, there is also a top piece without a bottom piece (the girl herself).

  36. just a little something … the sixth girl’s headgear changes. there are little dots that don’t seem like anything right at the very end of the second panel and at the very start of the first.

  37. In the 1st picture, the lady beside the third ball is complete in itself. In the 2nd picture, she is placed in a blank space. Hence, she’s the additional one in the 2nd picture.

  38. That is, in the 2nd picture, she can be moved to the blank space without the other girls losing their upper part. Hence, she’s the additional one in the 2nd picture. Notice her skirt in the 2nd picture. It’s cut. She needs no lower body.

  39. The top half of the puzzle has 15 picture fragments. The bottom half of the puzzle has 14 picture fragments.

    1) Circle each fragment in the top half, and give it a number (i.e., top1, top2, etc).

    2) Circle each fragment in the top half, and give it a number (i.e., bottom1, bottom2. etc).

    3) Make a two column table that matches each top half with each bottom half for the first picture (i.e., top1/bottom1, top2/bottom2, etc)

    4) Repeat step 3 for the second picture (i.e., top1/bottom7, top2/bottom8, etc).

    In the first picture (14 women), the 15th picture fragment in the top has no bottom. In the second picture (15 women) the woman who has the 7th top half in the first picture now has no bottom.

  40. It’s the floating woman in the middle of the top picture. When she’s moved to the right, there’s no frilly skirt for her, so she becomes an extra.

  41. Count the legs! In the bottom graphic the 7th girl from the left is not complete. An extra top of a head is in the margins of the top picture….

  42. the extra girl is made up of the two dots at the ends of the top picture; the dots form the top of the bow of the sixth girl from the right in the bottom picture.

  43. its all in the corners. In the first pic on the horizontal seem on either side is a little black mark. in the second picture those little black marks become an extra “top” while one of the girls doesn’t use the bottom at all. Still boggles me even after I think I got it.

  44. Hi mate,
    It’s all in the bow:
    In the second picture (15 pin-ups)you have to pay attention in the second sequence of 3 girls.
    The third girl with the “tutu” has got a bow in the hair.
    Now have a look at the first picture, that same sequence is at the end and the bow is half there and half in the beginning or the picture. That’s what make all the difference. I think…
    Cheers
    Stef

  45. 13 incomplete girls that will move.
    + 1 complete (the girl beside the 3rd ball in the 1st pic) that will move into a blank space
    ——————–
    =14 girls
    +1 who will NOT SEEM to change. (the 5th girl with blue dress) (there are two dots on each moving rectangle piece that will be her hair: one the down-left corner of the left piece and the other on the down right corner of the right moving piece)
    ——————–
    =15 girls

  46. If you number the girls in the top image 1-14, then look for the same girl (different outfit naturally) in the bottom… you’ll see that 12 appears twice. Once where you’d expect her (after 10 and 11, now at the far left), and again in her old spot… where you would expect to have found 6 shifted (she just picks up 6’s bow). Six picks up a new bow from the edge of the card and also remains in her old place… which is now after 13 and 14, providing the fifth group of three.

  47. Pretty cool. On the top image there are 2 little color blobs just above the center line at the outside edges. These become the top of a head on the bottom image. This allows the reclining woman over the ball to not have to match up with a figure on the bottom strip.

    1. in editing my comment you made a mistake and put the wrong first picture. here’s the correct one:
      [img]http://britton.disted.camosun.bc.ca/leprechaun4.gif[/img]

  48. i think is has something to do with the bow on the ballerina’s head combining to make 5 sets of 3 girls because in the first set up the bow is just a tiny speck in two separate cnrs, there is no need for the extra girl to “show up”
    i don’t know if i’m explaining it properly but i hope you know what i mean

  49. The way to figure it out is to count the “tops” in both pictures. You will then quite easily see that the 15th “top” in the upper picture is the small blue smudge at the far right hand end – unconnected to any “bottom”. There are only 14 “bottoms” in both pictures, and the lady on the beach towel is not connected to a “bottom” in the lower image.

  50. It took me a while but the bottom picture has an extra girl with a blue ribbon on her head. You can see her in the bottom picture as the sixth girl from the left. In the top picture that group of girls is only a group of two (the top halves). You can just see the blue ribbon (on the top picture) at the very edge in the middle at the right-hand end and on the left-hand end.

  51. Ph I’ve never understood this kind of puzzle :(

    I’ve read the explanation on other versions of it, the extra person is made up of small bits of all the other people, but I still can’t get my head around how it works! How do all those extra bits from all the other people end up in the same place to make a new person?! Argh!

  52. Its simple… at both the ends of the first half there are small markings of blue color … when these two are joined they form the extra girl’s head.. ( the 3 rd girl from right in the 2nd picture).. check it out…:)

  53. [img]http://i.imgur.com/Jw3jY.png[/img]
    The top half of the image goes from having 14 “parts” in the first image to having fifteen “parts” in the second image. The black arrows point to two shapeless blobs in the top image that make up hair in the bottom image. It is in this way that the top half of the image goes from having fourteen “parts” of girls to having fifteen, as in the top image they are just blobs, and so are not seen as “parts” but in the bottom image they are hair.

    The bottom half of each image, however does not change, so where does the 15th pair of legs come from? Well the red arrows point to a woman who is part of both the top and bottom halves in the first image but only part of the top half in the second image, thereby removing the need for the bottom to change at all.

  54. You sir, have just stolen over an hour of my life!

    And now I must, in defeat, move on to other things…

    Good day!

  55. Regarding the Vanishing Girls Optical Illusion…

    I think I have it figured out. In the Bottom half of BOTH puzzles there are 13 (“Halves” of) girls. In the top half of the puzzle there are 3 girls in 1 pic and 4 in the other.

    The extra girl is the girl in the bikini. (fig. 1) If you notice she is the only girl who is entirely in the top half of the puzzle and her head never attaches to another body.

    Here is the catch. In fig. 1, the blanket where she sits drops below the line of the puzzle. In fig. 2, the bottom of the blanket becomes the bottom of the dress if the brunette lady. BUT in fig. 3 the girl in the bikini is still there just moved to the right. She is whole except for the small piece of her blanket.

    [img]http://oi45.tinypic.com/2jahtt1.jpg[/img]

  56. The secret is the two black dots on the ends of the first image. They look innocent but when the pieces are switched they form the extra head :)

    [img]http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/180/f/6/moillusions1_by_magic_of_josh-d55a4tj.jpg[/img]
    [img]http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/180/5/f/moillusions2_by_magic_of_josh-d55a4wv.jpg[/img]

  57. One girl is made out of slices of the other girls and some additional pieces left around the top image (like the extra leg/shoe on the first girl and the dark spots in the left and right borders). The girls in the top image are on average a little bit taller (1/14th) than the girls in the bottom image. It’s probably easier to see what’s going on if you replace the girls with rectangles or something.

  58. On the bottom picture, do you see the girl who is on the top row farthest to the right? Well in the first picture she was added to a pre-set base, but in this one she creates a brand new person. It doesn’t explain the answer for me too well but maybe it will bring us one step closer to solving this.

  59. The key is the smaller top piece codes 6 ladies in one position, and 5 in the other. The bottom lady that “connects” is positioned across the gap of the two top pieces, but there is no corresponding lady in the other position – she would be wrapped around, half on the right side, continuing over to the left side of the bottom piece.

  60. SPOLIER WARNING! – Don’t read on if you don’t want a clue.

    *****************

    In the lower picture, there are five groups of three women. The third lady in the second group from the left (lower picture) has a bow which only just makes it into the top half.

    In the upper picture, this bow is split across the ends, so losing one “head”.

    So that’s how it gets from 15 “heads” to 14. You now need to find whay happened to the 15th “body”. You can do this by following the path of displaced heads from the one being discussed (the split bow is replaced by another bow, which is replaced by a forehead, which is replaced by… etc).

    After several steps you end up with the figure on the extreme left. In the upper image she has too many legs, or possibly has had a horrible accident involving a chainsaw. In either case, this is how the 15th “body” is hidden in the top image.

    The cleverness can be seen if you follow the replacement path from the missing bow. At each step the portion appearing above the split line gets larger. It starts with a bow, then a forehead, then half a face, a face, some shoulders, the upper half of a lady’s torso (ahem), and so on, until it finally gets down to the knee. Presumably (I haven’t checked) the figures in the top picture are all a fraction taller than in the bottom picture. All these missing body slices add up to a whole extra body, like in some sort of serial killer movie.

  61. This is very clever. If you count up, there are only 14 “bottoms”, but there are 15 “tops”. The extra girl appears depending which top is not matched with a bottom.

    In Image 1 the unmatched top is the hair bow at the extreme right of the picture. In image 2 the unmatched top is the girl third from the right above the brown dot.

  62. ok, here’s is what I noticed, if you count all of the lower pieces on the bottom 1/2 of the puzzle that does not move or change, there are 14 pieces. However, on the top section, there are 2 moveable pieces of the puzzle, there are 16 pieces of an image. In the top view of this puzzle they are very easy to miss as they are small black specs on the outer edges of the page, but on the lower image you can see they become a part of the girls bow in her hair. Also, the in the upper image the 7th girl from the left, becomes the the 3rd from the right when the pieces are rearranged. this girl does not have a lower section after re-arrangment of the pieces. So essentially what you have is one one extra piece on the top and on top image/lady losing her lower half, which makes room for for another girl to pick it up, thus recombining to make 15. Long explanation, I know, I hope it made sense

  63. Look at the seams. In the first one, if you check the horizontal line in the middle, on the left end and the right end. You see the 2 blotches. That combines into a bow in the second picture.

    This is also leveraging some of the ladies that seems to “stand on its own”… There aren’t a lot of dependence on the seams. In the second picture, the 3rd from the right is rather suspect.

  64. The trick is in the head of the sixth woman from left. In the first image, the top of the head is split in the two corners, so you must count as one : 14 + 1 = 15, same number in both image.

  65. The secret is that slices of each girl are joined together to make the extra girl. This is a modern variation on an old illusion by Sam Loyd.
    If you search the web for “Loyd’s Chinamen” you will find the original “Get off the earth” puzzle,which has kept me entertained for the last 40 years.
    Keep up the good work. I do enjoy your regular postings.

  66. If you look at the first picture; the top right strip, even though it has 5 heads which match 5 torsos, when moved to the left they make up for 5 heads + 1 bow of 6 girls. Hence the extra girl.

  67. the black marks on the extreme left and right of the top half of the first row, are the top of the 6th girl in the second row. And the 13th girl in the second row is completely in the top half, whereas in the first row she appears at number 7 with part in the bottom half.
    i.e. there are only 14 girls (or parts thereof) in the bottom half – the missing girl is from the shifting and the small black marks at the edges

  68. I think I got it. If you look at the first picture, at the edges of that one, you see two small black dots. Those two will come together and form a bow in the second picture, thereby creating a 15th “head”. The sitting girl will then be left without a “leg part” and thereby it will be one person extra.

    So, basically: both pictures contain 14 leg parts and 15 head parts, but the odd head in the first picture are the two dots that form a bow, so you wouldnt count it. In the second picture the odd head part is the sitting girl, so it becomes an extra person although in fact it is still 14 legs and 15 heads.

  69. it took me a while too… do you notice the dark spots on the left and right corner in the top picture? they make the girl’s hair on the bottom picture. Do you have similar ones?

    [img]http://content.screencast.com/users/KerstinKlein/folders/Jing/media/75392344-a0e9-4352-80fb-0e25c8b2b18d/00000670.png[/img]

  70. Very clever!

    Look at the heights of each person, when you do the switch, each person gets a tiny amount smaller. Finally the total of all the extra bits gets cleverly accumulated in one place. Wow.

  71. The black dot in the very right of the upper puzzle becomes hair of a woman in the lower one. The 3rd girl from the right in the lower puzzle has no match in the puzzle piece below her. You have 15 upper and only 14 lower bodies altogether. Does this make sense ? My english sucks today, I guess.

  72. A very tricky one.
    It’s to do with the head of the 6th girl from the left (in a dark tutu).
    On the top picture it is visible as a dot at the extreme right so doesn’t count as a head.
    In fact the long strip has 9 heads and the short 6 so there are 15 heads in both pictures.

  73. To me is due to the Black Tied Ribbon.
    In the first image you could see them in the two corners of the upper image and they are not connected to any girl. So it’s a girl, but with most of the body missing. so you don’t count it as 15th.

    In the second Image the girl above the sphere is not having the half part in the bottom. So even if a part of the girl is missing, you count it cause is a small part missing.

    So they are actually 15 in both, but in the firs one you have only the tied ribbon and splitted in 2 part, so you don’t count it.

    In the second one you have just a part of the pink blanket missing, so you count the girl as a whole even if a part is missing.

    Is it a good explanation?

  74. My theory is that the extra lady is created out of (disappears into) 9 of the other women. Each other women contributes a 3rd of either legs, torso or head.
    Easiest to see the disappearing effect with the legs/dress on women 1, 7, 9, 12 in vg2, with 2/3, 1/3, 3/3, 0/3 parts showing.
    Look at woman 8 and that her breasts seam to occur on both the top and bottom piece in vg1.

  75. It’s quite easy; the extra girl is the full woman that appears in the middle in the first secuence; in the second one she has nothing down to fit, but a ball. And where is the missing one in this first secuence? It’s the green lace head that is fitting with no head and is conveniently located have at the beginnig and half at the end of the strip. In the second secuence the lace fit with the green suited girl’s head.

    No image needed, in my opinion.

  76. If you look at the top picture, then there is a little ‘smudge’ on the far left and right, which becomes a lady’s hat in the middle.

    In the bottom picture the top right lady no longer has a rug in the bottom half of the picture…

    If you count ladies in the top half, or the bottom half, it becomes evident

  77. Ha. That explained it before posting took all the leading spaces out. Ah well. Try again

    x……………..x….
    x.x……………x.x..
    x.x.x……>>…..x.x.x
    ..x.x.x………..x.x.x
    ….x.x………….x.x
    ……x……………x

    4 girls become 3 taller girls

  78. I think the extra ‘head parts’ may have something to do with it.

    Look at the very left and right ends of the cards in the top picture … there are black marks that make the top part of a head when re-arranged into the layout in the bottom picture. The head that was originally in that position has to go somewhere else and this has a knock on effect onto the next woman, as the top half of each woman progressively moves upward into the top cards, until eventually you gain an extra woman.

  79. The heads are not identical to the bodies, picture split horizontally and new girl appears in top, look at bottom picture – 2nd girl from left wearing green top and full pink skirt – on top picture she is wearing the blue top and green skirt 4th from right) -but cant explain it further!!!!

  80. It’s actually pretty easy. Bottom part (“legs”, 14 elements) is static so the only difference is in the top part (“heads”, 14 elements + “universal” or “extra” girl, third from the right on the lower picture, that doesn’t have to be combined with the bottom part). Upper picture has one “head” unused (http://i46.tinypic.com/154ynok.png marked in sexy pink), that’s why there’s one less.

  81. Took me a minute but here is how I figure it works.

    In the top pictures all girls utilize both the top and the bottom panels to be created.

    In the bottom picture the girl where all pieces come together use two small images as a bow (they are to the far right and left on the top image)

    Then the third girl from the right does not utilize the bottom.

    So essentially a girl from the bottom and a girl from the top no longer use the other section to be complete, so it adds a girl.

  82. One of the people tying her lace on the top part is hidden as her bow is on either end (the black dots) and that is why she cant be seen? or something

  83. The trick is that each picture has a part that is not matched. There are 15 pieces in the top of the puzzle, but only 14 in the bottom half.

    The top version has a headband that is split in two and not matched to a girl below (black thingies left and right end).
    The bottom version has a girl with a truncated skirt, not matched to a piece below.

    One item at the top is always unmatched. But because the top two parts are unevenly split, the odd item can be either an (almost) entire girl or an (almost invisible) headband.

  84. The top middle girl loses the bottom of her skirt and the girl in the green dress to the left of her in the first picture gains the little bit on the very right of the picture to her head

  85. The top piece of the 1st arrangement consists of one entire pin up. She is the extra pin up that is seen in the 2nd arrangement.

  86. In the top panels, there are parts for 15 girls. In the bottom panel, there only spots for 14.

    In the 15 girl configuration, the red haired girl in the bikini lacks a matching panel on the bottom, but her entire body exists in the top panel.

    In the 14 girl configuration, red haired bikini girl gets an extension on the bottom of the towel and one “head” (actually just the hair bow) gets split between the panels and goes away.

  87. I believe the solution lies in the sixth woman from the left, with the blue-plaid(?) dress. In the top panel, her hair+bow are completed by what becomes the hair+bow for the sitting girl, fourth from the right on the bottom panel. The blue-plaid girls head is then completed in the bottom panel not by another girl’s head from the top panel, but by an unused (but only slightly seen) bow in the bottom right corner of the second panel on the top. You’ll notice it as just a blue fleck next to the black-haired woman’s head. Thus, by that being the completion of the bottom panel’s woman’s head, it adds a “complete woman” number while “freeing” another part (the top panel woman’s head) to complete an additional woman. The illusion seems to work off the near completion of the woman in the top panel and an otherwise overlooked component that would complete her in the second panel. Rather clever.

    Anybody else get that?

  88. These have to be sliced horizontally. Many of the girls in the second pic have different tops, heads, or combinations of dress. They must also be vertical slices since the girl at the end top on bottom pic is center top on top pic. Maybe done in squares that can be rearranged infinitely?

  89. Good one, took me a couple of minutes.

    So, the image is obviously composed of 3 cards, with the bottom card remaining static and the top two switching places.

    In image A the first girl on the left is composed of an upper and lower torso. In picture B, the same girl (upper torso) has no lower torso. So, there’s an additional bottom torso.

    In image A there’s actually an additional ‘head’ (upper torso) hiding on the far left and far right of the top cards. In image B these combine to create a bow/head (upper torso). So, there’s an additional upper torso, as well.

    Put it all together just right, and viola, a whole extra girl.

  90. In the top picture, there is a bow that wraps from the right to the left that is not seen in the bottom picture.

    In the bottom picture, the girl 2nd from the right (top row) has her dress cut off from the bottom, whereas in the top picture, it connects. Thes discrepancies all for a new person to appear.

  91. 15 girls’ parts can be counted on the two top halves combined.
    14 can be counted on the second part.
    Here’s what’s happening. In the second image, in the middle where the two top halves meet, there’s a hair-bow being “associated” with a girl from the bottom. There’s also a girl on the top right who is NOT associated with any girl part from the lower half. (she’s #15)
    On the first image, the hair-bow is split into opposite corners (Far right and far left), and the girl who was not associated with anything from the bottom half in image two IS associated with a bottom half in the first image.

  92. There are 15 tops and 14 bottoms. In the upper picture the 15th top is made up of the dot on the right plus the dot on the left (which together form a top on the lower picture right at the seam), so net it appears like 14 people.
    In the lower picture there are 15 tops and 14 bottoms again, but this time the highest woman has no bottom, so net it appears like 15 people.

  93. The picture works like the other ones you allready cracked. In the first setup there’s a bit extra in every girl, in the second one there’s a bit missing from every girl. That’s where the extra girl comes from, every single other girl. Or rather, she is hidden inside the other girls in the first setup. As you see in the second setup, the extra (3:rd from the right) girl has the lowest part of her missing (the only piece she couldn’t take). The highest piece she could take, because there’s an extra ribbon in the higher picture.
    Sorry for not being able to explain it better than this. Maybe someone else can do it better.

  94. On the bottom picture, if you look at the third girl from the right, you’ll notice that she doesn’t extend onto the lower panel(she does in the upper picture) and the sixth girl from the left is wearing a bow that, in the upper picture, isn’t part of any girl. That’s how the trick works.

  95. Okay, so if you look at the bottom picture, there is a woman formed right below where the two lines meet. See her hair? Now look at the top picture–over to the waaayyy right. There’s a little black thing thats’s almost cut off. There’s another one of those on the waaayyy left. That is how they made the woman’s hairdo in the bottom picture. And, the 15th woman, the kneeling one on the upper right, is connected to another part of the skirt in the top picture. Everything else just lines up!

  96. There are 15 upper figures and 14 lower figures (not counting the balls). The trick is one of the upper figures is just a hat split across the two upper panels. When the upper panels are as in the top arrangement the hat is used above a girl in the lower panel. When the upper panels are in the bottom arrangement the hat is not above a figure, just sits at the outer left and right edges of the panels.

  97. On the rightmost side of the top banner is the bow that was in the 6th girl of the bottom banners hair. It does not connect to a body in the top banner.

  98. there isn’t an extra lady she’s just in a different spot. The top panels were switched, And the lady on the right hand side is drawn so that her whole body is on one panel.

  99. Whoops, I wrote backwards. There are 15 upper figures and 14 lower figures (not counting the balls). The trick is one of the upper figures is just a hat split across the two upper panels. When the upper panels are in the top arrangement the hat is not above a figure, just sits at the outer left and right edges of the upper panels. When the upper panels are as in the bottom arrangement the hat is used above a girl in the lower panel (6th from the left).

  100. I didn’t took much time in analysing the how/why but il seems to me as the third girl from the right is not connected to any ‘bottom’ on the lower configuration. So she’s the one ‘appearing’.

    The effect being completed by the ‘bow’ of the sixth girl from the left, wich is made up of the 2 blue spots off the opposing corner of the two cards, that are now join toghether.

    Makes sens?

  101. In the bottom picture, the girl at the bottom in the second from the left group, is created from the blue dots on the left and right side of the top image.

  102. If you count each girl as a ‘half part’ of a total, there are the same amounts of halfs.
    However the number of halves is uneven. Meaning there will always be a ‘half lady’ somewhere, well not really half because the ladies are not always divided through the middle. Sometimes through the head/hair/legs.
    There are more halves in the top then in the bottom, so thats where the extra half lady will be.

    In the top image, the extra halve lady is (almost) a full lady, it doesn’t need the bottom part, and is counted as one.
    In the bottom image, the extra halve lady is just a piece of hair (bottom right) and is ignored.

    It got there because every half girl in the top row is replaced by a slightly larger halve girl. (that is easier explained by a drawing, but I cant draw here :p)
    but check for yourself where every half girl moves, and you will see it is constantly a slightly larger halve then what was there before, until you are left with a tiny bit of hair.
    So the extra (half) lady is formed from tiny bits of all the other ladies :p

  103. Tis is simply a reiteration of what I have said before: I love these image puzzles, but they do nothing but leave me frustrated the way you do it. FIND OUT THE ANSWER BEFORE YOU PUT THEM UP THERE!! IT’S ANNOYING!

    Thanks

    CRLN

  104. There is one girl in the top picture who has only a bow in her hair on the top half of the picture. There is another bow which is on the right edge and not connected to any girl. In the second picture there are two girls who now have a hairbow on the top , which frees up the top half of the bikini blond to stand alone ( no one misses the bottom-ruffle of her skirt!) She becomes the 14th girl!

  105. The solution is that the pin-up on the top right on the second picture is contained entirely in the top half of the picture, it is not using any of the “bottom half pin-ups”. Also, on the top picture, there are two small blue things at the extreme bottom left and right of the top parts which are unused. These form the top half of a pin-up on the second picture. In conclusion, on the top picture, there is half a pin-up that is split into these two tiny parts and that you won’t count. On the bottom image, there is half a pin-up that looks like a full one. So both pictures actually contain 14 and a half pin-ups. Just we naturally interpret it as 14 or 15 depending how the pieces are arranged.

  106. If you look in the corners (bottom left, and bottom right) of the top panels you can just see the black marks that make the top of the head of the lady adjusting her shoes.

    Also be careful to count the whole and part women top and bottom for each section.

    The trick is to count heads (or more specifically eyes) above and below the line.

  107. Hello,

    this one made me scratch my head indeed.
    Finally I discovered where the 15th lady comes from.

    The lady in the middle has some clothing attached below the cut line. In the second picture, she hasn’t.

    The second picture shows 2 ladies with a blue hair ornament. The first picture only one.
    However, in the first picture the hair ornament does appear at the edge of the picture not attached to any lady (left and right).

    If we count the lower part (legs and clothing) of the ladies, we count 14.
    If we do so with the upper parts, we can count 15 including the hair ornament.

    With the lady in the second picture above the far right ball not having any lower part attached, we get a total of 15 women.

    Hope that does make any sense to you.

  108. If you look at the split and count how many girls are on the top versus the bottom then the counts are the same. There are 15 heads and 14 bottoms. What happens is that the ears floating in space on the right of the top image are put on someones head, while the girl on the top loses the edge of her cape. So you are trading the ears for the girl as the extra top piece.

  109. The top two pieces have parts for 16 girls (hair in the lower L & R corners). In the setup with 15 girls (bottom image), the two “hair” pieces combine into one (ballerina 6th from left)

  110. If you look at the top picture, you will realize that there are two black dots at each side of the top row. Switching the tow row elements makes them a top piece of a head.
    Previously, there was another, slightly larger, head on that girl. It went to another girl. Now, that girl previously also had a slightly larger head on top of her. It went to another girl. This goes on with each and every girl in the picture, the cut moving down and down and down (and everytime, the girl in the bottom picture is slightly smaller than before).
    At the end, the top part of one girl is large enough to actually be a picture on its own, with the bottom part being manned by another girl, who by this became slightly smaller.

    1. So, in fact, there are 15 tops parts and 14 bottom parts in both pictures, one top part not being assinged to a girl in the upper picture, and one top part being a girl on its own in the lower picture.

  111. This type of illusion is simple – you always see it with more than 9 starting creatures.

    If they start with 9 people, they take 1/10 th of each person, and collect it. They end up with 10 figures, each of which contains 9/10th of a person. But the amount that is missing is so small, you disregard it.

    The more people, the smaller the amount that is missing, the harder it is to spot it. More importantly, there is the ‘join’, which your mind fills in, making it even harder.

    If you look at the girl on the far right you can see the effect. The 14 girl version on top has a larger head – it includes both a nose and a mouth. But the girl on the far right in the 15 girl version doesn’t quite have enough space for both a mouth and a nose in the join area.

  112. first of all, lets mark all pieces as A B | C
    where A and B are pieces from the first row of first image, | is horizontal separation of images.
    so second image consist of B A | C.
    piece C have 14 possible body connections, piece A 9.5 and piece B 5,5
    if pieces A,B are in order A B, you get 14 possible body connections,
    if the are in B A order, you will get 15. its because bottom left corner of piece A and bottom right corner of piece B.
    so on your first picture, A B | C you actually have 15 bodies, but 1 is just a head and its spitted into half (left edge of piece A and right edge of piece B) so visually you dont see it.
    however on second picture, B A | C you have extra body, on piece B. by extra i mean top part unassigned to bottom part.
    because in this order, you are missing just bottom part, what actually is piece of blanket, it visually looks like you have extra body :)

  113. The first picture has 4 sets of 3 girls and 1 set of 2 girls.
    The second picture has 5 sets of 3 girls.

    At first I thought it was only the 1st girl in each set that moved to the start of a different set. But if you look more closely, some of the other girls in each set have subtle differences from the first set.

    They are essentially two different collections of girls, with some girls in common, but it messes with the way our mind tries to organize them.

  114. The 15th girl is extra cuz she doesn’t match up to anything on the bottom half–her towel is cut off.

  115. In the picture with 15. The 3rd girl from the right (on top right section sitting down) is an original girl that doesn’t share a half body. She is the secret to this illusion.

  116. In the lower half of both pictures there are 14 ‘half’ bodies and if you look at the top picture you will see that at the very far right there is the top of a girl’s hat, technically making 15 girls.

    When the panels are moved, the seventh girl in (from the top picture l-r) loses her bottom half and becomes the 15th girl and is now the third girl in (r-l) on the bottom picture.

  117. in the top picture, there are 14 “tops”, 14 “bottoms” and a green smudge all the way to the right.

    in the bottom picture, there are still only 14 “bottoms” yet there are 15 “tops” as the olive green bikini lady on the mat has no bottom in this view. the green smudge from the far right becomes the “top” (hair bow) of the lady lacing her shows, who’s bow moved over to the seated lady.

    so essentially, and extra person was created by the lady in the green bikini loosing her bottom, and an extra top being created from the green smudge…

  118. It has to do with the bow of one of the girls becoming not used in one picture and the towel of one of the girls not being finished in the other picture. Those are the only unaccounted for bits that I can find.

  119. So the 15th woman comes from the bits of black on the edges of the top picture. The woman now floating completely above the ball on the right side of the second picture is the “extra” woman, and the bits of black from the edges have gone on top of the 6th woman’s head on the bottom picture, effectively adding a 15th woman where there were only 14 before.

  120. There’s an one with a only one bottom. She’s at the top of the last group of girls on the right in the bottom picture.

  121. There’s really not an extra girl. If you count the heads and bodies and include BOTH bows: In the both the top and bottom picture, you get 15 tops and 14 bottoms. The top picture uses the bow on only one girl (the other bow is unused). The bottom picture uses the bows on two girls, and the girl in the bathing suit doesn’t utilize any of the bottoms. Clear as mud? I know there is a MUCH clearer way to explain this, but I can’t think of it right now.

  122. I’m sure someone’s said it already but the bow for the second configuration is split on the outside of the top row on the first.

    The 13th lady on the second page doesn’t have anything on the lower portion though she does on the first configuration.

    Very clever layout.

  123. The top image “wastes” a top half: see the two halves of a bow on the outside edges (the bow is put together and used in the bottom image). It also “wastes” a bottom half by pairing up the 7th girl from the left with a bottom half (she is the 3rd girl from the right in the bottom image, and she doesn’t have a bottom half)

  124. In the first picture, there is a girl in the middle which has two parts, where in the second picture she has only one.
    And also in the first picture there is a floating ribbon without match in the right corner.
    So, it adds up, one ribbon without match in the upper part + one girl that has no lower match in the second picture (it kinda adds as an invisible lower match), resulting in one more girl.
    Really well made :)

  125. This is a very clever little trick. Take a look at the top image. Clearly, there are only fourteen women in it. So how do we make one more?
    Well, to make one woman, you need two halves of a woman. Luckily, there are two halves of a woman in this picture we don’t need. First, take a look at the seventh girl from the left. Wait a minute! She isn’t cut in half like the rest – she’s just sitting on top of some frilly bit of towel! So there’s our bottom half right there.
    What about the top? Well, see those tiny specks at the far left and far right of the top half of the image? That’s it! that’s enough to make a bonnet!
    Now, you may still be confused. None of the girls in the bottom image is just a bonnet on a piece of a skirt, are they? No, obviously not.
    However, girl number six is a girl whose top half is nothing but that bonnet. So where did her previous, slightly bigger bonnet go? To girl number twelve, whose head in turn went to girl number three, who gave her head to girl number nine, and so forth, through girls fifteen, five, eleven, two, eight, fourteen, four, ten, one and finally seven, who ends up on top of that piece of frilly towel we noticed earlier – only now it looks very much like a piece of skirt. Funny how that works out.
    In other words, between the two versions of the puzzle, every bottom half of a girl switches to a slightly smaller top half, which frees up the biggest top half – which is actually a whole girl. Notice that in the lower image, girl thirteen has no bottom half at all.
    The moral of the story? The way you distribute your resources can have an enormous effect on the end result.

  126. [img]http://intranet.glidos.net/~paul/girls.jpg[/img]

    There. 4 girls changed to 3 taller ones, with a bit of foot and head left over. That’s very close to the actual illusion

  127. There are always 15 figures in the upper half of the puzzle and 14 in the bottom half. There is always one in the upper half that does not match up with anything in the lower half. It’s easier to see in the second setup. In the second setup the blonde woman in the blue swimsuit who is third from the right is completely in the upper half. She is the extra one in the second setup. Because she is a complete figure, we see her as a 15th figure. In the first setup there is also an extra partial figure in the upper half of the image: the two little blue dots that appear on the left and right edges of the image. We don’t see them as a figure because they just look like dots, but in the second setup they appear together and form decorations in the hair of the sixth figure from the left. (Sorry I can’t attach images).

  128. It’s the ribbon of the sixth one. Note how on the first picture on at the center of both ends there are unnecessary two parts of a ribbon. You can easily figure the trick. :)

  129. I cracked this one as a kid :) Each one of the ladies becomes a little shorter when you re-arrange the panels, sum all this up and one is removed. You can see that this is happening due to one piece not being used in the top version, you see it just at the borders.

    I guess I could explain it in a second way. Imagine a person cut up in slices horizontally. In the top version all the women are exactly one slice taller than before, they have basically spread out all the slices (except one) from the missing woman between themselves.

    And in reality, the woman made up of slices was actually made from the other women, so it’s really the reverse. They look a bit wonky in the bottom version as they lack one slice.

    I hope that makes sense ;)

  130. There are 3 pieces to this puzzle, the bottom half is one but the top half is cut in two. The cut is 2/3 way down in the top half.

    If you switch places with the top two pieces then that is when the blonde girl in the bikini moves. From the top picture centre to the bottom picture far right.

  131. ****SPOILER******

    In the top illustration there are 3 pieces of paper 2 on the top and one on the bottom. Look at the top 2 pieces only ( above the horizontal split). In the top 2 pieces of the top illustration peer at the bottom left and bottom right as the 2 pieces sit. You will notice that there is a difference in the 3 piece top illustration and the 3 piece bottom illustration, those two differences, when swapped on the lower illustration, make up the 15th girl.

  132. If you think of them as sets of three, each running nw to sw at an angle, it is pretty obvious that the topmost girl in the last trio is the addition. She rests solely on that panel, whereas everyone below her needs that panel for their heads and torsos only. Notice how the bow is slightly off on the bottom girl in the second to last trio, and the other girls have changed slightly in dress and/or hair color. This is weird and kitschy, and a really great find.

  133. The ladies in the pictures have 15 top “portions” and 14 bottom “portions”.

    In the first matching up, 14 of the “tops” are lined up with 14 of the “bottoms”, with the 15th unmatched “top” way off to the right side (very small, not making a full lady).

    In the second matching up, 14 of the “tops” are lined up with 14 of the “bottoms”, with the 15th unmatched “top” being the lady sitting down (3rd from the right).

    QED.

  134. In the top picture, every girl has some part from both the top and bottom portion of the picture (sometimes just part of a head or part of a skirt). The “extra” girl in the lower picture comes from a girl on the top portion which has no matching part on the bottom and the combining of 2 fragments that are not used in the top picture to create an extra part of a head in the bottom picture. Specifically, the girl that is topmost in both pictures (near the middle in the top picutre and near the right in the bottom picture) has no parts spanning to the bottom portion in the bottom picture (leaving an “extra” bottom part for some girl to use), and if you take a look in the top picutre at the 2 edges, you will see a small dot. Those 2 dots are combined to make the bow of the lady at the intersection of the 3 parts in the bottom picture (essentially creating the extra top part). So the extra top and bottom parts are used to make an “extra” girl.

  135. Waou!! this one deserves big respect !! Each lady is composed from one part above (let’s call it HEAD) and one part below (LEGS). On the version with 14 ladies, a part of HEAD is not used (hair ribbon as seen on extreme right and extreme left). On the 15 version a woman did not need LEGS to be complete (third woman from right). So, on the image with 14 ladies, 14 HEADS are used on 15, and 14 LEGS on 14. On the other image, 15 HEADS used on 15, and 15 LEGS used on 14!!! It’s simple but so so intelligent!

  136. This one to me was too easy!! If you look at the bottom piece of the puzzle you will notice that there are a total of “14” lower portions of the Pin-Up girls (Including legs & skirts) and on the top two pieces there is a total of “15” (Look at the 6th girl bottom pic. She has a “bow” in her hair, then look at the same girl in the top pic she has a “hat” on instead. The bow that she’s wearing in the bottom pic looks like smudges or something on the far right & left of the top two pieces of the puzzle in the top pic. Therefore removing one of the Pin-Up girls…

  137. This was a tough one. I think the solution lies with the fact that there are 14 girls along the bottom. The 15th girl comes from the fact that the bathing suit girl is not connected to anything below. This indicates that one of the girls is completed somehow without her. If you look closely there are black marks at the outside corners of the top two pix. In the 15 girl combo girl number six is completed by those two outside marks freeing up her pointed hat to complete girl 12.

  138. Each girl in the second one is a few pounds lighter (shorter). In the re-arrangement, a thin slice is “transferred” to the next girl. They lose a little more than they gain. You can’t do this with money anymore, since bills have TWO serial numbers to prevent it.

  139. Nice one! While I can’t exactly explain why, I think it has to do with one lady’s head being split in two, which lets it count as either 1 or 2 ladies. See my images for my “headcount”:
    [img]http://www.evercurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/vanishing_girls_14.png[/img]
    [img]http://www.evercurious.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/vanishing_girls_15.png[/img]

    1. you need to count the blue bows on the far left/right of the first image as a lady also.

    2. It actually has to do with the lady you marked as number 7. In the first image her upper body is entirely on the top piece of the picture while part of the material she is sitting on is on the bottom half. When the pieces are rearranged she is to the far right to an open space and the bottom half that matched up to her before becomes the bottom of another lady’s dress. Since her entire body is on the top half and she is moved to a part of the picture with no matching bottom half it looks like it’s a new person.

    3. GOT IT, the deal is the trade off between the bow girl and the loner girl on the middle in the first piture, but it doesnt happen in a direct way, but by pieces of girls that compile. On the first pic we have this middle girl as a 2 piece, when in the second we have her as a one piece. So we have a +1/2 on the count, the other half comes from slowly chopping less and less of girls, check out how the rows have less match towards the end of the cicle from left to right, starting from middle, and this compiles obviously to the very last girl before we return to the middle girl which is the bow chick, a 2 piece first and a one piece later, when her bow gets split to the edges of the image and ignored, so we have another +1/2 and a total of sum of +1 girl, this one took some brain use there, uff

    4. Simply put, there are always 14.5 girls there, on the first its 14 gals and a half, the bow, split to left and right, the other “half” is the girl sitting on her dress, in the middle, that has no dress part on the second pic, just a matter of counting partials as girls or not

    5. the key is to see the two ladies that got her whole body only on the top and only on the bottom part of the second picture(bow and a piece of cloth are not body part). When you understand their placement, it will become clear how the 15th lady appeared.

    6. you tried so hard – yet failed liked everyone else
      why doesnt anyone notice, theres 14 girl pieces on the bottom, 15 on top. one girl doesnt have a bottom in the second image (long dress)

    1. In the very middle of each end (right and left) of the picture is two blue dots. These make up the bow on the top of the head of the girl in the 2nd row bottom. She is the only one of all of them that doesn’t change heads. If you take the top half of the picture and move it over two rows there are bodies that exchange heads, except her. there is no extra bow until you put the sides together forming her bow. When the sides are apart there is no bow/top of head for her. Hence your extra girl in bottom picture.

  140. 3rd girl from the right (bottom image) doesn’t have any portion of her on the bottom.

    One of the girl’s bunny-ear hats is on the seam so for the top image you only see two dots on the far left and right of the image.

    1. Ryan has it

      the bunny ears of the girl tying her shoes are part of the picture in the bottom one but whilst still there dont play a role in the top (theyre stuck out at both ends)the rest is easy…

      does this trick rely on one being distracted by the shapeliness of the legs?

  141. Pretty impressive. Looking at the bottom strip, and then the top, you can see where parts of women “disappear”, as they take on other parts of the body. The easiest to describe is the left most figure at bottom, vs her replacement. The replacement appears to be kneeling in the bottom image, but is standing in the top one (suddenly has a foot).

    The trick to the illusion is that body parts are “cut” into two halves, but when reassembled, don’t maintain their aspect. There are so many figures, that it overwhelms the brain. We can’t compute so many dissections and re-assemblies at once.

    Impressive, to say the least.

  142. Excellent spot Ryan! That now makes sense! I saw that the top girl in the second photo (third from the right) had nothing on the bottom pane, but the crease/bunny bow didn’t even occur to me. Well done!

  143. I think I figured it out. The key is that there are 15 things above the line and 15 below the line. But they are not exactly the same things. If you look at the bottom image, there are only 14 sets of legs – 14 ladies. If you look closely at the top image, there are black dots above the line at each end of the panel. When the panels are rearranged, these dots are together and become a bow for the lady who is 6th from the Left. Then if you look at the 7th lady from the Left, she moves to be the third from the right. In the top pic, she is sitting on a pink ruffle and in the bottom, there is nothing below the line. The ruffle is now the attached to the lady in the black bikini.
    What they have done is create a 15th item on the top (the bow) and separated the kneeling lady and allowed her to be the 15th lady.

  144. I figured it out! The corners of the two top pieces have a fraction of a head that only comes together on 2nd arrangement.

  145. If you look at the top image there are two blue things in the corners just above the cut that you probably ignore. In the bottom image those two come together to form the bow of the girl 6th from the left. The girl 3rd from right in bottom image also doesn’t have a bottom part but it is hardly noticable. New top half + lack of unnecessary bottom half = 1 extra girl.

  146. The solution becomes visible when you stop viewing the pictures as parts of figures and see them instead as parts of individual images. The top and bottom of a figure is required to show a “girl” but if only the top and bottom of an image are missing then a whole “image” is missing. The lower part of the blanket that the girl labeled “7” is sitting on is missing in the top display. There are also two figures wearing hair bows in the lower set of images. they are both cut off as the top of an individual but only one returns to be reassembled onto a girl. So you have a missing blanket as the bottom portion and a missing hair bow as the top portion. Neither of these items are really part of a girl but they are part of an image so their loss represents the loss of one whole image.

  147. It has to do with the woman that is numbered 7 in Adam R pic. Like Ryan said…she doesn’t have a bottom half in one pic…that’s the extra.

  148. Ok so from what I can see….they take a small unnoticed dot on the far right of the top image and make it the top of a head on the second. Then, they move a full body (all the way to the right on the second image) it allows a whole new head in and a whole body in that wasn’t in the first.

  149. To go from 14 to 15, each girl loses a small piece. A small section of each girl is cut off to add up to the extra one.

  150. Sorry the image file did not appear before:
    [img]http://theory.tifr.res.in/~amol/extra/4to5.jpg[/img]

    Anyway I see now that a similar figure has already been posted..

  151. I circled the pictures at the top with the pictures at the bottom using the following criteria.
    1. Exact matches. Top to bottom. 2. Some of the top halfs of some (head to waist)were switched with the bottoms of others. I circled the top halfs on top and bottom that matched. 3. Sometimes only the heads were different. (I counted this as a match.) Using this criteria I found girl #14 on the bottom strip as the extra. Since her bottom is in other pictures you could get different girls as extras, but there should always be an additional girl. I hope this is intelligible. A lot of times I say things and people look at me as if I am strange. (Guilty as charged)

  152. I should clarify a misstatement. It is not that the lower portion of the blanket is missing, only that it has not been replaced with another lower portion of an image. A floating purple ball in the area distracts us from this slight of hand. Additionally the unused hair ribbon is split and placed at opposite sides of the display for further distraction.

    The point is that an entire top portion (ribbon) and an entire bottom portion (blanket) are being used in one image and not the other so we see 14 full images in one and 15 in the other.

  153. The bottom half has 14 body parts, the top half has 15. When the pieces are shifted, the bow on the far right lower top half becomes the top part of girl #6 and girl #7 has no bottom. The illusion works because the little bow on the far right of the first image doesn’t get recognized as a girls head which it becomes when the top peices are swapped.

  154. Didn’t take me too long, hear is best way I can explain it. (attached pic)[img]http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc7/582584_3231593438641_400794701_n.jpg[/img]

  155. I think this is subtracting a small piece from each figure, enough to produce one additional figure. Sounds impossible.

    Here is an example where I have 14 dummies, and have slid the bottom half of the picture across to make 15 dummies. A clever artist could make up for the obvious shortcomings.
    [img]http://gavaus.goya.com.au/trans/15%20dummies.jpg[/img]

    1. Gavin’s graphic explains the illusion quite nicely! Some of the other explanations provided remind me of the “Dunning-Kruger effect”.

  156. If you count, there are 14 bottoms. Also, there are 14 heads. BUT if you look to the far right of the picture on top, you will see a little blue dot which ends up being on the 6th girl’s head. The bottom of girl number 13 in picture number 2, is not present. So still there are 14 bottoms and 14 tops, but 15 girls because no bottom on one, and no top on the other.

    1. Best explanation to this point in the discussion. It’s really just the same as the prior versions of this.

      If this is not clear to you, think of this explanation along with the earlier comment about how a small part of each lady is removed and when all the small parts come together you get an extra person.

  157. Can not say for sure if this is “it”, but may be worth considering—the bottom uncut strip of both sets contain 13 sets of legs. I did not count the gal in the bikini to the left center, but it does give us the 14 women all together in the top set. Notice the far left lady in the top strip (also in bikini, I think) has “legs”. OK, now when we flip the top strips around to get the illusion in the second set, this gal now floats–no legs–with the other bikini lady, and becomes the 15th one. What do you think? Can anyone further explain?

  158. The “trick” lady is actually the girl in the bikini in the top row. In the upper image the towel she is sitting on connects to the pink fabric on the lower strip. When the two upper strips are reversed, there is actually no matching bottom for her towel, thus creating the illusion of the extra lady.

  159. On the first are 14 whole women: 14 x 100% women.
    On the second one, the upper parts and lower parts are recombined, resulting in 15 smaller women. each woman is a bit smaller: 15 x 93.3% women.

    It’s the same with the leprechaun and mad professor puzzle: every person is a bit smaller than in the previous set-up.

    These kind of puzzles often have a give away: in the first set-up, all the images connect well as if that’s the way they should be. In the second image where the upper and lower part are recombined, you see freakish transition on the line. Just check all the heads which are on the line, in every puzzle of this kind!

  160. It’s neat, but not that complicated. In the second version, each girl is slightly shorter (missing a “slice”, so to speak.) the cumulative effect of shifting pieces is a nearly complete girl. (The extra one is also a little smaller.)

  161. The answer is obvious when you see it. Look at the black dot on the far right of the top layout. It becomes the head-top for the sixth lady from the left in the lower layout. Anyway… track the head movements and effectively each girl gets slightly taller until there is a whole body left over.

    1. #8 girl from left (top picture) has bigger breasts (2 pairs?)… Maybe she distributed to another. I’m speculating, have nothing yo do with it!

  162. The top image uses up more bits. The women on the top image are a bit bigger. EG. no 4 gains a thigh. Also the bow on no 6 is in the corners. No 7 dress bottom is not used below. So basically one woman is dissolved into the larger women on top.

    1. It’s a bit like that jigsaw puzzle with the rectangle loosing a hole to the slightly smaller area when its rearranged.

  163. The girl on the beach towel has a part on the top and bottom for the 14 girl pic, but then loses the bottom for the next pic. Essentially, one girl splits into two.

  164. It’s not that hard to understand: The extra woman was made of parts of the others.

    First look at the top picture and you will notice that each woman has just a little bit too much geometry (stretched face, legs, belly, etcetera)…

    Now look at the bottom picture and you see that they are all missing a little (too short face, legs, belly, etcetera)…

    At the top picture you see on both sides the beginning of an extra woman because the bowtie is not used there. At the bottom picture it is used where the cards touch. underneath is now the extra woman made up out of the too much of the first picture and the too little of the bottom picture… That is more than enough to build the “extra” woman.

  165. It’s quite simply really; the top half was cut into two pieces and swapped. The bottom has not adjusted or moved at all. The heads/upper torsos fall perfectly in line with the rest of the bodies.

  166. There’s a little black mark, right beside 14 in the top picture that Adam provided. It is used to complete the girl’s head at 6. This frees up one torso to become a body at figure 7 in the second picture.

  167. I think this explains / solves the mistery, thanks for AdamR and Julien2512 thoughts.

    First image – 15 Girls
    1-I labeled each half with “1/2”, and only girl “C” has “1” since she’s not split
    2-Pay attention to girls labeled A, B, C and D (forgot to add label to her… is the one under C, to the left wearing green)

    Second image – 14 Girls
    One girls “disappears” because we get two broken “1/2”. One is under girl C. she don’t need a 1/2, she was already a “1”, a full girl!
    The other broken “1/2” was girl A’s bow, that gets out of picture, almost unnoticed, unless you keep track as we just did.
    And Girl A receives the bow from girl D.

    So, the 15th girl is there, broken in two disconnected “1/2”.

    [img]https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/QxIgVanMqmWPUOPyalIBgwIvxM5tDepv-TaHR7eu7DKkbb6sTV0aaw0JJkE021YCRgQZhe8cie5LrrIz[/img]

  168. The third woman from the right on the bottom image is a stand-alone figure. (number 7 in the first comment). She does not require a “bottom half” to exist as a complete image. However, when she is moved to the left, as she is on the top image, she lines up with a small portion of “bottom half”. This means that in one arrangement she is an extra while in the other she is not.

  169. I’ve been following this site for ages (great work – keep it up!), but this is my first post, because this is one of the cleverest and most subtle puzzles I’ve ever seen.
    First I tried counting heads and that didn’t work because sometimes they’re split. Never mind, try feet – again that doesn’t really work either. In fact, wherever you try and isolate parts of the body it doesn’t work. Each girl is divided in slightly different heights up the body. This gave me the clue to solving it. The very simplified example below explains it I think. But to translate that principle into such a complex image is amazing.
    Where did the original puzzle come from and who published it?[img]http://www.huntswebdesign.co.uk/test/puzzle%20solution.gif[/img]

  170. I managed to make 16 women, if you line up the top image so that the girl who is entirely at the top is before the 2nd set of three women.

    This makes 3,4,3,3,3 albeit with a little artistic license

  171. I count 15 upper “halves” of the ladies, in both configurations.

    It’s just that one of the 15 isn’t associated with a lower lady “half” in the top of the two assemblies. Specifically, the “bow” of the ballerina. In the top picture, that bow is split into two small dots at each end of the upper split pieces.

    That is combined with one of the ladies not needing any lower “half”, in the second of your tow images (the bikini girl).

  172. If you look closely at arrangement 1, you can see two pieces of a woman’s head in the outside corners of the top two pieces. In arrangement 2, woman #13 (from l to r) is missing the lower half of her dress. This means that in actuality, the tiles contain pieces for 14 and 1/2 women. Additionally, woman # 8 in arrangement 1 has a slightly elongated torso. This larger body size allows her to be split in half and serve as the major portion of the bodies of two separate women in arrangement 2 (#8 & #14). Whew! This is the kind of image that can destroy a collective ;)

  173. Half of the girl in the blue tutu’s head is on one corner and the other half is on the other corner in the top picture

  174. Very old trick which I already saw when I was a kid with dwarves.
    [img]http://bric-a-brac.org/enigmes/combinatoire/disparition_nain_15.gif[/img]

    [img]http://bric-a-brac.org/enigmes/combinatoire/disparition_nain_14.gif[/img]

  175. Good answer. It’s a bit like that jigsaw puzzle with the rectangle loosing a hole to the slightly smaller area when its rearranged.

  176. This is very well done. In each arrangement we have 15 portions above the line and 14 below. The images of the girls are distorted such that in one arrangement the lone portion above the line is a bow (which is then split in half to make it near invisible) and in another arrangement the lone portion above the line is a girl. As someone else has posted, the girls are slightly smaller in the second image to allow this redistribution of portions to equate to the appearance of an ‘extra’ girl.

  177. i think that all yours are very bad. the response is that in the image 1 and 2 have two a little
    pieces and then complete a bun that after put in the head at the girl that the shoe is getting dressed, thats all.
    thanks.

    1. Well done for bothering to edit the picture like this – this one post explains it perfectly. Didn’t really need the other 227 replies!

  178. Nice illusion !

    In fact, this illusion is based on DeLand’s Paradox.(1909)

    Sam Loyd and Stover studied it.

  179. [img]http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg694/scaled.php?server=694&filename=vanishinggirls1.jpg&res=landing[/img]

    You have to look at the outer corners. There you see both the half of the 15th womans’ head, or however one would describe this.

    By rearranging the picture, these to half-head-pices form the extra lady.

  180. in the corner of right and left there is a black down which later forms a head. This head is lady nr 6. there is never an extra body however.

  181. Yeah tbh I can’t see why this has caused so much confusion. Looking at it next to the leprechaun one, it’s almost EXACTLY the same! The new mystery lady/leprechaun is even in the same place. The ladies, on the whole, get smaller.

    I think one thing that causes confusion is the phantom/extra lady’s skirt when there’s only 14 of them, but you kinda need some reverse logic there to realise, in losing her skirt, it goes to being some of the area that makes her up in the 15, if that makes sense. I think.

  182. Hi, It’s hard to explain but I will try my best. on the first image, the top left peice, the girl to the right of the second dot attatches to a small peice of skirt on the bottom peice. where as on the bottom image, she doesnt attatch to anything on the bottom peice, leaving her to be the 15th girl. please let me know if you understood that?

  183. In the top image, look at the bottom outside corners and you will see that they built in an extra head. And the girl in the grey bikini, top piece close to center becomes a stand-alone when she moves to the edge. This gives you an extra piece for the bottom half.

  184. I’m about to confuse the issue – I think this one used is a slightly poor version (no offence intended!) I had a version of this trick years ago with some girls on cushions, again burlesque style, with more background detail, but there wasn’t any obvious bits like the hair on here and the one whose skirt is cut off in a straight line and leads to a ball. But I think the people looking at the girls kneeling on the cloth might be on to something, because I remember on mine there was a girl in a similar position on a cushion who, when swapped, became the top half of a girl in a skirt. I’ve been trying everywhere to find an example like the one I had, but cant find one!!

  185. It’s just 2 peaces of paper, the top and bottom doens’t stick together. (sorry for the explenation, I’m Dutch ;) )
    But you have 2 coloms,
    Left, Middle, Right,
    Put the upper paper 1 to the left, the most left, to the most right, and than you have the same picture as it was.
    Hope you understand.

  186. There is a girl sitting on a blanket and if you look at the 2nd pic, there is nothing under the blanket. No extension. Then you compare it and you find out theres no girl in the first one to replace it.

  187. It’s because of the one who is tying her slippers because on the image on top it uses a bow of a head for the top half of the picture, the picture on the bottom does not use a whole bow it just conjoins the ends of the top half that has dots on them making it look like a bow and also the bottom picture then allows there to be a woman only on the top half and not the bottom (it’s the blonde on sitting on a pink thing)making it an extra girl…… Idk if that made much since but it’s what makes the extra girl

  188. The bottom picture is the original, people assume the top is because that is what you see first. In the bottom the 6th girl from the left is pretty much completely on the bottom half, and the 13th girl from the left is pretty much completely on the top half so when you take away half of one girl and half of another girl you are left with one less girl. The biggest part of the trick is knowing that people will assume the top pic is the original and they think an extra girl was somehow added.

  189. If you look closely at the middle on the right hand side you will see part of what becomes a bow in the second picture, making it appear as though another girl has appeared even though they have not.

  190. Trick is that girl #7 is entirely on the top panel, and in the first arrangement she matches the the cloth from the bottom panel, counting as 1. But she doesn’t need to have a bottom part so in the other arrangement she moves to the right (still as 1) while the cloth is matched to the other lady.

  191. something that would be really puzzling until one discovers the role of the two small half-ribbons at the extreme left and extreme right of the first picture

    (which at the second picture becomes the head of lady #6)

  192. Another way of looking at it is this:

    The bottom half has 14 “LOWER PARTS” – all of which need an “UPPER PART” for them to become 14 “WHOLE LADIES”.

    The upper half actually has the ff:
    13 “UPPER PARTS” (that need “lower parts” to become “WHOLE LADIES”)
    1 WHOLE LADY(LADY#7, which DOES NOT need a lower part)
    1 RIBBON (two half-ribbons, one at the extreme left and one at the extreme right.)

    In the FIRST ARRANGEMENT, the 14″LOWER PARTS” were partnered with the 13 “UPPER PARTS” AND the LADY#7 resulting to 14 “WHOLE LADIES”. (The RIBBON is NOT used(actually,two half-ribbons – one at the extreme left and one at the extreme right.))

    In the SECOND ARRANGEMENT, the 14″LOWER PARTS” were paired with the 13 “UPPER PARTS” AND the “RIBBON” (making 14 WHOLE LADIES). THEN add to these the LADY#7 and YOU HAVE 15 WHOLE LADIES.

    I hope this mystery is demystified…hehe

  193. Trick is that girl #7 is entirely on the top panel, and in the first arrangement she matches the the cloth from the bottom panel, counting as 1. But she doesn’t need to have a bottom part so in the other arrangement she moves to the right (still as 1) while the cloth is matched to the other lady.

  194. If you look at the left bottom corner/edge of the top piece it has half a bow, and the right top piece in the farthest right also has a half a bow so when put together it creates an extra head. This allows for another person, because the person with both her legs up on the top piece doesn’t need a bottom half, so the extra head takes her bottom, and she is still fine! GOT IT!!!

  195. The bows on the bottom corners of the first half is supposed to be a woman which created another woman on the second one because the bikini sitting girl doesnt need a bottom half

  196. If you see the 7th girl(from the left) in the first photo and it’s part in the lower piece, you can see that the part in the lower piece is still there, but the lady has changed and our first one is the 13th one

  197. they added a 15th girl in the bottom photo and if you trace where she has been back to the last person you notice that in picture where they have 15 people they have a person with a bow twice which would mean there is an extra part or person to put somewhere in the picture. the reason you didn’t notice it is because it is very small and is in the fold of the book

  198. The bows….well, I understand the explanation, so the true test would be to print out each illustration, and white out those bows. Now, with the bows removed, you should have the same number of ladies in each picture, yes? But you don’t. You still have 14 and 15 with the bows removed, so that is not the answer.

  199. Gary’s June 30, 2012 at 7:24 pm illustration is great because it still doesn’t explain where the extra girl comes from. It’s just a more streamlines example of the original illustration. So, where does the extra head come from? Bows aren’t eyes!

  200. Figured it out! Had to blow up the image, but in the top illustration, the third girl from the left has two sets of eyes making 15 sets of eyes on 14 bodies. When the images are moved, we see 15 sets of eyes. Also, in the top illustration, we “see” 14 sets of legs, but the gal on the far left actually has two sets, so when the images are moved, we have 15 sets of legs. The “bows” and “skirt” are part of the illusion to distract for the actual solution.

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