Music for Nurses Illusion

There was this record called “Music for Nurses”, whose cover I received back in the old days in way of illusion submission. I never managed to decode the name of the band which was printed as a negative in central position of the cover. Person who sent me this said it was easy, but it took some cheating (Google) before I could see what it says. I decided to share this one, and am more than interested to see how well you manage to decipher the hidden text. Remember not to cheat, and please be honest when reporting how long did it take before you could read it!

387 Replies to “Music for Nurses Illusion”

  1. The tags for this one kinda ruined it for me, I see how it would have taken a long time, but I always read everything my eyes fall upon, and so I noticed the name of the band in the tag section.. tut tut :/

  2. The title-tag of the image says “oceansize”, which ruined the illusion for me, because I hovered my mouse accidently. And since I know what it should read, I can actually see how :)

  3. I read oceansize, but it took me at least 20 seconds, if not 30. I started from the sz, then I noticed that it was written in lowercase, so the last letter is an e and not a g, and then started again from the left.

  4. It didn’t take me more than five minutes to start seeing the letters, but I missed out I, because of lack of white filler needed in writing it. Also, for a while, I thought the first and fifth letters were same until I noticed a flattening of the white central filler at the bottom where the fifth letter should be, so that made it N!

    I read it as Oceansze, and then searched online to see if it’s true, and found the missing I.

  5. It took me ages to finally see it and I still had to confirm what their band name is online.

    As a Graphic Designer, I gotta say that this is one of the worst covers I’ve ever seen. A band struggles desperately for name recognition and the creator has turned it into a puzzle I’m pretty sure almost no-one wants to solve.

    The “White Album” or “Black Album” with nothing on the front is one thing, but it kinda helps to be incredibly famous before you try something like that.

  6. The second half of the word was easy but I was having trouble with the first half. I moved my cursor over one of the letters that I deciphered and the name of the image file popped up… which gave it all away. So I can’t say I solved it and I can’t say how long it would’ve taken. Nine letter word where the trouble is the first and fifth letters for an unusual word. Good luck

  7. Uhhh… Well it kinda says “oceansize” when you scroll over it so… Anyway, I really couldn’t figure it out until I read that. You just have to look at it in a special way I guess…

  8. Actually, I had all but one letter in less than 5 minutes when I accidently put the mouse on the object and the name came up – still a good illusion

  9. the only thing i could make out is “es” in the first word and “size” as the second word. i got that match by accident. i stared at the image so long the display on my Blackberry started to go off to conserve the battery life. when that happens the backlight fades out slowly. thats when i saw the s and e in “size” so i tried squinting at the image and it worked…sort of

  10. That only too a few minutes….3 at the most…I don’t want to post the name so that other people have the chance to figure it out on their own.

  11. I found the name of the band without cheating, but I didn’t see it before quite some trying. Especially the first letter was hard for me to decipher. I think it took me 3 minutes. Spoiler alert: Don’t read the Tags if you want to decipher the hidden tekst yourself.

    Continue the great work moillusions!

  12. It took me about 10 sec’s…But it was because I wanted to save the picture to my computer (I wanted to open it with Paint, and invert the colors) : But then i saw the filename…
    Consider naming the filename some other thing in the future, because something similar has happened to me before, here on the MOI-site :)

  13. I believe it says Ocean Size.. it took me about 3 minutes to see it and no i didnt cheat. I saw the cean right away… it took me a few moments to see the o.

  14. a little bit difficult to read… but it says OCEANSIZE… the “size” part is pretty obvious, also the “cea”, the rest is for guessing xD

  15. I was able to understand the second word of the band name pretty quick, but still have a hard time seeing the first.

  16. couldn’t make the first letter (thought it was an I), and never heard of the group so i’d never guess it… but the rest took about 3 mins and some distance… then i googled it, je

  17. It says oceansize.

    I would have never guessed it if I hadn’t put my cursor over the picture and seen the link at the bottom, or held the cursor over the picture causing it to show the title next to it.

  18. I can’t get the first word (assuming it is two the way it looks) – seems to have an e in it. The second word appears to be size, but I’m seeing an extra letter (my brain can’t decide if it’s an i or l, or maybe o) right before the s.

  19. could you please not post the answer in the tags? I was still trying to figure it out and then glanced at the tags by accident. such a spoiler.

  20. Was figuring it out fairly good, within seconds I had MOST of the lettering figured out.. until I saw the ‘tag’ at the bottom spelling out the Bands name and name of the music.. Oceansize.
    PLEASE HIDE the answers better!!!!
    Thank you
    Craig

  21. I saw the word “size” right away but can’t make out more than an “e” in the first word. Still can’t.

  22. I see oceaosize… until I saw the tag that said oceansize. There is a slight difference between the o and the n. This is pretty cool though

  23. I saw the word “size” instantly but had a really hard time seeing the first word until i googled it and even then, i see it now but its not very clear

  24. easy it took me about 5 mins and thats been tottally honest

    btw spoiler: oceansize- worked out with no cheats 2 :)

  25. I think you might want to take the name of the picture out of the equation. While I was trying to figure it out I hovered over the image and it’s name came up.

  26. It took me a few minutes because I don’t know the band. But then I let the mouse linger over and you have the answer in your picture tag. You might want to remove that.

  27. Oceansize? Doesn’t make much sense, but that’s all I can figure that it could be. The ‘O’ and ‘n’ took me a while to figure out, but I got ‘size’ right off the bat.

  28. Maybe it would be a good idea that the hover of the image didn’t reveal the name of the group, but it’s only a suggesstion :)

  29. Got it :) and it was correct when I checked on Google.

    Took a couple of minutes to get the whole lot, the last 4 letters where relatively easy, but getting the first part proved tricky. It doesnt help that band names never make sense even if you can read them, so guessing at letters only partially works.

  30. I had trouble seeing it. If you want to figure it out yourself, don’t read the hint I’m about to share.

    How big is the Pacific?

  31. Saw the “SIZ” bit fairly quickly, wouldn’t have seen the rest if I’d spent the rest of my life staring at it.

  32. You only get to see half the picture in the igoogle app so it took me longer than expected, but basically only about 15 seconds til I got the answer… dare I speak it here?

  33. I was close to figuring it out, when my mouse moved over it and the tooltip came up giving away the name! :( I suggest on ones like this you remove the “title” attribute from img tag, or at least set it to some text other than the answer.

    BTW, love the site! It’s part of my daily surfing! :)

  34. I see “Ocean Size”, not entirely sure if i’m right, BUT it only took about 30 seconds to see it, but I have an unfair advantage, I am a graphic designer who loves working with negative Space :P

  35. I gave up after I could only descipher the second part of the name. It’s easier to just bing “music for nurses” than read the band’s name…

  36. I noticed the second half as soon as I looked at it, but the other half gave me trouble. I’d love to say I didn’t cheat, and I really wasn’t trying to… *SPOILER* but did you realize that when you hover your mouse over the graphic, it tells you the answer? *SPOILER* I was a little upset about that; I wanted to figure it out on my own.

  37. It took less than a minute D:, i had the curiosity of the mini image on my widget and entered to see it full size and realized it after a few seconds :)

  38. Size jumped out right away. I worked out o-c-e-a-o for the first part, then realized the slit for the 5th letter was longer than for the first and squared off at the bottom, making it o-c-e-a-n-size.

    But even knowing what it says, I can’t “see” the first part.

  39. I got the last four letters after a while…but then gave up and cheated (Google). I might have gotten it if I’d ever heard of them! Good one.

  40. It didn’t take me any time at all when I read it in the tag underneath! I didn’t deliberately look there to cheat – honest I didn’t – I just happened to notice it after I’d already figured part of it out myself.

  41. the second time i entered this website i already saw it’s oceansize, few hours ago i was working it out for ages :D

  42. I had the second part figured “size” and as I was trying to burn the negative in my eyes to stare at something white, I bumped my mouse. I was completely bummed that the answer popped up. I assume because of an TITLE tag on the image :-/ Bummer, I was hoping to see how long it would take me. Of course, clicking on the image to full-size revealed the name of the image as well.

    Disappointed, now I’ll never know if I could have figured it out.

    I didn’t cheat, the answer was on the test ;-)

  43. Too bad :-( I accidentally stopped with the mouse over the picture and the answer appeared. But I nearly got it (after about one minute :-) )
    Check also the tags…

  44. I noticed the ‘cea’ and ‘size’ immediately but seeing how that made no sense, I started guessing.. And I figured out shortly after that it said ‘oceansize’.

  45. SPOILER ALERT

    I believe it says oceansize? I saw “size” and “O”, but I put my pointer on the picture and it says “Oceansize”…….I believe I am a cheater…*sob* :(

  46. ocean sze

    the last part isnt a real word
    its not REALLY easy but a piece of cake once you get the hang of it!

    took me like 3 min

  47. Not only is it in negative, by=ut the letters touch each other – making it even more difficult to decifer. And one of the letters is not the way I normally write the letter, but it is the way I type it!

  48. Does it say Life Size? When I squinted at it, I thought that is what I saw. Took about 5 seconds after the squint.

  49. I think it says “oceansize,” but I’m not entirely sure. Its much easier to see if you turn the screen to negative colors (ctrl+option+command+8 on an apple)

  50. It took about 3 seconds until I rolled my mouse
    over the picture and the name popped up. If I
    had to guess, it would have taken quite a while
    to figure out the name on my own. I got the
    size part right away, but the backward c in
    ocean would have thrown me. It’s also listed
    in the tags.

  51. *ceaosize ?

    I can’t figure out the first letter, and even trying to think of words where any letter would make sense leaves me blank.

  52. no clue on the igoogle-gadget
    3 minutes on fulscreen. i love these ^^

    they are thus simple, i recommend to not add the cheaty stuff….

    the comments will help people more than enough in most cases ;)

    keep it up!!!! =D

  53. It’s “Oceansize”. The “size” at the end was obvious, the complete name though only came to me after looking at the tags for the post (that was a bit clumsy of you). Even after reading that it was a bit tricky to see it. The first two letters was easy enough once I knew what it was meant to say, but the rest took some more time. It helped once I looked at the end again and saw how the “e” looked there, after that it was easier to see were the border was between the “e” and the “a” in “ocean” and then there was only one line left to make out the “n”.

  54. I made this drawing using only verticle lines and drawing 2 horizontal lines for the top and bottom. It says oceansize. I immeaditaly saw the SIZE, but not OCEAN, i had to google the album to fully read it. I would have never got the full word. I made this drawing to help everyone see how the letters connect. [img]http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5165/5371289888_b0fe96bddf_z.jpg[/img]

  55. I don’t know if this was done on purpose, but “Oceansize” (which is the answer to the illusion) is one of the tags for this post. That’s actually how I figured it out.

  56. it says oceansize 1.because if u put the cursor over it it says so but realised wat it was before i even thought of puting my cursor there.It took me about 2 min.this is a very smart illusion

  57. It took me a good minute to decipher this, and honestly, I could only get the first part of the name. The “i” was particularly enigmatic. The first part of the name came fairly quickly, and I was starting to think it was a foreign band/spelling, thinking the first word was plural.

  58. To begin with I spotted the “SIZE” off the bat. I then saw the “CEA” and guessed the “O” and “N” to give me OCEANSIZE. Google confirmed it. I had never heard of them before.

  59. Wow, I found this one quite difficult. I saw the tag by accident when I put my cursor on the image but I had to stop looking for it to find the word.

    1. Then I notice C as the second letter.
      What could be the first?
      Must be O.
      What’s after C? It can’t be P surely?
      SZP doesn’t make sense either. I’ll think that it’s SIZ squashed together, with an E.
      Yeah. Must be SIZE.
      What’s before S? O…?? Let’s see…
      So we got OCE____SIZE.
      What’s in between?
      OCE__OSIZE.
      But what starts with OCE? OCEAN?
      Yes, I can get an OCEA from the pic, but I can’t get the N…
      Oh well. Let’s assume it’s OCEANSIZE.

      Google… google… yeah! It’s oceansize. Took me 15 minutes.

  60. I saw the size straight away and the CEA but the rest I needed google for. First one of these I’ve actually been able to see…

    Nice

  61. i had to cheat… but even then, i had a hard time seeing it. it took a good 5th look (after cheating) to finally see it

  62. Got it in about 40 seconds …….

    Don’t wanna say & spoil it …….

    I may get it or research more, cause I am a nurse! ;)

  63. After about 15 minutes and some photoshoping on the pic, I think it says “oceansize.” Now I’m gonna google it and see if I was right.

    1. haha just noticed the answer is the name of the pic. Thats a pretty hard on to see. But cool.

  64. I read it as “Oceansize”. It only took me 30 seconds or so to figure it out, but I did have to peek at the internet to verify as I had never heard of this band before.

  65. It took me several minutes. The second word was seen right away. The first and last letter of the first word had me stumped until I guessed it from the letters I could quickly see in the middle.

  66. Aw I had it right after only a minute but thought to myself, “That doesn’t make any sense”. Googled it and it turns out I shouldn’t have second guessed myself :P

  67. This one was hard for me too. I got to OCE could not figure out the A and I got the N wrong, I thought it was an O. but I got the SIZE right away.

  68. I had to cheat. I would never have gotten the first part. Even now that I know what it says, it’s hard to see.

  69. “OCEANSIZE”. Got most of this one right away…at least from the C on. It took a couple minutes to decipher the letter O.

  70. It took me about 4 minutes. I was looking for a space, which threw me off. “Size” was easy and took <5 seconds.

  71. Um… it took me about two seconds to figure this out, since as soon as I moused over the picture, the answer popped up.

  72. I dont…see…it! >.<'
    Well I only saw the second half, and then I saw the answer in the tags…
    That should really be hidden. ^^'

  73. I have an IQ of 127 but I cant seem to figure it out. But I think it said “TOTIXTI” or “ITXITOR”? It took me bout 3 minutes to figure out. I dont know if im correct or wrong and I dint cheat.

  74. if you read the letters surrounding the white pattern you will gradually see the word ‘oceansize’ appear. took about ten minutes for me. super illusion. I like those. they make your brain see things differently.

  75. That’s what i thought it said, but the name just didn’t make sense to me. So I thought I was reading it wrong.

  76. first i could see the obvious and i will not say what it was. i knew you could see the writing through the white. the other 2 letters i had some trouble with but it only took a few minutes to figure out what they were. great one though. promise i did not cheat!!!

  77. I saw the “size” right off, then I saw “cean”. “ceansize”” did not make sense. it took approx. 6-8 min to put it all together.

  78. hehe nice one, took me just 10 secs… usually take me a lot longer, i guess i was lucky, the name is Oceansize? the problem was differentiating the O from the N, so i guessed it was a real word, so Oceansize. got it right?

  79. Oceansize. It took me about 20 minutes of staring and filling in the negative space! Very clever, one of the best negative space illusions yet

  80. Ugh, I while I was scrolling down the page, my computer lagged and landed on the pic, and I got the answer…

  81. Oceansize? Sorry, I had to cheat. I was looking at it, squinting everything i could think of, for about ten minutes onl to search google in the end.

  82. took me 30 seconds, i put my cursor over the image to try and work around the figures and it showed the name:OCEANSIZE

  83. LOL. You shouldn’t have named the picture as the bandname. However: the last part is easy, the first part I just figured out by cheating ;-)

  84. Took me a couple of minutes until I accidentally let my mouse pointer rest on the image for just to long and the alt-text appeared…

  85. ive seen these kinds of illusions before. so i knew how they worked.
    so i was starting from the left..
    o-c-e…
    then i accidentally put my cursor over the image revealing the answer.
    (is that counted as cheating?)

  86. Don’t know if I’m right, but after 5 to 10 minutes of reverse enginering process on every single letter, I’ve come up with “Ocean size”…Well, at least I think that’s the word, even if I still can’t see clearly the first half…

  87. right away i see cea size. finally i see the N. . but I had to look up what it really was. b/c ceansize didn’t make sense to me.

  88. I read Oceansize, but I do not know the band… in case it is right… took me some 3 min to figure it out although size was clear but ocean it is difficult, mainly the O and the N
    Good one nevertheless. keep good work!

  89. Oh.. it took me about 1 minute to get my eyes decipher the ‘negative’.. it looks as though it says OCEANSIZE.. it’s so clear once you get it..! Very clever!

  90. In aboout 5 minutes I came to “OCE*NSZE”.

    Then I hovered over the pictuere with my mouse and it showed the name of the picture. So I tried not to cheat, but hey, you made it too easy.

    Still have trouble seeing the “I” though.

  91. Unfortunately the name of the band was disclosed by my browser. It revealed the filename of the picture while the cursor was on top of it. So I did not set a time. However even with the solution I can not see the “i” in the band name. I think this illusion is hard to crack.

  92. well, i would have tried deciphering it if the answer wasn’t in the alternate text, tags and the picture name

    honestly, that just spoils the fun

  93. It took me 30 seconds to see the last four characters. The first five make no sense to me, not even after cheating.

  94. It was easy, I just put the mouse over the image and a small text appeared with the solution. In the tag don’t put the solution

  95. Few seconds to read the two words of the text (but I’m a graphic designer, I’m used to act with this sort of things). First of all we must realize that the outern part of the writing become invisible when coloured in the same black of the background. The difficulty is in the reconstruction of the hidden part in our brains.

  96. Well, you kind of give it away to say the least… but yes, it’s hard and even with the ‘subtle hint’ it’s hard to see the whole text.

    :D

    PS. Mouse over the picture…

  97. About a min to see “size”. Then “ocea” became easy. I wanted to fill in the N, but it looked wrong until a couple minutes later when realized it was not capital.

  98. The band’s name is “Oceansize,” but I know that only because I did a search on Tineye. Didn’t quite get it, otherwise.

  99. i managed about 1 minute to figure it out
    when i went with my mouse over the picture i knew it right away first i only saw size

  100. It’s OCEANSIZE.

    The “Size” is pretty easy to see, but “OCEAN” is a bit tricky.

    – Print the picture and cut à rectangle around the word. That will greatly help.

    – Now, check for the “E” in the left part (same that the E in SIZE).

    – Reverse it, it give a “A”.

    -> You got __EA_SIZE

    Once you got the E and A,The C is easy to see, and then the O.

    Got it : OCEANSIZE :)

  101. So Ya Ive Never Heard Of The Band Before And Still Dont Know Anything About Them But Its Def Oceansize And It Took Me 20 Seconds-ish

  102. i can read the last part… … size…
    but cannot figure the first few letters… not even sure how many letters there are

  103. I take 3 minutes to discover the first letter and the middle letter because it uses all uppercase and lowercase letters in addition to the widths of the letters vary

  104. Oceansize! took me a couple of minutes though actually. at first i just saw cea size. couldnt get past that for a while.

  105. I’m struggling with the left side of this illusion. I think I can make out Ocean and Size but the middle is tough

  106. Oceansize! It didnt take me very long to figure it out, but it kinda sucked that the tags gave it off too. Still good.

  107. Looks like “oceaosize” to me, with the white parts as the spaces in the letters.
    Or maybe oceansize, the middle letter is a bit ambiguous.

    Took me less than five minutes, but I probably got it wrong :)

  108. WOW this is my favorite band on the planet! What are the chances I would see their logo on Illusion of the Day. Everyone should check out this band.

  109. After about 25 minutes I checked my work and was off by one letter. I did cheat and used a generous helping of MS Paint though.

  110. This is a tricky one to figure out unless you’re in the know and are familiar with the font that Oceansize use for their album covers!

  111. 4 minutes.
    If you think you have it, you can check your answer by hovering over the white ‘Music for Nurses’ bottom right.

  112. Got it. took me a little bit and i didnt cheat. The hard part was reading the first letter in the first word. The second word was easy to get.

    Not going to give spoilers

  113. I think it must be – “oceansze”

    I tried to overtake this illusion for the whole day in my iGoogle page whenever I opened it, but I couldn’t. At last I came to this page and it took really I think 4 minutes, (after reading your lines that its a name ;) ) to decode it.
    If its fast then I think its may be because by profession I am a graphic designer.

  114. I was having a Hard time figuring this one out, I could see the second part of it, but then I my mouse rolled over the pic and revieled the answer, relief and disappointment all at once. Answer is also listed in the tags.

  115. Oceansize.
    Took me about a minute, maybe two.
    The hardest part were the “O” and the “n”, I find them pretty tough to distinguish.
    Anyway, nice cover for a vinyl.

  116. unfortunately I hovered the pointer over the pic, and voila, got it, because that’s the name of the pic attached. 2 minutes max.

  117. I never saw the whole thing, but got almost all of it after a few looks. Since “oceansize” is a word I knew, I couldn’t get the “n”. It had the same white line as the “o”. It’s still difficult to see, because the word “oceansize” is so odd. Once th efact that it was in lowercase letters it became easier. The “size” part came out pretty quickly. Good illusion.

  118. OCEANSIZE I SAW IT AS SOON AS IT POPPED UP ON MY SCREEN. I AM USING A 32″ FLAT SCREEN THOUGH. DON’T KNOW IF IT MATTERS OR NOT????

  119. I had inadvertantly cheated by making my submission (oceanoze)I wound up with the correct answer. As far as the time it took I’m ashamed to say. However, I loved the challange. Keep ’em comming!

  120. Just try to stare at it for 20-30 sec then look at something white. :) I know that everyone has found out but still.

  121. I got it straight away – because I am a fan of the band saw them last year. Great band if your into prog-rock check them out…

  122. I didn’t notice the tags at first. The “size” part was really easy to see. Then I figured out the “ea” then the “c”. _cea_size. The “O” and “n” are almost impossible with the reverse image provided.

  123. About 2 seconds. Oceansize. It’s a Jane’s Addiction song too. “Wish I was Oceansize! They cannot move you man, no one tries!”

  124. saw the size after about a minute but couldn’t figure out the rest of it. might have helped if i’d been familiar with the band!

  125. oceansize? okay…i really don’t know how this is oceansize. just got it after putting the cursor on it.

  126. Ocean Size.
    Took me a while, HAD TO DO IT ON A PAD OF PAPER!
    the I was hard to find but I used my common sense and did it with a time of 1 minute

  127. the white spaces are the insides of the letter. So the the inside of “o” is that first white line. see if you can get the rest. i didnt time myself but i saw the e and then scrolled over and noticed it said oceansize…

  128. About 2 seconds. Right clicked on the image to ‘Save Picture as…” and there in the save dialogbox was the name of the image – “oceansize”. Piece of cake.

  129. Wait, it actually was supposed to say oceansize? I got that in about 4 seconds but figured it was wrong because “Oceansize” doesn’t mean anything.

    1. I could not figure it out.. got the 2nd part.. then mouse hover reveled the answer.. even knowing the answer its still difficult to see the first part of the word Ocean… Size jumped right out within a few seconds..neat

  130. even i bymistake moved my mouse on it and then understood . This will help the people who didnt understand .[img]oceansize.jpg[/img]

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