Have you seen this jumbled message before? If it looks familiar, it’s probably because it’s been present on the internet since 2003!
At first, we see a misspelled message that most people can read it despite the visible errors.
However, as most riddles, puzzles, and word jumbles today, it’s not always what it seems.
What Does the Un-Jumbled Text Say?
“According to a researcher at Cambridge University, it doesn’t matter in what order the letters in a word are, the only important thing is that the first and last letter be at the right place. The rest can be a total mess and you can still read it without any problem. This is because the human mind does not read every letter by itself, but the word as a whole.”
Matt Davis, a researcher at the University of Cambridge, wanted to check out the truth behind this trivia. As he hadn’t heard of the specific research before and didn’t know any scientists from the university who claimed this, he dug deeper.
He did find the original research on letter in words from Graham Rawlinson from his PhD thesis from 1976, but, this happened at Nottingham University, not Cambridge.
Still, Davis decided to do several other experiments with word puzzles and things became quite interesting. Check out 3 samples below that he came up with and see iif you’re able to decode them:
- A vheclie epxledod at a plocie cehckipont near the UN haduqertares in Bagahdd on Mnoday kilinlg the bmober and an Irqai polcie offceir
2. Big ccunoil tax ineesacrs tihs yaer hvae seezueqd the inmcoes of mnay pneosenirs
3. A dootcr has aimttded the magltheuansr of a tageene ceacnr pintaet who deid aetfr a hatospil durg blendur
If you’re scratching your head, you’re not the only one. Even Davis who’s a Cambridge research got lost a bit.
He wrote that all three of these sentences were randomized according to the ‘meme rules’.
Namely, the first and last letters remained in the same place while all of the other letters were moved.
Still, a lot of people could be stuck and unable to decode the sentences!
So, what is the reason making the meme so easy to read while other sentences turned up to trickier?
Davins explains that people are able to recognize words with middle letters misspelled; however, there are some caveats.
This text has to be quite predictable, not random letters all over the place. This is simpler with shorter words while the longer ones can be mismatched and harder to decode.
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