By John Walker on October 7th, 2008 at 5:17 pm.
This is an odd one. And an addictive one. Called The Eyeballing Game, it’s the work of Canadian woodworking site, Woodgears.ca.
Site owner Matthias Wandel explains,
“If you are somebody who is into woodworking or construction, its good to be one of the people who notice when things are crooked. But I suspect the ability to notice that things might be just a little off square, off centre, or not quite straight, varies greatly. I thought it would be fun for people to try to test their abilities to see if things are straight or crooked in a little game.”
You cycle through the seven challenges three times to generate an average, which becomes your score. Do well enough and you’ll enter your name in the top 10 of the last 500 games, appearing on the front page.
So, targets people. I’m most pleased with getting a 0.0 twice in a row, the same game resulting in my current best score, 2.40. No cheating with set squares on the screen, and post your better scores below. Clearly (non-offensive) insults are the correct way to enter your name if you get in the Top 10. Big thanks to Kim for the tip.
07/10/2008 at 17:30 Theory says:
I did pretty well, except that I didn’t understand how the interface worked for the first test (drag and release) so ended up with an error margin of 60!
07/10/2008 at 17:31 Rook says:
Seems I’m an expert in right angles and a complete failure with triangles. 5.6 on my first go, not too keen on trying it again.
07/10/2008 at 17:34 Mark Stephenson says:
4.10 :(
07/10/2008 at 17:34 Ian says:
First try: 4.73.
I sense a strangely addicting game…
07/10/2008 at 17:35 terrapin says:
If they had adverts for mousepads on that page they could make a fortune.
07/10/2008 at 17:41 Flappybat says:
9.29
I’m really good at right angles and terrible at parallelograms.
07/10/2008 at 17:41 Fazer says:
First try – 10.07
Second – 4.45
I had 0.0 accuracy in finding one mid-point :-D
07/10/2008 at 17:42 Whiskey Jack says:
Got 7.07. But I suck at those thing so I’m pretty proud of myself. Getting a better score would have been lucky in my case.
07/10/2008 at 17:42 nabeel says:
Second try 5.61
: (
nabeel
07/10/2008 at 17:47 Austin says:
Man – I had 1 .4 on the first trail, and then got worse each time after – I think due to rushing. I disagree with this scoring system :).
07/10/2008 at 17:59 ack says:
First Try:
Overall score: 3.40
07/10/2008 at 18:05 phuzz says:
My best was 4.85, but it went swiftly down hill from there.
I’m getting old :(
07/10/2008 at 18:11 UnrealMythology says:
First – 4.18
Second – 3.60
Third – 2.53
Afraid to try again, don’t want to ruin my improving streak.
Lowering mouse dpi from 2000 to 400 may well be cheating, but it helps!
07/10/2008 at 18:28 IvanHoeHo says:
first: 3.67
second: 4.26
Lower score because of a gigantic fuck up at one of the triangle center thingies, causing an error of 46(!!)
Will try again, probably for the rest of the day.
07/10/2008 at 18:33 Nimic says:
3.60 on my second go. My best ones are “Right Angle” (1.5, 0.0, 0.7) and “Bisect Angle” (0.3, 3, 0.3). In all the others I got at least one 3.6 or higher. Oddly it looks as if my worst is “Circle Center”, which I figured I’d be good at.
07/10/2008 at 18:34 Nimic says:
Heh. I just noticed this on the site:
“And thanks to LCD monitors, its possible to display geometry with absolute accuracy on a computer now. So what better way to try this game concept than to put it on the web! ”
I don’t have an LCD monitor :x
07/10/2008 at 18:43 Sucram says:
For more staring at your monitor madness, try Test Your Colour IQ
07/10/2008 at 18:43 sockpuppetclock says:
1012.3
…I always spaz to the nearest corner when I hold my mouse down!
07/10/2008 at 19:00 Therlun says:
There should be a time component for proper eyeballing… or it becomes more mouse work and patience than actual… eyeballing. :p
07/10/2008 at 19:19 Fazer says:
> For more staring at your monitor madness, try Test Your Colour IQ
Great game, I’ve managed get 4 points at first try ;-) (the lower, the better).
07/10/2008 at 19:23 Dan Harris says:
2.26 first go. Third in the table.
Easy, no? :)
07/10/2008 at 19:27 YogSo says:
7.44 on my first go. I succeded only one 0.0, but in my defense I must say I have a slight cold and a bit of eyestrain right now.
07/10/2008 at 19:29 Silarn says:
Got a perfect 0 on the color test. 3.5 then 2.9 on the measurements. Center of the circle seems to be my toughest category.
07/10/2008 at 19:55 Pod says:
3.68 pod
I would have got better but I slipped on “bisect” one and ended up with a 10.7 :O
also: I really suck at the parallelograms
07/10/2008 at 20:01 mist says:
3.18 at first try.
I suck at triangle center, and my best is right angle.
07/10/2008 at 20:08 Lambo says:
I got 5.11 first go on the eyeballing and a perfect 0 on the colors. I feel proud :)
07/10/2008 at 20:10 hydra9 says:
3.91, which seems okay for a guy with wonky eyes.
07/10/2008 at 20:28 James G says:
6.08 then 4.31, no wonder I was always useless at woodwork. Still, its better than the pitch test run buy Manchester Univeristy a year or so back, I fall in the bottom 2nd percentile for pitch definition, that is, 98% of those sampled were better than me.
07/10/2008 at 20:31 Tom says:
6.07 – go me.
07/10/2008 at 20:52 brog says:
6.70. But my computer is away for repairs and this CRT monitor I am reduced to using is not pleasant.
07/10/2008 at 22:32 JamesC says:
3.38 on second go at maximum squint-eyes-and-turn-head intensity, boo.
08/10/2008 at 00:26 A coin says:
5.98 on the first try, with a headache. I could do worse I suppose.
08/10/2008 at 02:50 Thiefsie says:
You can kind of cheat if your lucky, depending on your monitors ratio you’ll also be wrong.
But the lines’ aliasing is a clue as to whether you are parallel as well, etc.
08/10/2008 at 04:04 EvilH says:
Woo, 2.69 on my first go! I was made for this game.
08/10/2008 at 04:13 Willy359 says:
3.67. I suck at triangles.
08/10/2008 at 04:44 rez says:
2.7 first go.
progressively worse after.
i’ll give it some more time tomorrow when i’m actually awake.
08/10/2008 at 07:41 caesarbear says:
CRT monitor. 5.7 and I keep getting worse. I can’t find a midpoint of a vector or a right angle at all, but I can do bisections and equidistants. I easily get a perfect color score.
08/10/2008 at 12:50 Tichinde says:
8.59 first go
7.67 2nd go
7.26 3rd go
6.62 4th go
6.09 5th go
Convergences are definately my strongpoint though :)
08/10/2008 at 15:09 Thermal Ions says:
3.34 on first and only go (not helped by a 12 & 13 on two of them). Will try again tomorrow after some much needed sleep.
I think I might end up playing this for longer than I played and enjoyed Spore. Oh, actually I already have :P
08/10/2008 at 15:16 StenL says:
I got 2.84, but I am horrible at convergences, yet almost perfect at finding the midpoint.
08/10/2008 at 15:29 LukeE says:
2.35 1st go :)
Managed a few 0.0′s on the last time round – but got progressively worse at the triangle centre thing :)
Went from 0.6, to 2.9, to 5.9.
08/10/2008 at 15:43 Thermal Ions says:
Couldn’t resist having another go, and improved to 2.23 (5th from last 500 games). Actually got 2 x 0.0 midpoint and 2 x 0.0 circle centres :D
I always seem to get progressively worse on 2nd and 3rd set for some reason though. Average for the sets this time – 1.19, 1.76 & 3.76
08/10/2008 at 16:56 Shadowcat says:
3.20 on first and only try; not enthused enough to do it again. I didn’t do too badly for the most part, but I completely suck at figuring the equidistant point inside a triangle. I was getting errors of ~10 on those ones :/
09/10/2008 at 15:30 Tasogare says:
2.06 and no.1 :) on 3rd try (on CRT monitor)
still thers room for improvement
first i had similar problem like Theory, only in my case it was 120 in first test