113

Am I a human? Yes. Can I type phi off the top of my head? No. enter image description here

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29
  • 19
    That's Phi, not Theta.
    – Michael Kristofik
    May 5, 2010 at 13:05
  • This is probably a bug. Urrgh what the what?
    – the_drow
    May 5, 2010 at 13:06
  • @Kristo and all - thanks. Maybe that's why... 8-\
    – Sky Sanders
    May 5, 2010 at 13:08
  • 6
    Note that if you would have typed whatever you wanted instead, it probably would have worked as long as the first was "corrected".
    – Gnoupi
    May 5, 2010 at 13:09
  • 18
    How do we know that you're human unless you pass the CAPTCHA? Everyone be on your guard!! "Code Poet" is a human impersonator! He's trying to enlist your help to beat the CAPTCHA!
    – devinb
    May 5, 2010 at 13:15
  • 11
    to add to Gnoupi's answer, SO uses re-captcha one of the words is known and one of the words is a scan from an old book. By giving the captcha to many people, they can accurately determine the scanned words the computer can't recognize. Effectively using small amounts of peoples time as powerful computer power to electronify books.
    – Lumpy
    May 5, 2010 at 13:18
  • @Lumpy - if your comment had a checkmark next to it, it would be marked check.
    – Sky Sanders
    May 5, 2010 at 13:44
  • 9
    As designed. A robot would not head off to meta, post this question, learn how to enter the CAPTCHA, then return to the page and complete the challenge. So clearly you are not a robot, and the CAPTCHA worked!
    – Craig Stuntz
    May 5, 2010 at 15:07
  • 9
    @Craig I don't know. That sounds exactly like a try - catch to me. try { ReadCaptcha(); } Catch(InvalidCharacterException ex) { PostToMeta();RetrieveAnswerFromFoolishHumans();} Finally { SpamDeluge(); }
    – devinb
    May 5, 2010 at 15:22
  • 8
    Are we human? Or are we dancers?
    – Daniel Daranas
    May 5, 2010 at 20:20
  • I got this recently with a photon-symbol, and also one with chinese letters ><
    – user146787
    May 5, 2010 at 21:50
  • 4
    Related: TODAYS REVISIONS WTF?! meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/48840/revisions
    – user146787
    May 5, 2010 at 21:56
  • @Koning - i noticed that too. interesting..
    – Sky Sanders
    May 5, 2010 at 22:30
  • 2
    @Earlz: So...? They're just as bad as your titles.
    – uɐɯsO uɐɥʇɐN
    May 6, 2010 at 0:17
  • 1
    You don't even need TeX. Just enter ϕᴍ,ᴘ(x) in plain text!
    – Mechanical snail
    Feb 7, 2013 at 12:35

16 Answers 16

Reset to default
46

According to reCAPTCHA:

Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one.

So therefore if nobody else figured out this one, you would be the first and you could legitimately type anything and succeed at it.

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2
  • 9
    So that would explain why it let me through when I accidentally mistyped a captcha...
    – Zach Johnson
    May 5, 2010 at 21:17
  • Yeah, the policy is harass some internet users to get your work done for free...
    – user148312
    May 19, 2014 at 19:21
57

Pfft... that's easy. Try this one:

worst captcha ever

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7
  • 2
    I smell a robot!
    – devinb
    May 5, 2010 at 14:10
  • 61
    Burnt waffle reform. easy.
    – Sky Sanders
    May 5, 2010 at 14:40
  • 1
    @Jon: I don't think that █ is an 'ARABIC PLACE OF SAJDAH' (U+06E9)
    – kennytm
    May 5, 2010 at 14:53
  • 3
    @Kenny: Ummm... they had an unfortunate fire?
    – Jon Seigel
    May 5, 2010 at 14:57
  • 1
    Pretty easy on on iPhone >++++++++++[>+++++++++++>+++++++++++>++++++++++++><<<<-]>>+>----><<<<>.>.>.
    – user146787
    May 5, 2010 at 21:59
  • 27
    Is it ▓ Reform?
    – Aarobot
    May 5, 2010 at 22:00
  • It looks kind of like a cake. Maybe it's "torte" reform.
    – user164291
    Aug 8, 2012 at 20:53
37

As promised, here's the one I got a few days ago:

alt text

Edit: One more from just now (looks like they are scanning math books):

alt text

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1
  • 11
    ++ wtf indeed. .
    – Sky Sanders
    May 5, 2010 at 22:50
30

This is a trick question: you fail if you can type it.
The cat and mouse game continues...

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26

Remember that, if the challenge is too "hard" to solve, you can request a new one with the "refresh" button.

Recaptcha and the "new challenge" button enclosed in a yellow freehand circle.

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1
  • 1
    Klaatu ampliti ni*hack cough*!
    – user164291
    Aug 8, 2012 at 20:54
22

You misunderstood - you are supposed to solve the equation as well.
I know it's tough but we have to keep the cyborgs out of Meta.

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22

Readable, just confusing. It seems like reCAPTCHA is now digitising house numbers on Street View as well ;)

enter link description here

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4
  • 2
    Nice. And odd that they know where to find the number, but then still need a human to confirm its value ;-)
    – Arjan
    Mar 28, 2012 at 5:47
  • 5
    I've seen this recently. No else that I know agreed with me, about those being house numbers though. I am so happy that there is some else who believes that they are house numbers too!
    – Ellie Kesselman
    Aug 8, 2012 at 20:24
  • Seriously dafuq!! o.O
    – Bhuvan Rikka 웃
    Aug 16, 2012 at 9:34
  • Are there 2 pi before number?
    – Danubian Sailor
    Aug 23, 2013 at 9:07
20

alt text

Now, isn't at least one of these supposed to be a real word?

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5
  • 10
    Google: 'Your search - joutandt - did not match any documents'. lolz - what are the odds of 0 google hits on a single word consisting of ascii characters?
    – Sky Sanders
    Aug 18, 2010 at 19:39
  • What's more impressive, we're discussing it on the Internet and it's still a Googlenope! (Also, I totally thought the second "word" was in Arabic at first.)
    – Pops
    Sep 17, 2010 at 18:27
  • Clearly it's "joutandt OOMMG!!!"
    – Ben Lee
    Mar 28, 2012 at 6:22
  • 2
    No, "18 15 23 44" don't count as a word in my book, even if rotated by 90°.
    – MvG
    Oct 5, 2012 at 19:56
  • @SkySanders Your comment is the top result, but nowadays there's also a Google Books results from something published in 1813...
    – Izkata
    Aug 3, 2014 at 22:06
18 
&phi;<sub>M,P</sub>(x)

φM,P(x)

(or use LaTeX \phi_{M,P}(x).)

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4
  • &phi; doesn't work though :) it's clearly the capital letter Phi: ɸ. I am not sure of the HTML code for that though.
    – Joshua
    May 5, 2010 at 13:49
  • 7
    @Joshua: The capital Greek Phi (&Phi;) is Φ (U+03A6), not ɸ which is the Cyrillic Ef (U+0444). There's also a phi symbol ϕ (U+03D5) which may render like the image, depending on the font.
    – kennytm
    May 5, 2010 at 13:54
  • 4
    @Joshua: &phi; and &Phi; -> φ and Φ
    – perbert
    May 5, 2010 at 14:23
  • 19
    You know, providing LaTeX equations in captchas would be excellent for mathoverflow.com to keep out the riff-raff. They're always complaining that they get too many elementary-level questions there... ;)
    – Ether
    May 5, 2010 at 14:49
13

I actually got 4 Greeks in a row. Sharing my favorite for posterity:

adessurn ... aw crap.

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11

First of all, I am human but no human being can decipher the ReCAPTCHA I just encountered. enter image description here

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7
  • 24
    Someone skipped differential calculus.
    – user156620
    Apr 23, 2011 at 8:45
  • You only need to type "helects" for that
    – YOU
    Apr 23, 2011 at 8:49
  • @YOU: Oh, there's no need for capitalization?
    – Hendrik Vogt
    Apr 23, 2011 at 9:17
  • @Hendrik, Yeah, I used to type like that, and It works, IIRC.
    – YOU
    Apr 23, 2011 at 9:25
  • 1
    What's so hard about (\deltaa_i)/(\deltaa_(i-1))?
    – Tamara Wijsman
    Feb 25, 2012 at 16:51
  • 6
    @TomWijsman: It's \partial a_i/\partial a_{i-1} also pronounced "del", "dou", and other weird stuff. math.stackexchange.com/questions/110565/…
    – Manishearth
    Mar 28, 2012 at 6:24
  • I guess so, that's over the top of my head...
    – Tamara Wijsman
    Mar 28, 2012 at 6:30
9

This is the best (or worst) CAPTCHA I've recieved.

enter image description here

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2
  • 4
    Oh, that's \sum_(i=0)^n((-1)^n)/(2n-1^(\Delta^n))).
    – Tamara Wijsman
    Feb 25, 2012 at 16:50
  • @TomWijsman: it's clearly (-1)^50 :)
    – CSᵠ
    Feb 27, 2013 at 21:20
6

I just got one with an integral from -∞ to ∞. Is reCAPTCHA digitizing math books this week?

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3
  • 3
    It's been for some time. I recall an integral from a few weeks ago.
    – perbert
    May 5, 2010 at 17:16
  • 5
    Hmmm... I wonder if we're supposed to solve these?
    – Bill the Lizard
    May 5, 2010 at 20:34
  • 5
    @Bill: But there wasn't anything to integrate -- just the integral symbol. That's why it was so frustrating!
    – mmyers
    May 5, 2010 at 21:40
4

I would have entered ompx.

You can also just press F5 to get another one.

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1
  • 6
    Is that popular demand? Don't think so.
    – user138231
    May 5, 2010 at 14:24
3

I think it is the symbol of diameter. Well... I can: ∅ and ϕ

This are some details of phi:

UTF-8: 0xCF 0x95
UTF-16: 0x03D5

C-form (octal escaped UTF-8): \317\225
XML-form (decimal): &#981;

Symbols in linx

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6
  • 13
    Are you a human?
    – Sky Sanders
    May 5, 2010 at 13:08
  • 1
    @code poet: Yes. In linux there is a very handy app that allows you to access all symbols.
    – Martijn Courteaux
    May 5, 2010 at 13:10
  • 20
    NULL SET and PHI are not the same glyph.
    – quack quixote
    May 5, 2010 at 13:25
  • 1
    @Quack Quixote: correct, the correct glyph is U+03D5 Greek Phi Symbol (referring to the posted image, it is the incorrect glyph). Windows also has a character lookup, called the Character Map.
    – Joshua
    May 5, 2010 at 13:38
  • Sadly, X's Alt Gr key mapping includes ø, but not phi.
    – perbert
    May 5, 2010 at 14:21
  • @Mart: What app is that?
    – John
    Mar 5, 2011 at 2:17
-2

Distorted text CAPTCHAs can be a little stressful also!

Seriously!

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2
  • 3
    When did SE turn into reddit ?
    – Pogrindis
    Jun 2, 2015 at 16:00
  • Must... Not... Type...
    – user474678
    Aug 23, 2019 at 19:11

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