Each Friday morning I post a riddle or brain teaser. The idea is to get you to think outside the box and exercise your brain. This week’s teaser is an optical illusion, that was shared with me by BosGuy reader, Joey.
I’ll confirm answers in the afternoon so don’t worry if you don’t see your comment posted right away. I want to give everyone a chance to guess.
This Week’s Riddle: The squares marked A and B are the same shade of gray. How is that possible?
Thanks again to Joey for sharing.
BosGuy 
Not me; I didn’t know the shadow did as much work as it does until I read the answer. 😛
But D is correct. I’m in the graphic design biz and the colors surrounding anything affect how its perceived a lot more than you think. Even color correcting a photo on your computer should ideally be made with a combination of a neutral gray screen background, “daytime” light bulbs rather than fluorescent ones, and a black hood around your monitor to mask everything else around you.
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oh man i remember this example… it’s in every single graphic design / color theory textbook lol
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According to Joey the illusion works by surrounding the B square with darker squares so it seems lighter than it really is by contrast. But the shadow also helps by making those surrounding squares seem even darker without you noticing because its a soft shadow and it gets darker gradually.
Clearly Joey is “wicked smart” because I never would have figured that out. You can read more about this here, http://web.mit.edu/persci/people/adelson/checkershadow_illusion.html
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