So far the machines are winning...

reCAPTCHA is the solution to the prompt; if computer's couldn't read it, they can't read it.

Well, reCAPTCHA takes advantage of the fact that there is inherent distortion and reduction of quality of letterforms via the fact they were created before digital fonts and then scanned afterwards. In addition, they add further distortion to create variable letter forms. Now, while it is well done and puts captcha efforts to good use, there are still potentially interesting results that can be created via this contest.

So, is it possible to create a font that humans can read but computers can't (or have extreme difficulty with) without the added benefits conferred via reCAPTCHA? Ultimately, nothing we create will be able to stand up to a program written specifically for that font, but there is still plenty of room for creativity and kooky concepts.

That's like saying the solution to a faulty deadbolt is a chain lock. reCaptcha is a hack because Captcha is such a lousy experience.

Aaron you're right. You said what everybody here was thinking. The key in a battle though is to create the kooky concepts. The machines will catch up. They always eventually do.

Wow, I only just noticed my disgustingly wrong possessive that I unfortunately can't fix.

My point about reCAPTCHA is just that it uses the words that computers had difficulty with. The exact reason why the computers had the difficulty is separate.

And now I should come up with a real answer.

This is the most interesting premise for a battle yet!

Can we nominate someone else? I ask because I'm pretty sure fatbob's optical illusion type could be a strong contender.

Hmm..

here's a machine-looking font that the machines are possibly going to have a hard time trying to make sense of..

by the way, you can download this font from fontstruct for free..

I just tried an OCR over the same image i posted above and this was the result:

“LPTLH i a program that prori wrhr again bu bq grnrraing and grading Uia Iiuman an pai bu Lurrvn Lompurr programs LannoL For rsampIr1 humans an rrad dorrd r?t a hr onr hoiiin Li[’10L1J1 bu Lurr[’n Lompurr programs Lan’:’—LapLha.

The computer was still able to recognize some of the words pretty nicely.. hmm....
and interestingly, the machine read "humans" correctly .. he he he :)

Gimme suggestions..

My OCR program (OmniPage) read this as:

CNA 4TIP 71, m, 7, ~'am&?" irmct,.g ime..

y ' Y %t ˆ

19 1 & Lt rni 1 #1/ AM4 /, A.1 /AVJ. S

Adw v -ka

grelo ad))§elo ttll)4062cpo 010,

Craig, that is smart. An impressively simple solution!

Wow, the responses are coming in already! I better get going on mine...

Craig's is just great — clean, simple and probably extremely difficult for a computer to manage effectively.

Good idea Craig!

Loving these solutions!

Can anybody point to an effective site to test whether a font is machine-readable or not?

Props to Paul Rand

This is my try. The idea is to deceive the program by giving false input.
Readers may be advised to type the letters they see in white.
Done in inkscape.
Rgs

This is built from Myriad, so not really valid for the contest, but I'm interested as to how well it would work to confuse OCR:

Dulcius ex asperis
_____________________________________________
Personal Art and Design Portal of Ivan Gulkov
www.ivangdesign.com

@pica pusher,
that was nice.. simple and looks like it's gonna work big time...( didnt try though)

@fiestoforo,
just look at the picture with an eye as if a strong wind is there on your face... you'll come to know (why it was easily recognized by the computer when i tested)...

may be you should play a little with the size and weight of the negative text... but i think the OCRs will still tend to 'join the dots' to read the blacks...

-- eliason's was also a killer idea.. simple but it works!

Bijuneyyan, the whole point of fiestoforo's entry is that the reader should input the negative text, not the black. So the text easily recognized by the computer is not the correct text...

oops!... sorry!

You get the idea - apologies for the flicker - I could not create a smooth animation! HEALTH WARNING: STARING AT HIGH-CONTRAST FLICKERING IMAGES MAY CAUSE EPILEPTIC FITS FOR SOME INDIVIDUALS...so please scroll away!

hello
Can we beat the machines?
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The human perception rules

The dots and lines in these wonderful responses could be replaced with characters.

Machine read dialoge, men read movie title

I'd like to nominate Optica Normal, one of the TDC2 2009 winners. It's barely readable even for human:

http://tdc.org/images/tdc2_optica_full.jpg

Ouch. My eyes hurt.

The one from henrypijames really had me trippin behind my desk, great concept face! But why do all these captchas need to be so decorative (with a few exeptions).

That's only an idea.

*

A paper shredder and some dirt:

Man
Machine
Both Lose.

_________________________________
Michael Hernan

thought this would work, tested it so far, thought I would upload a quick example. not designing a font, just using a very readable one in a way an OCR wouldn't be able to read it.

first stab...

another one all based on the same negative/positive idea. I don't think captcha can read it...

I think we're designing prettier CAPTCHAs rather than better CAPTCHAs. Which is great as I don't think there *is* such a thing as a better CAPTCHA.

Hello,

This is an interesting thread, I would have loved to be here when there was more action. I thought I'd add a technical perspective to the game:

1. Clever fonts for captcha don't work. You can instruct the program to look for certain patterns in the text so as long as those don't change, it's really not complicated to break the captcha
2. Animated captchas don't work either because you can easily extract and merge all frames in a GIF.

So the only valid concept thus far is to have a set of rules from which you can generate fairly different shapes so that a single program cannot deduce the rules.

Hi. I'm new here. Just wanted to know when the next challenge will be up. Is it monthly?

When the robots take over, we will need to cipher all messages by inventing new fonts — most lasting 17hrs before enemy algorithms decode.

Hi, this is Miniblock another illegible font :)

:)

The best was Michael Hernan's (userone) post!.. :P kudos!

What do you think about Optica Negative...

Never done ones of these battles before, so i thought i'd give it a go.

smth i did for abc book this year:]

Just a bitmap/gestalt type idea here. Kidding with the whole Blackletter thing, heh. Although, you could use unconventional forms like blackletter or script to fool computers I would think. It would make it hard on people, though. I can barely make out the letters in some of those captchas.

It just occured to me that if the purpose of the excercise is to allow the human to merely select a sequence of letters, say CBDD for login purposes, several lines of complete alphabets can by displayed with the letters to be selected indicated by color, underline etc. The selection rule (color or underline etc.) can be changed at random. For example the instructions for CBDD would be "choose the bold letters shown within asteriks"

AB*C*DEFGHIJKL...
A*B*CDEFGHIJKL...
ABC*D*EFGHIJKL...
ABC*D*EFGHIJKL...

@Luey my machine just exploded!

Obviously, I've been listening to Kraftwerk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T65NpyfPkQ

///Gerardo Ruiz Babsia///

@Vladimir Tamari: Right. Why couldn't there just be string of regular text letters, where the pertinent letters were bolded (or a different font)? That way, the CAPTCHA would work like...

Please enter the correct letters to proceed:

A[B]CD[E][F]GH[I]J

The answer: BEFI

SO simple.
--
http://samoff.com

@tim,

well, I've two things to say:

1.It's easy to code for such strings of letters and find the odd ones out. That even eliminates the need of 'reading' an image. And just to see how interesting the way softwares are working these days, try google sets!

2. This battle is about "creating typefaces" which can be read by humans but at the same time, make it difficult for machines to figure it out. (And not about the solution to the real problem, there could be plenty.)