How many holes does this shirt have?
A shirt has an opening for the head, two openings for the arms, and an opening at the bottom.
That makes four.
Simple, right?
Not necessarily.
A viral puzzle built around a damaged shirt has turned this ordinary question into a surprisingly complicated exercise in visual reasoning. Depending on exactly what is visible in the picture—and, more importantly, what you mean by a “hole”—the answer can change.
That is why these puzzles are so effective.
They appear to test arithmetic, but they actually test how carefully you interpret visual information.
The most commonly discussed version shows a shirt with several visible tears or openings in addition to its normal openings. Some of those tears appear to go through both the front and back of the garment, while others may simply be openings in one layer.
So the real question isn’t simply:
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