Rob Lambert blogged over the weekend on being a tester as opposed to be a follower of something that someone else said. This triggered a little challenge, that my wife and I crossed while taking a closer look on a wedding present we got two years ago.
A former colleague of mine is working in a supermarket, and he was able to organize a collection of smurfs put as gift into some candy eggs. Since my wife collects these toys from the eggs, this was a neat present.
I took two pictures from the arrangement. It’s a smurf house with some smurfs in it, and there is something wrong with it. Tell me what you notice. Here are the pictures (hopefully in high enough resolution):
In a follow-up I will reveal what my wife and I noticed.
Hello Markus,
Interesting post. :) You are speaking that something should be wrong. Perhaps for you it is easy to tell what is right or wrong as you have some kind of expert in the house (assuming your wife is the Smurf-expert) For me I can only tell that there is something questionable. In this case I would question the reason of having the fishing gear on the ground in picture 2. Why is it there, is it complete, is there something missing, is the circle matching the picture or is it borrowed from something else?
Obviously this seems to be wrong? only the context is missing and therefore not able to tell if it is wrong or right. it stays questionable.
Another question can be asked, what has the painter to do with the pie?
Looking to the whole picture and who is living in that house, the question can be asked: what happens to the smurf-village. As far as I know they all live in their own houses.
A great example you posted. What do you think is wrong? Is the question: what is wrong the correct one or would it be better to ask: what make it less usable/valuable?
Or even better: When do you think this toy is usable?
Regards,
Jeroen
A challenge! I like…
At first the smartass in me was going to say “It’s not because you say something is wrong, that that automatically means that something is wrong”, but then I noticed that:
– These smurfs (a Belgian “invention”, by the way have a strange sense of perspective. The view out of the 4 windows is not in sync. The upper left window (first floor) shows a ground floor perspective of a garden with an other smurf house nearby. The two windows on the right only show a blue sky. Makes no sense, unless the smurf house is leaning on the edge of a cliff, of course. The ground floor window on the left shows green or blue, I cannot really tell from the pictures – in any way it seems strange to me.
– The attributes of all the smurf figures are mixed up. The female smurf is watering books, while book smurf is reading a plant. Artistic smurf is painting a cake, while handy smurf is working on a present with his appliances. Cooking smurf is looking at something that unidentifiable and overflowing that seems quite weird to me – probably wrong attribute too.
– And by the way, How did these smurfs get on the upper floor? No doors, no staircase (and no ladder outside, too :-)
Just my two cent’s.
— Zeger
The lack of a staircase also jumps out at me. Also, there is a fireplace on the first floor, but I do not see it on the 2nd floor. This could be brick hidden by drywall, but I don’t see a chimney popping out of the top of the house, so I’m going to call that a bug.
Nice little challenge for a Monday morning, thanks!
…and it seems to me that the (possibly) hidden chimney would go straight through the 2nd floor window.
It could of course be normal practice in smurf-land to build a chimney *around* the window.
The greatness of this challenge is because the simplicity, my compliments. Something you might question is also:
1. the reason for 2 door handles. (is this door able to be opened in to directions?)
2. is it a construction error on the second floor that the screws doesn’t match: upper right outer side: 2 screws in bench, on the other side just one screw. although the left inner side has to screws in respect to the right inner side.
3. when the house is open, it visualize 4 rooms, when you close it, you have 2 rooms, Does that match some common sense? :)
4. smurfs are already that small, I cannot imagine that mice are even smaller (the mouse hole downstairs) or is that a mouse hole?
5. is the window in the left side open and because of that you can see another house and on the right side the window is closed and therefore you’re not able to look at it?
A good choice to post 2 pictures of teh same object in different angels. I believe a great example how one object can be used to compare with the same object.
As far as I see it you were able to proof that the angle how you approach things help to look at objects and define valuable questions. We might learn from this that we should look beyond our skills and vision and learn.
Thanks Markus
The only thing I have to compare your smurf house to is a conventional house but even allowing for the differences between smurfs and men, a few things strike me as odd about your smurf house:
1) There is no bathroom
2) There is no kitchen
3) There are no bedrooms
4) The chimney breast does not extend above the ground floor
5) There is no obvious outlet (like a chimney) for the smoke from the lit fire
6) All the furniture on the 1st floor appears to be floating above the orange skirting boards
7) They appear to be boiling a small blackboard in a cauldron in the fireplace
and anything else I noticed was covered by other people …
What first caught my attention is that the label on the top says (I’ll write it out to make it clear):
plus Milk
minus Kakao
Does that mean pure milk?
I’m not sure I agree with the two door handle comment, it could be a double door. Unlikely, maybe, but possible.
The windows are strange as has been pointed out, the house must stand on a climate border as it rains looking out through some windows while in others there’s a clear sky.
Interesting one :-)
I dunno, if you live in a world where its ok to have blue skin, anything could be acceptable. :)
Only now stumbled over your challenge. Was hard to skip the answers already present ;)
Here are my thoughts:
1. The chimney finishes in the ceiling instead of going through the first floor and the roof
2. The combination of each smurf with the connected “tool” is wrong (from my point of view)
3. If you open the door of the house the person entering will run into a wooden pole
4. There are no stairs from ground to 1st floor