Hello my friend, you know what I’ve been thinking?

 

What, Vassilis?

 

We have fundamental knowlenge of mind ambigrams. But I wonder, is there something else to be discovered, hidden in plain sight?

 

You mean something that we all know and don’t know it’s an ambigram?

 

Almost. Let me walk you through my thoughts.

 

I’ve been pondering on exactly how I’ve been going about discovering new ambigram types, and while I really should dedicate a whole theory section to this method, I’ll give a quick synopsis here. This trick has really guided me in my previous explorations for new types of ambigrams.

 

Now, what’s this trick? It’s to ask questions. Questions that show what’s going on in an ambigram. A very good question that fits amazingly well with this is “what if?”.

 

What do you mean, V?

 

Let’s stay in the mind category, in the interpretation group and see if we can use “what if?” to determine how these work.

 

Figure-ground. “What if what I am supposed to read is not the letters, but the negative space instead?”

 

Middle form. “What if a letter could be two letters at once?”

 

Arrangement. “What if the letters are randomly displayed and I’m supposed to discover how the piece should be read?”

 

Fill the gap. “What if I can’t see the whole letters?”

 

Now, here’s the crucial part. We can find a thousand  “what if” questions, but this doesn’t mean that we’ll end up with a thousand ambigram types. But while we are on this exploration, we will discover some. Like the one that I’m going to talk about now.

 

Which is?

 

Remember when I said it’s hidden in plain sight? Here you have…

   Hidden cue ambigrams 

 

Here’s one.

 

 

Out of order. Oh! What’s this? Is this a B? A border? Out of border?

 

That’s right my friend. Now tell me, how do you feel about it?

 

Isn’t this pretty similar to fill-the-gap ambigrams, maybe? How is it different?

 

You’re an excellent student my friend! I like you. This question is super important. Let’s see what’s happening here.

 

The process goes something like this: Here’s a typographic piece. Good. I can read it. Good. So what?.. Wait! What’s this? Is this a letter? Oh! And if it’s a letter, then this word becomes this other word. Oh! I can also read that! Wow!

 

Which is exactly what you thought when you saw the “Out of border” piece.

 

So, how’s that different from fill-the-gap ambigrams? Didn’t our minds fill the missing piece to form a B?

 

No. The question in the fill-the-gap ambigram is “What if I can’t see the whole letters?”

 

The question in the hidden cue ambigram is “What if I can’t see ALL the letters?”

 

How is that different?

 

Fundamentally. The key difference is that fill-the-gap ambigrams challenge the viewer to mentally reconstruct what’s missing, while hidden cue ambigrams encourage the viewer to notice something that was subtly there all along.

 

Another way to describe this is that fill-the-gap ambigrams rely on absence, whereas hidden cue ambigrams rely on presence. It’s the difference between what’s missing vs. what’s hidden in plain sight.

 

In fact, when asking myself the “what if” questions, I though “what if we can’t see all the letters?”. And I turned it around and came up with the “out of border” piece.

 

Oh! I get it now. Can you show me more examples?

 

Of course! Here’s another one!

 

 

I can see where you’re going with this. The sound of train (and rain) helps me sleep as well.

 

Me too. So, where do you think hidden cue ambigrams fall in the ambigram class spectrum? Are they form-driven (reliant on the individual glyphs) or linguistic (reliant on the entire phrase)?

 

I would say that they are linguistic ambigrams. Or at least, towards this end of the spectrum.

 

And that’s why I think you’re an amazing person! You got it, my friend.

 

After all, I read Ambigram Horizons, Vassilis.

 

Oh yeah? Me too! You just put a smile on my face. And I’m glad to have you on my side on this journey. And it’s a long way. It’s like a mile. Oh… smile… mile… here’s another hidden cue ambigram for you.

 

 

Haha! I’m going to try creating one of those ambigrams.

 

I’m waiting to see what you come up with. But hey! Here are another two pieces of mine.

 

 

 

I like those. Are there any other artists that have drawn hidden cue ambigrams?

 

Well, to my knowledge, after studying this type, I only came across this piece by John Langdon.

 

 

I can read the TEXT, and also… TEXTURE?

 

That’s right. Isn’t this cool? This piece has a unique feature as well. You cannot only read the U, but your mind fills the rest of the word. It’s not like you read “textu”, but “texture” instead.

 

I’m amazed.

 

So am I.

So what about the sub-category? Where do we put hidden-cue ambigrams?

 

Well, here’s the mind map again. Where do you think we shall put it?

 

 

Hmmm… Probably on ‘focus’? Since we must focus on this hidden cue to find the second word?

 

Here’s the catch. Even if this is a nice argument, hidden cues fall under the interpretation sub-category. And that’s because we interpret something that is subtly visible and hence we discover the second word.

 

Actually, you can say that every mind ambigram falls into both ‘interpretation’ and ‘focus’ sub-categories. I can ask you “In a figure-ground piece, don’t you focus on the negative space in order to get the second word?”, or “In a containment ambigram, don’t you interpret part of the whole word as a second word?”. But these two sub-categories play another role in our study. Our minds do billions of activities at once. Focus area is used for those ambigrams whose main brain function requires a shift in focus. And interpretation likewise. It’s more of a tool for us to navigate the mind category and invent new types of ambigrams that will fall into this category.

 

Now, back to hidden cue ambigrams, the main thing that our brain doesis realize that something that’s subtly visible can be interpreted as a letter. Thus, we get a mind map that looks like this.

 

 

Nice! We have six types of mind ambigrams. Are there any more?

 

Well, we can’t leave the right side alone. Containment ambigrams have their close friends as well. And of course there will be more interpretation ambigrams. This horizon is full of surprises, my friend.

 

Oh, so we have more of both? Mind-blowing!

 

Indeed, mind-blowing!

 

Ok, now tell me a bit about what’s coming next, I can’t wait. Are we staying here or are we visiting the blue horizon again?

 

Well, there are some amazing things in the geometric ambigrams that we haven’t talked about, but I would like to stay here for a little bit, now that we’ve gotten the hang of it.

 

That’s perfect, V. I’m glad I saw something new today.

 

I’m glad you read this as well, my friend. Have a blessed day.

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