# Just Sharing A Captcha **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 9, 2011, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-sharing-a-captcha/602435 "2011-11-09T22:36:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![tr0psn4j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/958977/32.png) [@tr0psn4j](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tr0psn4j)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2011, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-sharing-a-captcha/602435/1 "2011-11-09T22:36:35Z")
These things are getting out of hand! I[got this](http://i.imgur.com/TbWF6.jpg)a month ago and I still laugh thinking about it. Anyway, I couldn’t figure out how to type it so I must be some sort of robot. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2011, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-sharing-a-captcha/602435/2 "2011-11-09T23:16:16Z")
> [@tr0psn4j](#): > > These things are getting out of hand! > > I[got this](http://i.imgur.com/TbWF6.jpg)a month ago and I still laugh thinking about it. > > Anyway, I couldn’t figure out how to type it so I must be some sort of robot. 😃 Awesome username post combo! (Your name could itself be a captcha.) ---
**Author:** ![Crown\_Prince\_of\_Irony](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ed655f/32.png) [@Crown\_Prince\_of\_Irony](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crown_Prince_of_Irony)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2011, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-sharing-a-captcha/602435/3 "2011-11-09T23:17:16Z")
If I understand correctly, the way Captchas work is that they have one word that is known (sometimes an actual word, and sometimes a string of “sensible nonsense” like the one in your image), and one word that is unknown. Typing in the first word confirms your human and/or Turing machine status, while typing in the second only helps them digitize the old books that provide the source text - if the first is correct, then they assume the second is also correct. I’ve gotten something similar before, where I had a normal text string followed by something untypable (in my case, it looked like Cyrillic). I typed the first string correctly, then, lacking an Eastern European keyboard, followed it with a bunch of random text, and it passed. But right now, someone in Russia is reading a digital book and wondering “vat in ze hell does ‘grndsdf9ds’ mean?” ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2011, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-sharing-a-captcha/602435/4 "2011-11-09T23:36:48Z")
You’re talking about recaptcha which is a particular captcha group that is using them to pull double duty. A regular captcha is just a random arrangement of letters that a spam program shouldn’t be able to figure out. Recaptcha adds a word pulled from a digitized text using OCR. It doesn’t decide what the word means based on one person’s guess but takes them all in aggregate. If over a thousand captchas 97% say the word is homes then the program decides it most likely means homes. If the highest any particular letter order can rank is, say 4% because no one can read it and they just type random letters, then it assumes the words is unreadable and flags it for more careful and human based attention. ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2011, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-sharing-a-captcha/602435/5 "2011-11-09T23:51:52Z")
Δτₒ≃ Best I could do. Unicode doesn’t seem to support a subscript capital D. For reference, I typed each character by holding ctrl-shift, pressing “U”, releasing “U”, then entering the four-digit [Unicode value](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unicode_characters) for the character. (This was on my Ubuntu machine. I don’t know offhand how you enter Unicode on Windows.) ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2011, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-sharing-a-captcha/602435/6 "2011-11-10T01:29:46Z")
\Delta au\_D \simeq ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2011, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-sharing-a-captcha/602435/7 "2011-11-10T01:41:43Z")
[Here’s](http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f44/JoeyJoeyPP/b.jpg) one I got a few months ago. ---
**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2011, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-sharing-a-captcha/602435/8 "2011-11-11T04:04:33Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > [Here’s](http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f44/JoeyJoeyPP/b.jpg) one I got a few months ago. You were ordering porn, weren’t you? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![EvilTOJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee59a6/32.png) [@EvilTOJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EvilTOJ)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2011, 10:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-sharing-a-captcha/602435/9 "2011-11-11T10:34:41Z")
Dude it says \*\*ofource \*\* :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Lare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/53a042/32.png) [@Lare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lare)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2011, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-sharing-a-captcha/602435/10 "2011-11-11T13:45:35Z")
I consider myself honored to be part of a group of people who, among other things, save screenshots of captchas. Sadly, all mine are boring. ---
**Author:** ![PlainJain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5daacb/32.png) [@PlainJain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlainJain)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2011, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-sharing-a-captcha/602435/11 "2011-11-11T14:04:13Z")
The strangest one I’ve seen is “republican messiah”. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2011, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-sharing-a-captcha/602435/12 "2011-11-11T15:16:35Z")
[Here’s](http://www.whosay.com/sarahsilverman/photos/30977) one from Sarah Silverman that she put on on Facebook or Twitter a while back.