China’s train ticket site has an image CAPTCHA so hard that 92% guess wrong. Can you do better?

China’s 12306 train ticket sales site has come in for a lot of criticism over the years – there’s a detailed timeline in my last post on the subject – and it’s all deserved. But its latest annoyance is also sort of amusing.

In an attempt to ensure users aren’t robots, the site has instituted an image CAPTCHA system. But the questions are hard. So hard that reportedly only 8 percent of users get it right on the first try, and only 27 percent pass on the second try.

Can you do better? Here are a few samples net users and Tech in Asia have gathered. These are full-resolution images, by the way. (Also note that this is actually an even more difficult task in Chinese, as the Chinese language doesn’t have plurals, so you don’t get any hint about how many targets you might need to find).

Identify the squid(s?) and wings.

The wings are easy enough, but is there just one squid or two? Or are there zero squid and that’s actually an octopus?

Identify the kangaroo

By process of elimination, I guess we can assume it’s the top left image. But that’s distorted as hell. And who knows what that top right image is supposed to be…

Identify the dashboard and toothpicks.

Are those things in the cup on the bottom row toothpicks? It’s difficult to tell.