The two-disc Blu-ray and the two-disc Extended Edition DVD releases of Ron Howard’s recently released Da Vinci Code sequel “Angels & Demons” will feature a special bonus feature called:

This is an Ambigram

This bonus chapter of the disc sets will feature ambigram artist John Langdon, and will discuss the ambigram designs that he created for the book and movie.  The bonus feature will also go into detail on how John Langdon became the inspiration behind Dan Brown’s leading character, Robert Langdon.

It is unclear if there will be a single disc release of the movie, and if so, whether it will contain this bonus.  Make sure to read the packaging before purchasing.

Our best sources indicate that the releases will occur on the following dates:

• UK “Angels & Demons” release: Sept 14, 2009
• German-language “Illuminati” release (“Illuminati” is the name being used for “Angels & Demons” in German): October 22, 2009
• American “Angels & Demons” release: November 24, 2009.

If you love ambigrams (especially the work of John Langdon), you will definitely want to check out “This is an ambigram” on the “Angels & Demons” optical disc releases.

Ambigram, the game

FlipScript has released the world’s first ambigram card game, called simply “Ambigram”. The game is notable in that all of the 50 playing cards display an ambigram on both the front and the back of each card.

The rules are simple: Each card in your hand will contain an ambigram, displaying one word when it is read upright, and another word when it is read upside-down (like “Angel” / “Finger”).  You can play either of the two words in your ambigram on either of the two words that are currently displayed on the deck (like “Drink” / “Angel”).

The first few rounds are simple, since you will have lots of different ways to play the possibilities in your hand, but you had better plan ahead and pay attention not just to your own cards, but to what cards your opponents have, because the game gets a lot trickier in the later rounds.  You don’t want to get caught drawing a fist full of cards when your opponents are almost out!

To make the game even more challenging, your opponent might zing you at any time by slapping you with a red “Double Joker” or a red “Double Angel” card that contains the same word in both directions, doubling the chances that you’ll have to draw!

Of course, you could plan to zing them back with a red “Double Siren” card, but don’t get caught holding that card in your hand for long, because not only is it twice as hard for your opponent to play on, it’s also twice as hard for you to get rid of!  You had better plan ahead, or your scheme to attack at the end when it can hurt the most might come back to bite YOU!

Simple to learn, but filled with plenty of twists (literally), Ambigram! the game provides hours of fun for the whole family.

About the Playing Cards

The Ambigram deck itself seems impossible at first, and in fact, it would have been impossible just a few years ago. No human being could have designed it alone, even if they possessed several lifetimes to work on the problem.

For example, below is a picture of one “suit” from the game: the complete set of 7 “Joker” cards (there are also 7 such suits in the deck, for a total of 49 ambigram cards).  You will see that all of these cards say “Joker” when presented in this orientation, but all 7 of them also display a different word when turned around.  Every single card in a “suit” is totally different, yet viewed the other way, they are also all the same.

The center card has its corner ambigrams displayed in red since it says “Joker” in  both orientations.  The red cards become a critical part of effective game strategy.

The Joker "Suit"

To find exactly what words to use for the deck, a computer was programmed to go through the entire English Dictionary, word by word, and locate 7 words that could all form an ambigram with themselves, and also form an ambigram with every one of the other 7 words that were being located – a total of 49 ambigrams in all.

The Ambigram card suits (click for full view)

It took the computer 16 days to go through the Dictionary and return the answer: Angel, Drink, Finger, Joker, Killer, Learn and Siren - the amazing set of words that make up the 49 cards for Ambigram! the Game.  Those 49 ambigram cards are joined by a single green Wild card, for a total of 50 spinnable round cards that play out differently every time!

Ambigram! the Game is available from FlipScript Ambigram Products for $18.99, although introductory pricing is currently in effect.

Captcha Example

Unfortunately, lately they’ve been failing to do their job.

Could ambigram captchas be the solution?

This is no small problem. Concert giant Ticketmaster claims that they have been battling hackers ‘like the dickens’. The hackers continually defeat Ticketmaster’s captcha, claim large blocks of tickets, and sell them on eBay, Craigslist and reseller site StubHub for very impressive profits.

This Wall Street Journal article states that the highest price for a ticket on TicketMaster for the recent Hannah Montana “Best of Both Worlds” concert ticket was $63, yet the average price for tickets to that show through ticket reseller site StubHub was $237, a profit of almost 400%.

Ticketmaster isn’t alone. Yahoo’s captcha was recently hacked, Microsoft’s captcha was hacked, even the highly regarded captcha for Google was hacked.

According to the Wikipedia entry on captchas, programs that defeat captchas usually contain the following functionality:

Pre-processing: Removal of background clutter and noise.

Segmentation: Splitting the image into regions which each contain a single character.

Classification: Identifying the character in each region.

Furthermore, the Wikipedia article states that the most difficult step to automate is usually #2: The segmentation of the captcha into its individual characters.

I propose that one possible solution would be an ambigram captcha.

An ambigram based captcha would make both the #2 and the #3 stages much more difficult. Stage #2 would be more difficult since any separation technology that works in one orientation would NOT work in the other orientation, due to the way that ambigram characters combine in a finished design.  A character in an ambigram will often span multiple letters, but usually only in one orientation. A human does not have a hard time with visually separating the letter forms, but a computer would have a very difficult time doing separation on an ambigram captcha.

For a computer to do the separation step on an ambigram, it would first need to do the Classification step (#3) to determine what characters are there, but if it could do that, it wouldn’t need to do the separation at all!  Classification is very easy for a human, and we do not require Separation to get there.

The Stage #3 Classification step itself would also be much more difficult, even if stage #2 could somehow be completed with an acceptable level of performance. After all, it is hard to OCR a word when the font itself has tens of thousands of characters, none of which are public, and all of which are different!

Also, the casing of letters automatically varies within a word, letterforms take on different characteristics based on their usage, and letters split and connected in unexpected and unpredictable ways (unexpected to an OCR system, anyway).

In fact, Stages #2 and #3 would be so hard to crack that Stage #1 (background noise and character warping) could be completely eliminated. Since this is the easiest part of the process to crack anyway, this won’t be a large loss from a security standpoint. Plus, the elimination of the swirls, random lines and noise from the background will make it easier for a human to read, which has become a big problem with highly deformed “regular” captchas.

Here is an example of what an ambigram captcha may look like:

Ambigram Captcha

As a side benefit, having 2 words in the captcha (one in each orientation) will make it even more difficult to develop an automated way to hack the system.

Of course, the other common complaint about captcha systems is that they can become too difficult for even some humans to read. Ambigram captchas would be no exception. Sometimes people do have a difficult time making out the letter forms, especially the first time they see one.

However, the human has the advantage here in that the generated words could be made to be “related” in a way that would be difficult for a computer to comprehend, but would help a human determine the two words from their context.

For instance, in the captcha above, the two words are “teach” and “learn”. This is easy for a person to determine based on context and the fact that those two words “must be the right answer” since they are related and they “match”, but this type of abstract, high-level thinking would be all but impossible for a computer to perform, especially if the database of interconnected word pairs was very large.

Ambigrams are also based on uniquely human psychological variables, including how we read letter forms. Furthermore, they are a form of optical illusion, making it even more difficult for a computer based OCR system to decipher. In the ambigram above, a human would “understand” that the extra leg on the bottom left of the “a” in teach is unnecessary and would simply ignore it. An automated system would easily trip up on small things like that.

Of course, its not to be underestimated that an ambigram captcha would likely be one of the most beautiful captcha systems in existence! Instead of dreading the deciphering of a warped piece of mangled text presented against a grainy, low-contract background, users may actually look forward to the small puzzle that an ambigram captcha represents.

Although not perfect in every way, ambigram captchas may be one solution to the current methods that automated system use to gain entry into systems that only humans should be able to access.

Comments? Feel free to share them below.

Illuminati Intro Screen

Overall, not a bad download, and you can’t beat the price: free.

Titanium Ambigram Ring

Custom ambigram rings are becoming a hot product in the couples market. The entire concept of ambigram rings is brand-new, and if you wanted such an item in the past, it was both extremely expensive, and very time consuming.  Until recently, the total ambigram ring count was estimated at less than five in the world.

As recently as last year, if you wanted an ambigram ring, you would have to commission an ambigram to be created by an artist, and then take the design that was created to a custom jeweler and negotiate for the custom manufacturing of the piece.  Cascadia Design Studio, a jeweler specializing in titanium, has recently started offering ambigram rings for its customers, and making the process much easier and much faster by putting the entire operation on the Internet.  You can create an ambigram directly on their web site (including preview), order it on-line, and it will be delivered to you in about 8-10 days.

Cascadia Design Studio even offers a discount if you purchase 2 identical rings at once, making the ambigram couple ring idea even more attractive. Ed Ferguson, the company founder, reports that a significant number of the ambigram rings ordered through his site are purchased in pairs.

Semper Fedelis Ambigram Ring Gift

Ed shared this story of Mae, a young woman who shipped an ambigram ring to her Marine boyfriend Ryan, who was stationed in Afghanistan.  The ring said “Semper” upright and “Fidelis” upside down.  “Semper Fedelis” means “Always Faithful” and is the motto of the US Marine Corp.

Mae was instant messaging with her Marine man when he opened his present.  Here is a clip from their conversation:

[8:39:51 AM] Mae B. says: whats it say
[8:40:11 AM] Ryan says: “Fidelis”
[8:40:14 AM] Mae B. says: turn it over and read it
[8:40:31 AM] Mae B. says: isnt that awesome?
[8:40:41 AM] Ryan says: holy CRAP

So, if you’re looking for a great conversation piece, a unique way of showing your special ‘connection’ to someone, or want to give that “holy CRAP” experience to someone yourself, stop by Cascadia Design Studio and see what kind of ambigram ring magic you can make.

Angel / Devil Ambigram tattoo (on lead singer of Fuel Toryn Green)

Ambigram tattoos have been rising in popularity for years, and for good reason. No other design allows someone to present two messages to the world within the same physical space, and in such a cool way.

Of course, they are also a great conversation piece, as anyone with an ambigram tattoo will tell you. Anyone who is familiar with ambigrams will have no problem commenting on it.

“Hey, cool ambigram. What does it say upside-down?”

Although there are a few different artists specializing in ambigram tattoos, the Picasso of ambigram artistry is Mark Palmer, who has created literally thousands of ambigram tattoo designs. You can even create your own ambigram tattoo from Mark Palmer’s artwork at his WowTattoos web site.

Ambigram tattoos have become even more popular as a result of the success of Dan Brown’s book Angels and Demons (and the Ron Howard movie by the same name). Although exact figures are not known, it is estimated that tens of thousands of people have found these artistic creations worthy of a permanent spot on their bodies.

Although the popularity of ambigram tattoos remains, ambigram jewelry is also heating up, possibly since it keeps the same “coolness” without being quite as permanent. For example, you can get an ambigram necklace or an ambigram ring at the FlipScript ambigram products web site.

So, whether your tastes lie in ambigram tattoos or ambigram jewelry, Wired magazine said it best when they claimed that “Ambigrams are the hottest trend in typography since Helvetica” (May, 2009).