Category: View From Your Window

Damn. The picture's URL was coded for around ten minutes and gave the game away. We've disguised it now. We'll stick with the contest, but exclude all those who cheated – and told us how they did it! Fair?

A reader writes:

I do this ALL THE TIME.  I avert my eyes after clicking on the link in the RSS reader because the caption always shows before the pic. When in my peripheral vision I can see that the image is loaded, then I look and try to guess. I too am getting pretty good. Maybe hit it in the general region 70% of the time, though I have been known to confuse Shanghai with NYC.

Okay. So the first contest is the above window view. You have till noon tomorrow to guess it. Country first, then extra points for city and/or state. If we have a tie, the time will count. Obviously, the sender – and his or her family/friends – cannot enter. So be a sport and don’t. Another writes:

FWIW, I got Alaska from yesterday. The telephone pole looked like the standard American issue. From there, the ice was a giveaway. It’s been neat to realize how much visual information our brains register without our knowing it — looking at an anonymous photograph for clues and cues draws them into consciousness. There’s no mistaking a Chinese apartment block, for example, nor an American backyard.

Another:

I’m glad to know I’m not the only dweeb out there doing this.

Another:

I do it all the time.  Sometimes I’m stunningly close; often I’m literally half a world away. Incidentally, my all-time personal favorite came a few months ago when I sent a View From Your Window link to my daughter, since I knew it was taken at her college.  It turned out to be a View of Her Window, across the small courtyard of her dormitory.  How fun is that?

Another:

This is about the coolest idea you’ve had in some time, especially for those of us who would love a copy of the book but are sending two young’uns to daycare and therefore are too frugal to pony up. I’d recommend “closest to the pin” — i.e., give country, state, and town.  If you post a pic from Raleigh, NC, and nobody submits Raleigh, the winner should be the person who guesses Durham as opposed to, say, Charlotte.

So have at it. By noon tomorrow. Put “VFYW Contest” in the content line of the email.

A reader writes:

Does anybody else do this?  In the view from the window, I try to guess where it was taken from (at the country level at least) before scrolling down to see the caption.  I’m getting pretty good at it.

Maybe once a week, we should post a window view without a caption and have a contest. The winner gets a free VFYW book.