Eyes?
What exactly is an eye?
An eye for our purpose is simply a hole in a shape.
That sounds easy enough, but Quasels have a habit of making holes look much more complicated than they really are.
Quasels love using their eyes to weave through one another—and sometimes through themselves.
When a Quasel links two of its own eyes like in the image below, don't be fooled into inventing an extra hole. The two "hands" interlink, but unless they are visibly connected there are really only two eyes. If you cut one open, only one is left. Like a circular chain has just as many eyes as it has segments, and not one extra for the circle it forms.
Counting eyes often requires a different way of thinking than counting shapes.
Sometimes it helps to imagine the Quasel made from soft rubber. Stretch it. Bend it. Squash it. Twist it. As long as you don't cut it or glue parts together, the number of eyes never changes.
Take the Q in the Quasels logo.
At first glance it doesn't obviously have five eyes. But imagine gently stretching the two vertical strands sideways until they move outside the circular part of the letter. Suddenly the structure becomes much easier to understand: four eyes inside the main body, plus one in the little appendix.
This kind of mental stretching can be surprisingly difficult at first—but it gets easier with practice.
After revealing the artwork, you'll notice that each Quasel displays its own eye count for each colour, not just the total.
That means every solved puzzle becomes a practice exercise. Try counting the eyes again on the coloured artwork and compare your answer with the numbers shown. Before long you'll begin recognising the patterns much more quickly.
One final tip: don't just look for the small holes. Some of the easiest eyes to miss are the largest ones, as they don't look like holes at all.
Can you count the holes in the object below? Fortunately, Quasels never have hidden holes like some cheeses do. What you cannot see is not to be counted.
Unlike counting shapes, counting eyes is entirely optional. You don't need to enter the correct or any eye count to reveal the artwork. Think of it as an extra challenge for those who enjoy a little more topology.
