Optical illusion: Only 1 in 20 people can spot what’s missing in this alphabet puzzle. Can you?

Okay, it’s time to give your brain a serious workout—and no, we’re not talking about Sudoku or those “count the triangles” puzzles. This is one of those sneaky, maddening, “how did I miss that?!” optical challenges that messes with your head in the best way possible.At first glance, it looks innocent. Just a grid of capital letters, scrambled like a fridge full of alphabet magnets after a toddler’s been through it. But look closer… and the twist reveals itself:One letter from the English alphabet is completely missing.That’s right. A to Z — all should be here… but one letter decided to ghost the party.Your job? Find the missing letter. Sounds simple, right? Ha. Wait until you try.

So what makes this so difficult?

Glad you asked. This isn’t your average classroom alphabet board. This grid was designed to outsmart your brain and throw your perception into a loop. Literally.

1. Repetition throws you off

Some letters pop up again and again. You’ll see “B” ten times, “M” in three corners, “Z” winking from the middle. And suddenly you think: “Did I already see Q? Wait—was that an O or a D?!” Your brain starts second-guessing itself faster than when you try to remember if you locked the front door.

2. No A-to-Z order to help you cheat

You won’t find anything neat like a row that reads “A-B-C-D.” Oh no. This puzzle has zero alphabetical flow. It’s pure chaos. You’ll find “W-T-P-L” next to “G-H-X-Z,” and your brain will try to make sense of it all. Spoiler: it won’t.

3. Looped layouts twist your logic

The letter placement follows no traditional rows, columns, or diagonal hints. Instead, they’re arranged in little clusters, loops, spirals—whatever it takes to trick your brain into thinking the full set is there.

But one letter is still missing, hiding in plain sight by not being there at all.

4. Your memory becomes the enemy

After staring at the grid for a while, something wild happens: you start convincing yourself you’ve seen letters that aren’t even in the puzzle. “No way they left out R… wait, did I actually see R? Maybe that was P? Or D? Aghhh!”And that’s when the frustration really sets in.Feel like flexing your mental muscles a bit harder? Here's how you can crank the difficulty from “hmm” to “WHY DO I DO THIS TO MYSELF?!”Sneak in letters that look way too similar to each other.

Think O and Q. I and L. B and D. J and T. Your visual cortex will cry. Bonus points if you rotate one 5 degrees just to mess with depth perception.Put a faint image behind the grid—something abstract, or a textured background that grabs your attention in weird ways. Your eyes will keep trying to focus on both layers, making it harder to scan the letters cleanly.Give yourself 15 seconds on the clock. That’s it. Most people panic by the 10-second mark and start blurting out random letters.

Pro tip: don’t guess under pressure—scan with intent, and don’t let your brain gaslight you into thinking you saw something you didn’t.

“But wait, why does this even work?”

This is where it gets fascinating. Your brain loves patterns. It’s wired to find order even in chaos, which is why it fills in missing details automatically. Think of those sentences where the words are all jumbled but you can still read them just fine? Same concept.So when you look at this puzzle, your brain assumes all 26 letters are there and starts skipping over the grid like “yep, yep, yep—this is fine.”

But it’s not fine. One letter has vanished, and your brain is trying to cover for it.

Ready to play?

This puzzle isn’t about how fast you can read or how sharp your eyes are—it’s about outwitting your own brain. One letter from the alphabet is missing entirely from the grid. The rest are all there, even if some repeat a lot.So go ahead. Scroll up, take a deep breath, and scan the grid.And if you still can’t find the missing letter after a few minutes… you’re not alone. Most people never do.Answer: The missing letter is "S". Every other letter from A–Z appears at least once — except S. Sneaky, right?