Halloween Aftermath: Lights Up! Masks Off!

Congratulations to Our Winners!

• Achilein
• Ellipz
• Itsbendivisch
• Jimlaimun99
• Jpothunter8
• Leyreml
• Livithium
• mencina
• MrLuke
• Orbag
• PatouD
• Seathos
• THESUS24
• TUNNER28100
• xhin12

By the time you're reading this, our winners already have the prize money on their accounts. We also want to thank everyone, literal thousands, who joined our little Halloween party. If you had some fun puzzling out those illustrations, you are a winner too! And don't worry, our next contest is already in the works.

Teamwork, Dream Work

Gamers sometimes get a bit of a bad reputation for a (perceived) tendency of trying to maximize (personal) expected value. Of course many of our games are zero-sum affairs where one player has to lose for another to win, which naturally attracts and fosters a certain mindset. But this contest was not, and gamers tend to be a smart bunch. A lot of participants correctly identified that maximizing someone else's EV here didn't really affect their own EV. So we saw evidence of increasing cooperation over the course of the past week, people banding together in larger and larger groups to pool their answers. It was so sweet to see our Halloween competition turn into an actual party like that.

The Solutions, Ranked by Difficulty

Consequently we could not look at everyone's final submission to get an idea how hard it was to identify each card. Instead, the following percentages reflect how many correct answers we received within the first 600 submissions. This corresponds roughly to people's initial, spontaneous reaction, the cards someone recognized immediately on a first pass. The final percentages ended up much higher, across the board but in particular among the lowest success rates.

The 84% Question

This beautifully alien piece by Svetlin Velinov became the face not just of one deck but of one whole if shortlived Modern era. still proved instantly recognizable to 84% of our audience in 2024, eight years later.

The 70% Question

While the memory of the card may have drained away, the art by PINDURSKI is timeless. Even if the exact name didn't come to mind, these eyes pointed rather pointedly at blue cards set on Theros.

The 67% Question

Sorry, I just could not resist this Jesper Myrfors classic, given the context. It was almost like I was under some spell, some .

The 66% Question

What's next to Alpha? Why, if time is indeed a circle, it's Duskmourn of course! How could we not include a card (or two) from the House of Horror in our Halloween lineup this year? The big challenge here was not to confuse with the set's Spider token, rendered so similarly by the same Igor Krstic.

The 62% Question

Izzy's truly is the stuff of nightmares and of Nietzsches. After all, "if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

The 61% Question

Finally we know what moment Dmitry Burmak captured here. This is the shocked reaction I imagine on the faces of everyone who didn't realize until now that they were looking at .

The 47% Question

One can't deny that the eyes in Anthony Palumbo's are distinct, but unlike those on Memory Drain, they could be anywhere and any color. Indeed, a bunch of people thought this might be !

The 40% Question

Some say it's mean to include alternate arts such as by Sidharth Chaturvedi. But the aspect ratio of the image already gave away that this had to be some full-art offering, which narrows it down to, uh, planeswalkers, Eldrazi, a ton of other things, or any of the cards that nowadays get the treatment for no particular reason.

The 32% Question

Mike Bierek may have been commissioned by Wizards of the Coast to illustrate . But all along he was clearly working to create the perfect image for us to use fifteen years later.

The 26% Question

The first set of eyes painted by Jesper Myrfors above didn't properly reflect the artist's range. does a better job.

The 20% Question

I must admit that I had to look up the artists for all the cards mentioned in this article so far, even while looking at the art unveiled, if only to be sure. The same is not true for Kev Walker—not just because of his signature but because his signature style once again does a lot of work to make the empty space on nice to look at.

The 16% Question

Don't feel bad if you missed by Michael C. Hayes. But I promise, if you go back and look closely at the initial image we posted, you will be able to find more than one eye in between all the black space.

The 9% Question

has a great name, great flavor text, and of course great art by Ben Wootten. It's a shame to find it relegated to silver-border/acorn land, where, alas, many players never found it at all.

The 8% Question

If you are one of the many who always thought the bright circles at the back of Myr's heads were eyes, you've learned a valuable lesson now. Those lit-up rings indicate joints. (Of the anatomical kind.) Just look at all the necks, shoulders, hips, and knees on Franz Vohwinkel's .

The 7% Question

This one was always supposed to be the killer question. I'm impressed how quickly so many people recognized Steve Argyle's . Then again, few pieces give an eye this little space but at the same time this much attention. It's the focal point of the card artwork and also of the artwork we see being painted within the artwork.