If you’re still searching, don’t worry. Hidden-object puzzles are deliberately designed to take advantage of the way our brains recognize familiar patterns. Once your mind decides that you’re looking at rows of books, it naturally concentrates on book-like shapes and may overlook something unusual that’s sitting directly in front of you.

A useful strategy is to divide the picture into smaller sections. Start in the upper-left corner and slowly move across each row before continuing downward. Instead of searching only for an entire person, concentrate on distinctive graduation features. A square graduation cap, part of a face, or the outline of someone’s clothing may be much easier to recognize.

Another trick is to change your viewing distance. If you’ve been examining the image closely, move slightly farther away and look again. If you’ve been viewing the entire picture, zoom in and inspect smaller areas. Hidden figures sometimes become easier to recognize when your perspective changes because the surrounding distractions no longer dominate your attention.

Once you’ve found the graduate, something interesting usually happens: the hidden figure becomes almost impossible to unsee. Your brain now knows which shapes belong together and immediately recognizes them whenever you return to the picture. The original source page wasn’t accessible for verification, so I won’t invent the graduate’s exact location without being able to inspect the original puzzle.

So, have you found the hidden graduate among all those books? If you spotted the person quickly, you paid excellent attention to the small details. If you’re still searching, keep looking carefully—the answer may be hiding in a place your eyes have already passed several times.