Answer: Optical fibre bundle end
by CastIronDave · 38 guesses · brutal
What you're looking at
An optical fibre bundle is a collection of super-thin glass or plastic strands bundled tightly together, used in telecommunications, medical imaging, and industrial applications. You'll find them inside your broadband router, endoscopes, and fiber-optic cables that carry data across the world at the speed of light.
When you zoom in on the end of a bundle, you see hundreds of perfectly circular cores arranged in a honeycomb pattern, each one a separate light transmission channel. The uniform, repetitive texture creates an almost alien appearance that bears little resemblance to its real-world function, which is why this puzzle stumped so many guessers.
Search for repeating circular patterns with a uniform, geometric arrangement in extreme close-ups of technology.
How players did
29 players made 38 guesses. It took 37 guesses before someone got it right.
Most common wrong guesses: fibre optic cable, chicken wire
