The image contains more dots than the eight large black circles.
Start with the obvious dots:
8 large black dots
Then examine the words and punctuation carefully:
1 dot above the “i” in “geniuses”
1 period after “geniuses”
1 dot beneath the exclamation mark
1 dot beneath the question mark
That adds four hidden dots to the eight obvious ones:
8 + 4 = 12
The correct answer is 12 dots. The trick is counting every dot in the entire picture, not only the large circles.


