I thought I'd share these tips - they should really cut your typing those captchas in half when it's a captcha from ReCaptcha (motto: stop spam. read books):

Tip 1: Almost always you will see 2 words or phrases separated by a space. In ReCaptcha's case (seemingly the most popular one out there), they have one of these phrases marked with a wavy line. I've discovered that you only have to enter the phrase with the wavy line over it - you don't have to type the other phrase.

Here's an example of a contest using ReCaptcha: http://www.foodnetworkstore.com/checkout/contests/ipad2.aspx?

Tip 2: In ReCaptcha's case, whenever you see upside down words or gibberish, you don't need to enter those.

Tip 3: Also for ReCaptcha, you don't have to enter any punctation marks, just numbers and letters.

Tip 4: ANY captcha (not just from ReCaptcha) which has phrases separated by a space: you don't have to enter the space! It adds up, believe me.



Hope you found this useful - gla  

you're most welcome 

thanks for info

I noticed today that ReCaptcha's phrases have switched (again) from the wavy line phrases to phrases partially colored in black and white block letters - if you see a black and white block phrase, it acts exactly like a wavy line phrase: it's the only one you need to enter out of the 2 phrases shown.

Yup - many thanks - the simple rules work for me also.
Great time saver!

You're all welcome!  

A final tip, mostly for those starting out - you don't have to worry about exactly matching a captcha with respect to lower-case and upper-case characters: it doesn't matter in probably 90-95% of all captchas regardless of what they display. WHY they do this, I have no idea, but a good rule of thumb is to initially ignore that and just get the captcha correct - if it complains, then match the case. It is really annoying when they post something like 'AScghKL' and it doesn't matter WHAT case you enter  

p.s. Recaptcha switched again on Monday - this time you only have to enter the phrase in italics. I guess the rule of thumb is that you only have to enter the phrase that looks different.

Thank you! So glad I took the time to read your post. I usually just keep hitting reload button until it puts something in the box that is short and understandable.