# Recaptcha accepting one word out of two

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/recaptcha-accepting-one-word-out-of-two/192028>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [July 22, 2010, 3:35pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/recaptcha-accepting-one-word-out-of-two/192028 "2010-07-22T15:35:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![amitjain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/13edae/32.png) [@amitjain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/amitjain)\
**Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 3:35pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/recaptcha-accepting-one-word-out-of-two/192028/1 "2010-07-22T15:35:40Z")

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Hi ,

I am a bit confused about how recaptcha works. I have implemented it  
using ROR.

Sometimes even if i specify only one word out of two, it returns true  
while sometimes it fails.

I am really confused and not able to understand the behaviour of  
recaptcha.

Please help me.

Thanks

Amit Jain

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![amitjain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/13edae/32.png) [@amitjain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/amitjain)\
**Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 3:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/recaptcha-accepting-one-word-out-of-two/192028/2 "2010-07-22T15:47:16Z")

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[http://www.google.com/recaptcha/learnmore](http://www.google.com/recaptcha/learnmore)

The TL;DR is that recaptcha uses one word that it knows as the solution  
and  
the second is one that recaptcha is determining the answer for.  
Recaptcha  
is currently trying to turn print archives of newspapers into normal  
digital  
text. So it takes unknown words and has users try to solve it. It then  
stores the results and starts assigning confidence values to the unknown  
words. So if you get a answer with a relatively high level of  
confidence  
it’ll let you through. If you get a brand spanking new word, it’ll let  
you  
type just about anything.