Arm's reach is a real scale
Inside arm's reach the eye is good. A mug, a book, a shoe: you have touched them, and the ratio between them is something your hands already know. This shelf includes those objects and then steps just outside them, into doors, tables, and things that furnish a room. The hand-scale answer gets reused one size too far. A door is not a tall mug. The heading says tall or long or across. Your hands are not the axis.
The score punishes that reuse with a ratio, which is fair. A small absolute miss on a small object is a big ratio. Within 6 percent still scores 100, and on a mug that band is a few millimetres, which is why the library rounds the figure and why you should not pretend you are machining a part. You are matching a silhouette. Zoom in. The grip shows the axis. Use it.
Rooms lie politely
A room you live in feels known and is usually known as 'enough' rather than as metres. Enough is not a measurement. When an everyday object is judged against another everyday object, both 'enoughs' cancel and the ratio can still be wrong by double. Double scores 45. Players are surprised because neither object was exotic. Exotic is not the source of error. The missing number is.
Pick one room object and make it a unit. A door you have walked through is better than a tower you have not, but only after you have put it next to a hoop or a person-sized reference and accepted the metres. The sports shelf has a hoop at 3.05 metres to the rim. Many interior doors are lower than that rim. If your everyday guess treats every door as 'hoop height,' you are importing a sports number you never checked. Check it on compare, then return.
How the pictures work
The cut-outs are simple on purpose. A detailed drawing of a chair becomes a picture of a style, and you start judging the style. A silhouette asks for the axis only. If the drawing seems rude or childish, it is refusing the postcard problem that ruins landmarks. There is no crop making the lamp as tall as the table. Both are on one ground line.
Labels show metres and feet. The ratio does not change when you switch. A chair that is twice a stool is twice a stool in inches. Players who 'think in feet' and then miss were not failed by the unit button. They were failed by the multiple. Say the multiple in whichever unit you like. Lock in after the sentence, not before.
Practice without spoiling the day
Unlimited everyday pairs are quiet and useful. They do not look impressive in a conversation. They fix the hand. Five slow locks, each with a spoken ratio, beat a tour. If you are consistently large, your hand likes the right side of the log slider. If you are consistently small, you are flattering your caution. Neither pattern is permanent. Both are visible after three pairs if you look at the red edge instead of the points alone.
Today's everyday five, if you filtered the shelf, is still a shared puzzle for people on that shelf and that local date. It is not the mixed five. Do not compare a 1,000 with a friend who played mixed. The weights are the same shape, one, one, two, three, three, and the objects are not. Say the shelf when you talk about the score.
What not to expect
This shelf will not make you a surveyor. Rounded figures are enough for an eye and not enough for a fit-out. Do not cut wood from a silhouette. The fact line names the version, a typical object rather than your exact model. If your table at home differs, the board was not measuring your table. It was measuring the typical one we named.
Corrections belong on the contact page, with a source. A memory of your kitchen is not a source. A manufacturer spec is. We would rather fix a typical length than pretend every household matches it. The privacy page still applies: your guesses stay in this browser. The shelf does not phone them home. When you miss an everyday object you have owned, write down the ratio you believed and the ratio the red edge showed. That pair of sentences is worth more than another lap of the shelf. Most of the gap is a hand-scale habit applied one size too large, and it shrinks once you can see it named.