Is there a word for this?

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Is there a word for this scenario? Occasionally there are puzzles out on a table at work for us to play with if we so choose. Today there was a new one so I was looking at it. I then went back to my coworkers and told them there was a new dinosaur-shaped puzzle that was really cool, but apparently (and they made sure to tell me about this later) the puzzle was actually a lion shape, not a dinosaur. Is there a word for something like this or am I really just stupid?

I definitely know the phenomena, perhaps it is related to the thing about seeing faces in things, which is called Pareidolia

It reminds me of that picture where some people see a duck and others see a rabbit. There is no right or wrong answer, just different ways of seeing things.

Depends upon why you mistook the lion for a dinosaur.

If this puzzle was in its complete shape, or not. and so on.

If it were a picture deliberately crafted to look like two different things (like the common duck and rabbit thing) then I would call it a "visual pun".

Maybe you were focused on the details (the individual pieces) and not the shape?

There is a chapter in A Field Guide to Earthlings called Symbolic Filtering. Basically it's about NTs naturally filling in details so that they can recognize things that are unclear, ambiguous, or incomplete, and autistic people having trouble recognizing these things unless they are given most or all of the details.

So if the shape of the puzzle was ambiguous, maybe your co-workers (if NTs) filled in the details while looking at it to recognize that it was supposed to represent a dinosaur, whereas you misperceived the intended shape due to insufficient visual information.

The OP needs to explain it more fully for us all to get what theyre talking about.

For one thing: was deciphering the shape of the animal the goal of the puzzle?

Or was it a puzzle about something else that happened to be cast in the shape of a complete animal, and the OP mistook what animal the shape was?

I've heard them refered to as optical illusions. I've always been drawn to that kind of thing, where the picture is deliberately ambiguous.

I was actually just looking at the picture on the puzzle box. The puzzle had not been started yet. I went back and it indeed looked like a lion, not a dinosaur

I went back and looked at the picture on the puzzle box later... it was indeed a lion... no optical illusions or visual puns or anything... it makes me curious if I actually saw the lion the first time but dinosaur somehow came out of my mouth and then my brain believed it, or if I really did see a dinosaur the first time. I'm just very confused about the whole thing. I feel like I'm in the twilight zone or something...

It's called: "You thought it was a dinosaur when it was a lion."

As long as you eventually know it's a lion, I don't see the problem. This sort of thing happens to everybody at some point. There are larger battles to fight in this life.

It could be an "optical illusion" type of thing, as others are saying.

^ This is the term, or a very close approximation for that PhoenixRain. Pareidolia is, "the imagined perception of a pattern or meaning where it does not actually exist."(dictionary.com)

Granted, it can be safely assumed a genuine pattern/meaning would result from correct placement of the puzzle pieces, it sounds like you interpreted dinosaur among the mis-arranged pieces based on some queues & personal biases.

Everyone does this to some degree, especially when there's room for interpretation.

If it were a fully assembled, apparent lion that you called dinosaur... that'd be a bit like aphasia, though I don't think it would be a one-off event in that case.

I was looking at the picture on the puzzle box, not the pieces lol

Once upon a time I was walking down the street. It was very early in the morning and I had been up all night. It was just coming light.

Anyway, I saw what I thought was a monkey swinging from the telephone wire. I was somewhat taken aback by this as I live in Manchester England so I approached with trepidation.

Anyway, it turned out to be a bin bag blowing in the wind.

Sometimes your eyes can play tricks on you. I wouldn't worry about it.

Autostereogram

Magic eye

Mirage

Optical illusion

Top down processing