Playing Checkers    (April Fool's Day - 1943)

The April 3 issue of the Saturday Evening Post had an April Fool cover drawn by Norman Rockwell, in which the artist placed 45 "mistakes and incongruities."

Rockwell said he created the cover in order to fix the people who write in about mistakes, but the mistake finders may have got the upper hand. Rockwell later confessed that one man wrote to him from South America claiming to have found 120!


A list of all 45 mistakes appeared inside the magazine:

1. the trout, the fishhook and the water, all on the stairway (these count as 3 mistakes)
2. the stairway running behind the fireplace, an architectural impossibility
3. the mailbox
4. the faucet
5. wallpaper upside down
6. wallpaper has two designs
7. the scissors candlestick
8. silhouettes upside down
9. bacon and egg on the decorative plate
10. the April-fool clock
11. the portraits
12. ducks in the living room
13. zebra looking out of the frame
14. mouse looking out of the mantelpiece
15. a tire for the iron rim of the mantelpiece
16. medicine bottle and glass floating in the air
17. fork instead of a spoon on the bottle
18. the old lady's hip pocket
19. the newspaper in her pocket
20. her wedding ring on the wrong hand
21. buttons on the wrong side of her sweater
22. crown on her head
23. Stillson wrench for a nutcracker in her hand
24. skunk on her lap
25. she is wearing trousers
26. she has on ice skates
27. no checkers on checkerboard
28. wrong number of squares on checkerboard
29. too many fingers on old man's hand
30. erasers on both ends of his pencil
31. he is wearing a skirt
32. he has a bird in his pocket
33. he is wearing roller skates
34. he has a hoe for a cane
35. billfold on string tied to his finger
36. milkweed growing in room
37. milk bottle on milkweed
38. deer under chair
39. dog's paws on deer
40. mushrooms
41. woodpecker pecking chair
42. buckle on man's slipper
43. artist's signature in reverse