OK, I’ve joked about this to several friends, but I thought I’d share our adventures with international symbols on appliance instructions.

We don’t have an oven, but we do have a combination microwave/toaster oven that we use a lot on its toaster setting.  It took a lot of experimentation to figure out which settings apply to the toaster oven and which to the microwave.

Microwave/toaster oven settings

At first, we figured the little wavy lines inside the square meant microwave, since they looked like waves inside the box.  But, no.  Actually the steaming pot means microwave (and the water drop and snowflake mean defrost, but that wasn’t so hard to figure out).  So, we figured the wavy line inside the box meant toaster oven, and we had several heat settings.  Wrong again.  The pot ALWAYS means microwave.  The toaster oven is either on or off, and the additional settings are combinations of microwave and toaster oven.

But the really impressive one is the washing machine.

Magical incantation

(Note that you can click the image to get a larger view if you really want one.)

There are 12 wash settings: A, B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, M, N, X.  We can get as far as assuming that the degrees Celcius indicate cold, medium, and hot.  The faucet with the water is probably something about the rinse cycle.  The feather seems likely to be delicates.

We’ve totally failed at trying to puzzle out the rest, and my ever hopeful Google searches have turned up nothing on international wash cycle symbols.  So we essentially have chosen a wash setting at random.  We’re washing everything on X.  It’s getting things clean.  Fortunately, we haven’t had to wash anything delicate.