It all looked like pills to me until I read the text. Couldn't even see plates for a while.
Anyway, I noticed that the top right rectangular one doesn't match the perspective when seen as face down. All the other ones are round, so they don't insinuate a perspective at all. That's why that plate is the key.
Shadow says its face up though. There should be a thicker bright line down the side if it was flipped over. The shadow should not have the same depth as all the other dishes.
Sort of. This plate sticks out because in order to create a shadow and light this way when facing down it would have to be angled in a way that doesn't match with the others when also assuming that they're all placed on the same surface. It only looks right with the others when seen as face up.
The trick here is that we normally assume light to come from the top when given no other clues, but this assumption doesn't match with our assumption of placement. The text also suggests the wrong way first.
If the picture had been presented upside down, it might have been difficult to even ee it any other way than the correct one.
They all started as face up to me as well. The one that stood out to me though was the rectangular plate in the top right. That plate looked face down to me which then triggered all the plates to look face down.
I have tried some of the "tricks" in the comments and none work for me. Try as I might, I can only see them as face up and nothing else. It doesn't make sense to me that they could ever appear face down because the lighting wouldn't make sense.
I got to see them upside down for a moment and it does not look correct. They are actually face up in the picture but it is possible to trick yourself into seeing them as upside down but they don't look like they would if they really were