  A fake octagon is a genus two translation surface with only one singular
point and the same periods as the octagon. Existence of infinitely many fakes
was first established by McMullen in 2007, and more generally follows from
dynamical properties of the so called isoperiodic foliation.
  The purpose of this note is to build an explicit infinite family of fake
octagons, constructed by means of elementary methods. We describe an easy
cut-and-paste surgery and show that the all iterates of that surgery produce
fake octagons. We prove that any iterate gives a fake which is different from
each other, and we show that any such fake can be approximated arbitrarily well
by some other fake of the family.
  This note is intended to be elementary and fully accessible to non-expert
readers.
