How Not to Write a Puzzle

[tahnan]

About a year ago, I complained about a puzzle on a website called Tanga which I found particularly, er, terrible.

As part of an ongoing series, then, I offer: this puzzle. You can try to solve it if you want, though I don't recommend it. (Tanga puzzles lead to a single word. Heh.) Or you can read on...

Step one: recognize that each row represents a hexadecimal color, e.g. 7BA05B or 926F5B. Not especially recognizable, but colors nonetheless.

Step two: find the name of the Crayola crayon of each color.

OK, already we have a problem. There's a list on Wikipedia, but I'm not convinced those hexadecimal values came from Crayola in the first place. But, basically, what you've got is a puzzle that just involves going to one particular page on the internet and reading the information there. That's not necessarily a bad puzzle (though the less reliable the page, the less interesting it is), but it's not interesting.

That's independent of the typo in line four, which is just lousy proofreading, not lousy puzzle-writing.

Step three: take the nth letter of each name (where n is given at the end of each line) to get RESDOGMRROTH.

Nothing like gibberish to suggest that you're on the right track, is there? Gibberish to such an extent, in fact, that having miscounted the fifth line and thus being a letter off, I got RESDRGMRROTH and posted it to the discussion, figuring it couldn't possibly be on the right track.

Step four: read "RESDOGMRROTH" as "Res Dog Mr. Roth", i.e. "Reservoir Dogs, Mr. Roth". Tim Roth played Mr. Orange in Reservoir Dogs.

It's getting harder to stay positive, isn't it? At least it's thematic. But now here's the kicker: what's the one word answer? If you said "orange", you've overestimated the quality of the puzzle.

Step five: translate "Orange" back into hexadecimal.

So what's the one word...er, the single-string-of-characters answer? If you said "FF681F", which is what Wikipedia lists as the Crayola value of orange...you've once again overestimated the quality of the puzzle. Since Wikipedia seems to be the authority here, you could try the Wikipedia article on the color orange, which gives the color as FF7F00, but you'd still be wrong. Instead, you want the "web color orange", which is FFA500; that's the answer.

Personal aside to II&F members: if you ever write a puzzle like this, you'll be solving remotely from North Dakota next year.

Comments

[cnoocy]

Aagh. Crayola is not a good reference to assign names to hex colors. X11 or Web colors would be a much better one.

[thedan.livejournal.com]

I think this would be a perfectly fine puzzle if

(a) There was something that clued that website (say crayons in the background, or even better, a fuzzy snapshot of the color chart on that page)
(b) the typo was fixed
(c) the intended answer was "ORANGE"

The clue phrase actually works for me just fine, but having a hex code as the answer is lame, and having a hex code from an entirely different source is egregiously inappropriate.

[killians1978.livejournal.com]

Couldn't have gotten this far without you, mate. I managed to get the gobbledygook and nearly quit. I don't have much patience for the hard OWWW's, but this was such a shot in the dark that I could've stared at it most of the day and not pulled out what you came up with. Good job.

[aarondf.livejournal.com]

I agree with Dan, although don't even know A is needed as do you really have to use the Wikipedia page? I simply googled the first 3 numbers and every page that comes up is all about Crayola colors and hopefully has the same list as Wikipedia? First 3 colors that I googled they all seem to work. The answer not being ORANGE (or at least the Crayola Hex Orange) totally 100% wrong though.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

"Perfectly fine" is a little strong; "adequate", perhaps, though still a little dull, I think. I could almost accept that clue phrase in a better puzzle.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Sure, all you have to do is Google the numbers and you get the Wikipedia page...but again, how dull is that?

[aarondf.livejournal.com]

Well, dull I can live with.

Perhaps the issue is you set the standard high with the earlier Tanga puzzle you mentioned which was just a total nightmare, requiring leaps no one could expect like anyone to make. This may be a uninteresting puzzle but I think except for step 5, for me it is just a mediocre puzzle, not deserving of singling out as a disaster. Just my 2c.

[victor-vito.livejournal.com]

Hey, thanks! You're the fourth google hit for "res dog mr roth", so when I got that far and google'd it, you came up. I agree with you on the puzzle lameness... "orange" would've been a fine answer by itself.

[q-pheevr.livejournal.com]

Amen to that. RGB is for mixing light, not wax.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

It's true, it's not as bad as the last one. On the other hand, while it may not seem like a disaster to you, you didn't sit there typing answer after answer into the website, going, "Did I misspell 'orange'? Do capitals suddenly matter? What about this hex value? Or this one? Or...?"

you are truly prophetic

[(Anonymous)]

given that the MIT mystery hunt did in fact include a puzzle containing x11 color names (this is sokolov)