Museum Puzzle Solution

(Back to Museum puzzle)


The page consists only of two short phrases and an Andy Warhol-like composition featuring nine images of Ruby Rhod on panels of different green shades. There seems to be nothing obvious here, except the particular shades of green are kind of oddly chosen, so one looks at the source code.

[relevant part excerpted here]

<table cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td bgcolor="#26ff3e"><img src="images/rubyrhod.gif" alt="Ruby Rhod">
</td>
<td bgcolor="#03ff8c"><img src="images/rubyrhod.gif" alt="Ruby Rhod">
</td>
<td bgcolor="#02ff57"><img src="images/rubyrhod.gif" alt="Ruby Rhod">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td bgcolor="#24ffba"><img src="images/rubyrhod.gif" alt="Ruby Rhod">
</td>
<td bgcolor="#00ff20"><img src="images/rubyrhod.gif" alt="Ruby Rhod">
</td>
<td bgcolor="#27ff81"><img src="images/rubyrhod.gif" alt="Ruby Rhod">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td bgcolor="#00ff36"><img src="images/rubyrhod.gif" alt="Ruby Rhod">
</td>
<td bgcolor="#20ff76"><img src="images/rubyrhod.gif" alt="Ruby Rhod">
</td>
<td bgcolor="#24ff8c"><img src="images/rubyrhod.gif" alt="Ruby Rhod">
</td>
</tr>
</table>
[...]

Nothing clearly out of the ordinary here, either, but the important part is the green colors. In order, they are #26ff3e, #03ff8c, #02ff57, #24ffba, #00ff20, #27ff81, #00ff36, #20ff76, #24ff8c.

HTML colors are divided up into R(ed)G(reen)B(lue), each expressed by a two-digit hexadecimal number. Here, all of the greens are ff, pure green (only appropriate for Ruby Rhod!), so we ignore them and think about what can be made with a four-digit hexadecimal number. The answer to this is Unicode, in which each character is represented by a four-digit hexadecimal string.

(There are also a few clues to this end, any of which might be picked up on, pointing in the right direction. First of all, the text-encoding is UTF-8, which is the encoding for 8-bit Unicode. Also, one sentence of the flavor text says "Radio Cosmos speaks the universal language" — Unicode stands for universal code. Thirdly, the other sentence reads, "it's super green," which could of course just be seen as Ruby Rhod-speak, but could equally be seen as suggesting that one look outside ["super"] the green. Solving the puzzle didn't rely on noticing any of these, however; they were simply a helpful confirmation.)

If one looks up the specified characters (either in Microsoft Word or by throwing together a page of HTML with the relevant codes or by looking them up in the charts at the Unicode site), one sees the following message:

☾ΌɗⒺ ➁6⁶⒌

(Not all browsers will show all of the characters; if you get some question marks or boxes, check out the charts at Unicode.org.)

What happens if we try CODE 2665? We get this: ♥. So the answer is HEART.

(A piece of Taft trivia: This is the only puzzle in the entire sodding game that Ian didn't write.)