[HN Gopher] Show HN: Do you know RGB?
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Show HN: Do you know RGB?
Author : maxwellito
Score : 51 points
Date : 2025-06-24 08:19 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (maxwellito.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (maxwellito.github.io)
| yogini wrote:
| haha this is such a cool and fun game.
| susam wrote:
| First try: 16/20
|
| https://imgur.com/a/c0yUOlw
|
| Excellent game!
| maxwellito wrote:
| Good job! That's really good! Oh damn I didn't realised it was
| you!
|
| Dear HN community, susam built the GuessMyRGB game which was a
| huge inspiration for this game. Please take the time to play
| it!!
|
| https://susam.net/myrgb.html
| dang wrote:
| That one had a thread last year, for anyone interested:
|
| _Guess my RGB_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39882018 - March 2024
| (144 comments)
| freeqaz wrote:
| Here is another one my friend shared with me that's
| interesting. The time constraint adds some excitement!
| https://color.method.ac/
| joemi wrote:
| Odd, I only got one wrong, and it gave me a 10/20 score at the
| end. Is the scoring not 1-to-1?
|
| edit: Oh, I see. Once you get one wrong the game ends
| immediately, but the score includes the full 20 rounds that
| you're supposed to get through.
| dmd wrote:
| I'm so confused. This is something people know? I mean, I can
| work it out from first principles knowing how color mixing works,
| but it sounds like people just ... know them? I've been
| programming for almost 40 years and it would never have occurred
| to me to memorize this sort of thing.
| siddboots wrote:
| I'd say this is firmly about knowing how colour mixing works,
| and not about memorising.
| alpha_squared wrote:
| I got 14/20 on my first try just by knowing how the color
| mixing works. A few simple rules:
|
| - Higher values mean brighter colors
|
| - The closer the individual colors are to each other, the
| closer to "gray" it looks
|
| - R + G = Yellow, R + B = Fuchsia, G + B = Teal
| tshaddox wrote:
| I doubt anyone has many of them truly memorized. It's more like
| having the ability to quickly see each hex character and
| understand roughly what percentage that is, then quickly
| visualize the resulting color. My methodology playing this is
| to just convert each hex character to high, medium, or low, so
| you end up with something like "high red, medium blue, low
| green."
| meindnoch wrote:
| 4096 colors is not too much to memorize.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| In the English language, they call it "red"
|
| In the programming language, we call it "f00"
|
| 4096 words for colors!
| fsckboy wrote:
| f00 is 3840
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| Just know them no. Able to sanity check that an RGB value is
| the color it's supposed to be yes sometimes. It's not the most
| useful skill because you almost always get a swatch now, but
| sometimes being able to have _some idea_ of how it 'll look
| (should it be dark or light, grey or intense color) saves me 10
| seconds here and there.
|
| I like playing guess-RGB games every now and then because it
| improves the skill, but at the same time I find them really
| stressful haha.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _I mean, I can work it out from first principles knowing how
| color mixing works_
|
| did you try it? if you can work it out from first principles
| because you know how color mixing works, you should get a
| perfect score; that's the game. If you don't get a perfect
| score, you need to reinspect what you think you know about
| color mixing and even the first principles.
| dmd wrote:
| Yes, I got a perfect score. It just took me several minutes,
| whereas coworkers of mine got 15+ in just a few seconds.
| 2earth wrote:
| Couldn't get above 3 for numerous tries, after 5 minutes or so
| managed to get to 18! I learned a lot playing this (and reflected
| on things I already "knew" but never reflected on why). Thanks!
| ryandrake wrote:
| I tried about 5 times and never got more than 3 right. It would
| be better if they started out a little easier and then
| increased the difficulty. Currently it seems random. At any
| time you might get three nearly identical green boxes and it's
| game over.
| LorenDB wrote:
| Make sure to disable any dark mode extensions or the colors will
| not show up correctly.
| stared wrote:
| Thank you for sharing!
|
| However, you both ask about colors and use color for
| confirmation. This unfortunately is both confusing and makes a
| not nice overlap of one modality used for two things.
|
| Quick solution: just use the correct color. Use other modality
| (e.g. shape V/X or text "Correct!" vs "Wrong!")
| neilk wrote:
| I like it, but when you make your guess the mystery color should
| change to the color it describes, not to green or red. You should
| use some other aspect to indicate success - shape, motion, font,
| anything other than color. You already have it shaking for an
| incorrect guess, so that's good.
| joemi wrote:
| Yeah that green tripped me up.
| siriusfeynman wrote:
| > do you know rgb
|
| > colours are in hex
|
| am I missing something or being dumb?
| joemi wrote:
| It's a shortened form of hex colors from CSS, but it does
| correspond to RGB since the first character of the hex value is
| the R, the second character is the G, and the third is the B.
| So for instance, a hex value from this game of #F18 means the
| red is F (out of F), the green is 1 (out of F), and the blue is
| 8 (out of F).
| williamdclt wrote:
| This is hexadecimal notation for rgb. Each character represents
| 2 bytes, which encode a value from 0 to 255.
|
| This is a bit more confusing because this is a shorthand
| notation: you'd actually need 2 hexadecimal characters for 2
| bytes (eg #0077ff would be rbg(0, 127, 255)). In this shorthand
| notation, I think there's an implied 0 (eg #07f is #0070f0).
|
| So you can't represent all rgb colour with only 3 characters,
| but for this use-case it's fine.
|
| In css you can use either of these 3 notations, for example
| jenadine wrote:
| In CSS, #07f is the same as #0077ff. (i.e. double each
| symbols)
| siriusfeynman wrote:
| Every tool I've ever used referred to this as hex (including
| design tools but maybe I'm sheltered), whereas rgb refers to
| the 0-255 triples
|
| If someone asked me for a colour in "RGB" they'd be rightly
| confused if gave them a hex format colour (obviously you can
| convert between them but that's not what they asked for)
| susam wrote:
| The 3-digit shorthand for hexadecimal RGB colours dates back
| to CSS1, if not earlier.
|
| From <https://www.w3.org/TR/CSS1/>:
|
| _> The format of an RGB value in hexadecimal notation is a
| '#' immediately followed by either three or six hexadecimal
| characters. The three-digit RGB notation (#rgb) is converted
| into six-digit form (#rrggbb) by replicating digits, not by
| adding zeros. For example, #fb0 expands to #ffbb00. This
| makes sure that white (#ffffff) can be specified with the
| short notation (#fff) and removes any dependencies on the
| color depth of the display._
|
| I'm quite fond of the 3-digit hexadecmial RGB notation. It's
| a concise way to express the colours I use for web pages or
| Emacs font locking. In these cases, I rarely need the full
| 16-million-colour range offered by 6 digits. The 3 digits are
| usually more than enough, at least to me.
| comradesmith wrote:
| 18/20, first try :)
| jenadine wrote:
| You're good. I made 0/20 on my first try.
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| Definitely don't make the game end dafter one wrong guess. At
| least give me some lives or something, damn. Or, better yet, just
| let me play to the end, then give me my score.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I feel that way. Also there are many cases where I can
| eliminate two choices as obviously wrong but can't tell the
| difference between two similar shades. I wouldn't feel bad
| getting disqualified for a gross error but when it is two
| shades of bluish-green it doesn't seem fair.
|
| Another possibility is to give it more of a tournament feel
| where the early cases are easy and the last ones are hard so I
| get disqualified at 15/20 (webdev and photographer who does gfx
| programming for fun) but a real goldeneye could go further.
| 3/20 does not represent my skill.
| fsckboy wrote:
| that's not really what you want, what you want is for the
| starting of a new game to be automatic and not require extra
| clicks.
|
| the way I'm suggesting (which is what the game is with extra
| clicks) is a game of "what's my longest streak of correct
| guesses" which actually makes your score look better than
| keeping your losses around.
| skykooler wrote:
| It would be nice if this told you upfront how many questions
| there were - after sixteen with nothing changing I figured it was
| probably endless but apparently there are twenty?
| aezart wrote:
| Interesting that sometimes a washed out color will look darker
| than a pure color, even though there's more light overall.
| bbx wrote:
| Very fun game. Got 15/20. I think I'd do better at an HSL
| version.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Off topic, but this seems like a decent place to ask:
|
| Has anyone else noticed the weird new grey color that automobiles
| have in the last year or so? Does anyone know how to describe
| that color? Can anyone explain how it is different from previous
| greys in RGB terms? Or even in paint color terms?
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(page generated 2025-06-27 23:00 UTC)