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My encounters with colours and the solution to Krypton 388

The clue published on 20th August A representative in an American state in between red and blue (7)

When web pages, their construction, and HTML was something fancy in 1990's I thought it was all utter nonsense when the tutorials I read said they can represent 16 million plus colours. Of course the idea that many hues of colours are to be counted as different ones was ok. I could think of blue, dark blue, light blue, then I could throw in skyblue, sea blue, and pulling from my school day memories with fountain pen ink, I could come up with Royal blue, Turquoise blue, Blue black, Navy blue. Overhearing women's conversation, I could add Ramar blue and Ananda blue. That does not make even a dozen variations of blue.
Then my first experience in a massive T Nagar textile shop changed my idea of colours. After buying a saree in a particular floor we go to a different floor, typically the basement, to select the matching blouse. There I saw for the first time an array several dozens of blue, and several dozens of green and so on. How does one even name them? Easier to call them blue1, blue2, blue3 .. (Actually I made a note of that point and used it the next time I taught what an array variable is in my programming class. Easier to call a huge collection of variables of the same kind with a common name and a number. That day I became popular in my class!)
A decade or so later after buying a flat we had to decide on the paint for the walls. The brochures of the paint company gave fancy names (Would be an interesting job to be a name consultant for them, cooking up names such as "Lucid Dream", "Winged Angel", "Willow Creek" etc. which need not give a hint as to where in the spectrum it is.)
For today's Krypton the answer is a colour, or rather a color (we are talking about America now!). A color that is half way between red and blue. In American politics depending on which party is dominant in a state it is either a red state (repulican) or a blue state (decmocratic) , and things in between are purple states. In HTML this purple is 128 units of red and 128 units of blue and 0 units of green (in the Red, Green, Blue co-ordinate system).
But answer to this clue today is not this but magenta which is the maximum 255 of red and 255 of blue and no green. So this color can also be regarded as halfway between red and blue, only stronger!
MAGENTA = MA + AGENT
MA = Massachusetts, the state of USA where the Harvard university is.
AGENT = representative
I had fun in making this clue, hope you all had fun too solving it.
Visit this page to see all the solutions received.

Comments

Meena said…
Clue had nice deception. What one would think as at the meaning of the word was actually the clue. Had great fun solving.
clue is fair. I could not crack it. I went up to red+blue = purple, but did not think of magenta
S R. Balasubramaniam said…
I really wonder how ideas take form after seeing your briefing
With the solutions.
Raghavan MK said…
Very nice brief about colours.
In fact with so many shades in matching blouse bits the housewives never find one to match their saris.
Colourful explanation Mr Vanchi.
Vanchinathan said…
It's really remarkable that we can perceive lot more colours than what we can name!
I am glad this clue is liked by you, but the story around it may not be as exciting. Everyone has different personal experience with words. To enjoy those experiences need be same but only need to be triggered. If this clue did UT I'd be happy

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