Though printed in black and white, great literature is bursting with vibrant colour. In this rebus-style puzzle, color words and parts of words have been replaced with colored boxes. Try to guess the exact hue of each. Roll your mouse over the colored boxes to reveal the missing words. Click the colored boxes to learn more about each hue. Special thanks to Paul Dean for his colorful research.
by bleu celt
Some blues / Are sad / But some blues are glad / Dark and sad or bright and glad / We’re all blues / All shades / All hues / We’re all blues—”All Blues,” music by Miles Davis, lyrics by Oscar Brown Junior. Originally released (without the lyrics) on the album Kind of Blue, 1959.
by Orbital Joe
The sky was a miracle of purity, a miracle of azure. The sea was polished, was blue, was pellucid, was sparkling like a precious stone, extending on all sides, all round to the horizon — as if the whole terrestrial globe had been one jewel, one colossal sapphire, a single gem fashioned into a planet.—Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), Youth.
by swanksalot
The white glaze carried a faint suggestion of red. As one looked at it, the red seemed to float up from deep within the white. The rim was faintly brown. In one place the brown was deeper. It was there that one drank? The rim might have been stained by tea, and it might have been stained by lips. Kikuji looked at the faint brown, and felt that there was a touch of red in it. Where her mother’s lipstick had sunk in? There was a red– black in the crackle too. The color of faded lipstick, the color of a wilted red rose, the color of old, dry blood. . . .”—Yasunari Kawabata, Thousand Cranes, translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker, 1959.
Ida Red, Ida green, prettiest girl I ever seen / Ida Red, Ida blue, I got stuck on Ida too / Ida Red, Ida white, love her true? I think I might / Ida Red, Ida pink, saw her in town, gave me a wink.—Ida Red, traditional, additions by Uncle Earl, 2005.
About the Guest Author, Craig ConleyWebsite: http://www.OneLetterWords.comCraig is an independent scholar and author of dozens of strange and unusual books, including a unicorn
field guide and a dictionary of magic words. He also loves color: Prof. Oddfellow
