Puzzle: Contestants arrive at http://jchase.com/3990 and find the Color Cube puzzle waiting for them.
In the distant future, humans live in enormous three-dimensional residential blocks in space. Much like the Cartesian coordinate system, addresses are assigned based on the location of a point along three axes: red, green, and blue.
You are visiting your friend, who lives in area 12D. The galactic shuttle system drops you off at the local council building, where the government of this block takes place. The address is Red 0, Green 0, Blue 0. You notice the building is painted black.
You don't remember the coordinates your friend lives at, but you do recall some things about the three numbers from one of your friend's rambling episodes (she is an amateur mathematician).
If the Red coordinate is r, the Green coordinate is g, and the Blue coordinate is b, then:
Furthermore,
You know these cubes measure 255 units in each dimension; that is, coordinates on each axis range from integer values between 0 and 255, inclusive.
Public transport here works significantly better than today's DC Metro, and you have arrived quite early. As your friend is not expecting you for a bit, how do you contact her to come pick you up?
[Solution: The puzzle disguises an RGB as a location. After putting their heads together for a while, the teams should realize that the coordinates Red 51, Green 135, Blue 187 translate to a hexadecimal color code (commonly used in HTML, the language used for the jchase.com website). The hexadecimal code #3387BB in turn converts to 3377083. The “area” that the location is in (12D) happens to also be hexadecimal for 301. Using these two numbers, they dial 301-337-7083 in to get the next puzzle.]
Hint 1: Suddenly you remember that your friend once wrote her ‘address’ down for you as a single number on a piece of paper… looking at all these numbers (and letters), how can that be possible?
Hint 2: In the hexadecimal notation for colors in HTML, #000000 denotes black.
Hint 3: Though this scenario sounds extremely futuristic, the landline telephone is not yet obsolete.