“Less than ten seconds to go. Indigo on the outside with Turquoise driving in late for a desperation shot. And that’s the buzzer! Indigo Wins, Indigo wins! Unbelievable! This crowd is on their feet at the sold-out Burrito Bowl Arena. Turquoise looks exhausted. I can’t believe it. Indigo is your 2019 Best Color in the World Tournament Challenge Champion! A champion has been crowned!- Mr. Burrito Bowl, on his couch, alone in a dark room.
Hey guys, by now you’ve probably heard that on Saturday night Indigo came out on top in the inaugural Mr. Burrito Bowl Presents: The Best Color in the World Tournament Challenge. The whole thing spanned four weeks and took us all to the breaking point of our patience, and well past the breaking point of our interest.
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised Indigo took home the gold. I will never doubt Indigo again. People f***ing love that color.
What color Indigo actually is, is surprisingly hard to pin down- a brief history
If you Google the hex code for Indigo it looks dark purple. I think most die-hard fans of Indigo view it as a very purple color.
But, a lot of people think of it more in the blue family. Even a lot of rainbows on the internet really vary their indigo shade, depending mostly on how dark of a blue they choose to represent blue.
In the mid-1660s Isaac Newton used a prism to do a bunch of experiments with color. He counted five total colors but added orange and Indigo to make seven colors because there are seven notes in the musical major scale. That’s the kind of shit you do in the 17th century.
In Isaac Newton’s day, the color blue was light, what today we’d consider sky blue. According to Isaac Newton’s interpretation of the Roy G. Biv rainbow, Indigo looks very much dark blue. But again, Isaac only added Orange and Indigo because he wanted the colors to match up to music notes.
From Wikipedia:
Later scientists conclude that Newton named the colors differently from current usage.[20][21] According to Gary Waldman, “A careful reading of Newton’s work indicates that the color he called indigo, we would normally call blue; his blue is then what we would name blue-green, cyan or light blue.”[22] If this is true, Newton’s seven spectral colors would have been:
The human eye does not readily differentiate hues in the wavelengths between what we today call blue and violet. If this is where Newton meant indigo to lie, most individuals would have difficulty distinguishing indigo from its neighbors. According to Isaac Asimov, “It is customary to list indigo as a color lying between blue and violet, but it has never seemed to me that indigo is worth the dignity of being considered a separate color. To my eyes it seems merely deep blue.”[23]
Modern color scientists typically divide the spectrum between violet and blue at about 450 nm, with no indigo.
Back to my writing:
Basically, the human eye has trouble telling when exactly we’re switching from blue to violet, so it’s kind of silly to consider Indigo its own separate rainbow color. Because of this, many color scientists now use the six-color rainbow where Indigo doesn’t really exist. So, congratulations to Indigo, the best color in the world for 2019 that technically isn’t real.
There are 47,000 variations of just the color Indigo on Wikipedia. I feel like if we can argue about politics endlessly then we’ll never get to the bottom of what color Indigo is, and someone just has to make a ruling. Seeing as how I’ve got the microphone, or keyboard as it were, I will be making the final ruling.
The version of Indigo we used for voting was Web Color Indigo. That’s the Indigo that comes up if you type “Indigo Hex Code” into Google.
If you’re one of the people who think of Electric Indigo when they think of Indigo, I can’t blame you. If you want to mentally think of your champion looking more like this…
…I won’t stand in your way.
Still, there no doubt will be those who view Indigo more like Indigo Dye.
For that camp, the 2019 color champion ends up looking more like this…
All of these are very real versions of the color Indigo.
[At this point in my research, I took a four-hour break to get groceries and also sit under my desk and rock back and forth.]
I wasn’t sure if I was crazy and everyone else had a pretty firm grasp on what color Indigo is, so I took another Twitter poll.
Side note: It amazes me people put up with me on Twitter. Thank you, dear followers. I don't deserve you.
At current writing, Indigo= basically Purple is starting to pull ahead. Two out of three people feel like it’s basically purple. That’s good enough for me. For a while, it was split nearly in half. I was really starting to lose it a little bit.
Ultimately, how you view Indigo is probably how you view the world. Is the answer to the Indigo question black and white or is it shades of gray? Is there an exact answer to what color Indigo is? Or are there millions of almost identical colors that slowly morph from blue to violet, and picking one of them as THE Indigo is a fool’s errand?
During rounds two and three when Indigo was voted for, the color that would appear was Web Color Indigo because that’s what comes up when you type “Indigo Hex Code” into Google.
The hex code is what we go by and according to the hex code the traditional Indigo is Web Color Indigo, and it is basically dark purple. For next year’s color tournament we will differentiate Web Color Indigo (which is the 2019 champion) with Electric Indigo and maybe even Indigo Dye. They probably all deserve a spot.
Anyway.
Why are we even dealing with all this?
Wasn’t Turquoise supposed to smash Indigo? Indigo came from the easy side of the bracket. Turquoise came through murderer’s row on the way to the championship round. Cobalt Blue’s absolute destruction of Red proved they were worth the hype and Turquoise beat them as well as regular Blue. So if regular Blue walloped Indigo in the Roy G. Biv seeding tournament, and Turquoise beat out both regular Blue and Cobalt Blue, how did Indigo so easily beat Turquoise?! I guess that’s why we play the game.
It wasn’t that they won that left so many color enthusiasts speechless, it was the WAY they won. It wasn’t even close. They stormed out of the gates with a convincing win over a very exciting Lavender team, then beat up on the plucky upstart Aubergine, and that’s when things got interesting. In the semi-finals, Red was the hottest team of the tournament. Indigo was a virtual afterthought. The experts were simply wrong and Indigo trounced Red like Red had no business being in the adult tournament.
Beating Red is one thing, but surely they weren’t going to be able to withstand the undeniable attack of Turquoise. What about the stifling defense Turquoise is known for? None of it mattered. Indigo came into the finals like a house on fire and obliterated the competition. Lavender, Aubergine, Red, and Turquoise- none of them could touch the positive attitude and teamwork that Indigo brought to the tournament.
Congratulations to our Gold Medalist- Indigo.
What can we say that hasn’t already been said, several times? After losing to Blue in the first round of the Roy G. Biv placement tournament Indigo was worried they might not even get a ticket to dance.
Receiving only 5% of the vote in the seeding tournament had Indigo all but eliminated. Luckily they got one more shot to prove themselves with a Roy G. Biv consolation round and they capitalized.
The resiliency they showed coming back to dominate the consolation bracket was enough to win over the hearts and minds of the tournament organizers. Once in the tournament, they gave a simply stunning performance. None of their match-ups were close. They dominated from start to finish. There is nothing more to say, congratulations Indigo.
Congratulations to our Silver Medalist- Turquoise.
Turquoise came out the winner of the top half of the bracket. You never know what can happen in a tournament like this, but after beating so many Blueish teams they had to feel pretty good going into their match-up with Indigo. It wasn’t meant to be. They’ll look to regroup and try again next year.
Congratulations to our Bronze Medalist- Cobalt Blue.
Cobalt Blue was the tournament favorite going in and they lived up to the hype. One slip-up against Turquoise and they’re left on the sidelines wondering what would have happened had they had the chance to face Indigo. Third place in a tournament this stacked is nothing to be ashamed of. Still, you have to think Cobalt Blue felt like this season it was championship or bust.
Closing Thoughts
You have to wonder how Blue feels waking up this morning knowing Indigo is the overall champion. When people voted for “some version of blue” as far superior to “some version of indigo”, were they picturing Cobalt Blue, Sky Blue, or Azure Blue? It’s possible that some of the ambiguity that surrounded Indigo in the seeding tournament was confusing enough that people voted for a color they were sure was some version of blue.
Indigo will be seeded number one heading into next year’s tournament. Will they repeat as champions, or will a new color prevail?
Also, rounds two and three saw a real drop off in fan voting. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why. But, in the final round, we took the voting off the website and put it directly to Twitter via Twitter polls. Doing it this way increased the number of votes at least 5x. It’s possible the winners would have been completely different if all the polls were done exclusively via Twitter, and we might have been able to avoid this whole Indigo rabbit hole.
I think the reason I even decided to do this whole tournament was that I really like light blue, and I wondered if anyone else did too. I’m happy for Indigo, though.
Next year all the polls will be done exclusively via Twitter to ensure the most accurate results. If anyone is still reading at this point, you’re one of my guys or gals. Thanks for the support, I probably don’t deserve it.
Don’t worry, we’re officially done with the color tournament…for now.
Here are a few more articles that are about real things, if that’s your thing.
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The Good Day/Bad Day Teeter-Totter
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