What is The Daily Hue?
The Daily Hue is a colour-building puzzle that hides one specific colour inside a real painting and asks you to reconstruct it using three sliders for hue, saturation and lightness. You do not select from a palette. You compose the target colour yourself by adjusting HSL values, which requires translating what you see into numerical parameters.
How to play The Daily Hue
- Look at the painting at the top of the page and identify the colour the puzzle is asking you to find.
- Set the three sliders: Hue from 0 to 359, and Saturation and Lightness from 0 to 100. The hex code updates below the sliders.
- Tap SUBMIT GUESS. You’ll get a directional hint for each channel and a match score out of 100 for the full guess.
- Use the channel feedback to refine your next attempt. You must reach a perfect score of 100 to complete the puzzle.
- You have up to five guesses to find the target colour.
Reading the feedback
Hue, saturation, and lightness each receive their own feedback. Hue returns WARMER or COOLER; saturation uses STRONGER or WEAKER, while lightness reports LIGHTER or DARKER. The feedback chip shows how close you are: red means far off, amber means close, yellow means nearly there, and green means exact. A score from 0 to 100 appears on the right. The round ends only at 100.
Modes available
Daily puzzle: The free game on the front page. It features one artwork and one hidden colour, with five guesses before resetting each day.
Collections: Sets outside the daily rotation. Monthly collections contain past daily puzzles. Curator collections are organised by painter, medium, or genre and unlock with silver or gold keys.
Explore: A search tool for finding artwork by one or two colours. Sign-in is required.
Strategy tips
Start with hue. It covers 360 degrees, so a 30-point error there costs much more than the same error in saturation or lightness. WARMER and COOLER are the most useful clues to follow first.
Do not chase the loudest colour in the painting. The featured colour is often the one holding the composition together rather than the most obvious element. The reveal screen identifies whether it was the dominant, accent or signature colour.
Start from middle values rather than extremes. The sliders default to 180/50/50 because any directional hint from that position still leaves useful adjustment room. An opening at saturation 95 wastes half the answer space if the feedback returns STRONGER.
Why play The Daily Hue
Most colour games ask for recognition. This one asks for construction, which forces you to translate a visual impression into hue, saturation and lightness before you can even guess. The artwork is not decoration. The reveal names the colour, explains its historical role, and presents a gallery of other works that feature the same hue. A failed round still teaches colour theory. The daily puzzle requires no account and is free. Curated collections and the Explore search sit behind sign-in and a paid Curator tier.