Thinking about starting a chocolate company and using a rich purple hue for the wrappers? Think again – there’s already a lock on that color. If you’ve ever seen something like, “The color puce is a trademark of Puce Panther” stamped on a product and wondered how a company can call dibs on a chunk of the rainbow – well, they can. Sort of. You can paint your house Tiffany Blue with T-Mobile Magenta polka dots (though I wouldn’t recommend it) and neither company would have a leg to stand on in court, but if you started selling jewelry in Tiffany Blue Boxes or tried to market cell phones using T-Mobile Magenta… well, then you might have a problem. Here are 10 companies and the colors they’ve claimed.

1. Green-gold, Qualitex. Qualitex v. Jacobson Products CO., Inc., is what put colormarking on the map. Qualitex used the unique color blend for their dry cleaning presses (pictured – pretty distinct, right?). In 1989, competitor Jacobson began using the exact same shade, allegedly to more easily confuse companies into buying their product instead. Qualitex won the resulting lawsuit, and thus colormarking was born.

2. Tiffany Blue, of course, is one of the most famous colors in the world.

3. Target Red

4. Cadbury Purple. But it took them more than 10 years to earn that right and prove people associated that color specifically with Cadbury products.

5. Barbie Pink is trademarked for use in more than 100 categories, from bubble bath to cereal. (more…)

You may have a box of Duncan Hines cake mix in your cupboard, but you may not have known that, unlike Betty Crocker, Hines was a real person. Here are five things about the patron saint of powdered dessert mixes that might surprise you.

1. He Got His Start as a Salesman

Hines wasn’t a chef or a master baker himself. In fact, he was a traveling salesman for a printing company. The job doesn’t sound like it would help someone become a food expert, but since Hines was forever on the road – he averaged 40,000-60,000 miles of car travel a year – he ate most of his meals in restaurants. He and his wife, Florence, loved to travel on weekends, which made meals at home even more rare for Hines.

All of those restaurant dinners and lunches started to add up, and Hines soon found himself extremely knowledgeable on the best place to get a bite to eat in towns all over the country. Eventually he and Florence had a fun idea: they compiled a list of recommendations for their favorite restaurants in various cities around the country and sent it to friends as Christmas gifts.

It would be hard to top Hines’ restaurant list for the title of “Most Successful Christmas Newsletter of All Time.” His friends loved it so much that in 1935 Hines turned his travels into a book, Adventures in Good Eating. Book buyers adored Hines’ opinions as much as his friends did, and in 1938 he released a companion book, Lodging for a Night, that told travelers where to stay when they were seeking out these delicious meals. Hines soon became America’s favorite restaurant and hotel critic.

2. The Public Really, Really Trusted Him

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Today was baseball’s Opening Day, where everyone has a record of 0-0. So bust out the peanuts and Cracker Jack, pop open a frosty beverage of age-appropriate choice and take a look at some of the best ceremonial first pitches.

On opening day in 2007, Cincinnati mayor Mark Mallory attempted to toss out the first pitch. It wasn’t pretty. (more…)

YES! You can play this challenge/contest without knowing a thing about the weekly hunt! It’s sort of a one-off – a stand-alone if you will. Will you?

Answer the Level 3 bonus-round question correctly and you may win your pick of anything you want from the neatoshop (valued under $25). Ready? Set. GO!

Oh, and don’t forget, even if you’re not the winner, you still need to solve the challenge to compete for next week’s Day 5 final challenge!

You know the presidents. Do you know their back-up plans? Choose which person served as VP under each commander in chief.

Take the Quiz: Who Was His VP?

Ordinary wine racks and cellars are so drab and unoriginal—which only makes these 34 creative wine holders stand out even more. From chains to staircases to dart boards, these designs provide a good way to distinguish your vino collection from those of your friends and neighbors.

Even if you aren’t a wine aficionado, you can still appreciate the great design that went into these home accessories. Also, you may still be interested in the single bottle decorations that could make your vodka (in place of wine) bottle look like a little cowboy.

The ad above was created by Jenny Burrows and Matt Kappler for their art portfolios. Originally, the logo at the bottom belonged to The Smithsonian. But once Jenny and Matt’s work started getting attention online, the Smithsonian folks decided they weren’t crazy about the free publicity and asked the artists to take down the ads immediately. Jenny ended up swapping in the generic “Museums” logo seen above.

If you like the Roosevelt/50 Cent ad, be sure to take a quick trip over to Geekosystem to check out more of the wonderful posters.

3eanuts catalogs Peanuts cartoon strips, minus the fourth panel. It’s similar in spirit to De-Garfed (in which Garfield’s thoughts are removed from the Garfield strip) and other crazy Garfield variants. But in this one, it’s about existential aloneness, despair, hopelessness — pretty rough stuff for a comic strip. Here’s what author Daniel Leonard says about it:

Charles Schulz’s Peanuts comics often conceal the existential despair of their world with a closing joke at the characters’ expense. With the last panel omitted, despair pervades all.

Also:

Why 3eanuts?

The somber subject matter of Peanuts often goes unnoticed due to the merchandising of the strip (sentimental greeting cards and the like) as well as the gag structure of the strips themselves. The concluding punchline distances readers emotionally from the misery that precedes it; jokes turn us from co-sufferers into onlooking wise guys. Schulz was well aware that the dismal content of Peanuts, which is to say the stuff of life, is difficult to face without humor to aid us. By removing the final gag panel, we bring to the fore exactly how dark Schulz’s view of the world has always been. That this view often eludes us merely affirms Schulz’s skill at helping us to cope.

Here are a few favorites:

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It’s an all-new 5-day trivia hunt!

Co-puzzle Master Josh Halbur and I are happy to bring you the next How Did You Know? sponsored by our friends over at neatorama.com.

Here’s how it works: Every day the rest of this week, we’ll be presenting two challenges at noon ET. They’ll be very similar to the kinds of puzzles you’ve come to expect from me and Josh, and, yes, they will feed into the Day 5 puzzle, as normal. Each evening, at 8pm ET, we’ll be putting up a third challenge loosely based on the day’s previous two challenges. You won’t need to solve the first two to solve the third, but knowing the day’s theme might help you be the first to crack Level 3. Also: note that you’ll have to solve Level 3–the bonus–to compete on Day 5

>> Prizes! Each day, one person will win one item from the neatoshop worth $25 or less. Shipping is on the house but the item you pick must be in stock. Oh, and no credit if you don’t use up the full $25. To be eligible for the prize, you need to leave the correct answer to Level 3 on the correct neatorama page before 10pm ET. You also need to tell us in that comment what you want if you’re selected at random.

>> So what’s in it for the person/team who finishes first with all the correct answers? Bragging rights, as always, with your photo/bio posted on our site. But also the chance to win the Day 5 neatorama prize, and, as has been tradition here for the last 37 months of HDYK?, your pick of any one of the amazing t-shirts from our store.

As always, if you’re not a Fan of our Facebook page, be sure to add us so we can keep you updated, and you can get in on some additional nifty clues throughout the week. If you’re new to our five-day hunt, you can read up on our new Rules page here. Oh, and previous challenges can be found here if you missed it. Okay, ready to get your Hunt on? Click on through.

Happy opening day! This is the golden day where everybody’s got a shot to supplant the Giants as World Series champion. Even the Royals! In honor of the start of the Major League Baseball season, can you name the opening day starting pitchers for all 30 teams in 5 minutes?

Take the Quiz: Opening Day Starters