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After a very close call the last time he was making a flight for the mafia, Barry received a new set of orders for his next flight. The Don really loved his creative little puzzles, and Barry knew that the only reason he could solve them was that he and the Don were often on the same wavelength with their thoughts. With the Don's newest encoding scheme, there would be no more need to brute force or guess at any part of the solution like last time, so that would save Barry a bit of time figuring out his final destination.

The image sent to him by the Don consisted of two 7x7 grids, filled with squares of various colors presented in a random order.

2 seven by seven grids of various colors

Barry looked at the message sent by the Don and quickly setup the navigational unit in his plane and prepared for takeoff.

Where is Barry flying to this time?

Transcription of Images:

Legend: K = Black, O = Orange, W = White, P = Pink, V = Violet, Y = Yellow, R = Red, I = Indigo (Dark Blue), B = Blue (Light Blue), G = Green
Capital is full square filled in, lower case is half square filled in
First Image

K O W K P K P
K V Y O R R V
W R V K b O K
V K O K R R Y
O R R O K V K
K O P R Y W P
P K K K R K K

Second Image

K P V K P K G
W K K V B W V
P B G O G V W
K V B Y K Y K
K B K V i K P
G O B G K G K
K V P K V K P

HINT 1:

The partial answer below was such a great start, I was hesitant to add a hint at all, but it's been a while with no activity, so maybe this will get some of the juices flowing.

The partial answer and comments below it give almost everything needed to solve the puzzle. Given the starting point below, what's a simple thing that can be done to take the colors and translate them to a legal lat/long number?

Hint 2

Some of the colors are red herrings; each color falls into one of two categories. Determine which colors are actually relevant to the puzzle, figure out the correct order to put the relevant colors in, and then use that to convert them to the appropriate numbers.

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    $\begingroup$ Is the text "6x6 grid" in the edit a typo or a hint in some way? :) Because what we're directly presented is 7x7 $\endgroup$ Sep 14, 2020 at 18:33
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    $\begingroup$ @LukasRotter Good catch, it was a typo. Original notes from planning out the puzzle used a 6x6 grid with a border but I found it more aesthetically pleasing to be 7x7. The puzzle grid has a minimum size, but no maximum. $\endgroup$ Sep 14, 2020 at 19:04

2 Answers 2

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The pilot is flying to

Frankfurt Airport (50.0379, 8.56220)

Explanation:

Convert each color to its wavelength (except white, black and pink, since they have none), order the colors ascendingly by wavelength, then convert each group to it's amount of occurences (e.g. 5 times violet, 0 times blue) and concatenate. Small square represents the decimal dot.

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    $\begingroup$ Pink, as well. Colors with, and colors without $\endgroup$ Oct 6, 2020 at 18:57
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(Partial solution)

So far, this is what I have come up with:

*part1 A number with a "/" in front signifies that color was a half square
I used "X" for black, "O" for white, and "P" for pink in the grids on the right.
**part2

My thought process:

*The first thing that stood out to me right away was that "he and the Don were often on the same wavelength with their thoughts". Based on a quick Google search, I got the chart of wavelengths for the colors, as shown in the picture above. I have excluded black, white, and pink, as none of these colors have specific wave lengths.
**I tried not to overthink it. I split up the numbers from each of the boxes into 4 columns. Columns 1 and 2 contain the numbers from boxes 1 and 2 respectively, in the order that they appear (left to right, as if reading a book). Columns 1' and 2' are the same numbers, except sorted from smallest to largest (I also tried largest to smallest, but it is not pictured above). Taking the suggestion in the comments, I marked the half squares as where the decimal would go. I then summed each column two different ways each. From there it was obvious that a decimal could not literally go there. So instead of literally placing the decimal at the half squares, I placed the decimal reasonably, and got the coordinates all the way on the right. Despite the problem saying that guesses would not need to be made, I could not immediately figure out if there were any clues hinting to positive or negative coordinates, so I just tried them all anyways.
While some of these did put me on land, none of them put me on or near any airport.

Next steps/observations:

I honestly do not know where to go after this, or if im even on the right path. I am not a seasoned puzzle solver, and this is my first real attempt at possibly solving a puzzle on this site. Either way, here are some things I noticed that might be helpful:
1. [Removed, irrelevant given new information] 2. [Removed, irrelevant] 3. As given to us in the last puzzle, anywhere he goes has an international airport. Im going to assume this information is still relevant due to the continuation of the story, and the knowledge tag on the post.
4. The half squares are obviously significant in some way. My first thought was to use half of the wavelength values for those boxes. Given new information, my first attempt has been to use the half squares as decimal places.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color#Physics_of_color

Please keep in mind that I am completely new to solving, and puzzles in general. I do not have extensive knowledge about all the puzzles, or ways that clues may be hidden. I simply wanted to share what I have found, and possibly spark some inspiration for others.

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    $\begingroup$ Just a thought: The OP talks about order on two occasions (in the edit, it furthermore says that the colors presented are in "random order"). For me this suggests that the colors have to be sorted by wavelength nm, but I could very well be completely off. $\endgroup$ Sep 15, 2020 at 20:34
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    $\begingroup$ Good start. Main suggestion would be don't overthink it too much, you've done the hard part already rot13(purpx gur yvaxrq dhrfgvba gb frr gur sbezng bs gur nafjre naq frr vs gurer'f fbzrguvat fvzcyr lbh pna qb jvgu jung lbh unir. Rapbqvat zvtug abg unir orra n tbbq jbeq sbe zr gb hfr) $\endgroup$ Sep 15, 2020 at 21:11
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    $\begingroup$ Great job so far! An idea that might help...the setter has emphasized that there is no need for guessing, and looking at the solution to the previous puzzle, Deusovi had to guess where the decimal point went. I would guess that the half-squares indicate the decimal points. $\endgroup$ Sep 15, 2020 at 21:15

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