Yes, I should weight in about Apple’s Metal announcement, or Google’s Tango smartphone, or talk about Oculus Rift, or Word Lens (which really is cool and free for a short time, so get it now), or something. But, others have said enough on them, so let’s talk about two colors, chartreuse and puce.

I’ve blogged about chartreuse before (and answers here). The gist: it’s a color that a lot of people think they know, but don’t (including myself, once upon a time). Get it fixed in your mind before reading further. I decided to actually make it a tiny part of the Udacity MOOC, asking students about it for fun. 10,450 students responded, and here are the results:

• 41% said yellow-green
• 22% said red-orange
• 19% didn’t know
• 18% said deep purple

Please use this knowledge for good, or evil. So what about puce? Well, last night I was trying to think about other colors I wasn’t sure about. I know what drab is – that’s the color of commerce, accountancy, and business (hey, I don’t make this stuff up). One I though of was puce (aka, peuce, puse, peuse). I again got it wrong. Also, it turns out this has to be about the most disgusting color name ever – you’ve been warned. It sounds nicer in French, though.

This is a mostly content-free post (you really should see Word Lens, though – it’s like magic), but I should have an interesting color-related announcement next week, if all goes well.