Counter Culture

by Joseph DeVincentis

ANSWER: SCAN

 

The rectangles and dots at the left edge of the image are Mayan, base-20 numerals ("an even older culture" than the Aztec theme of this round). This would represent a gargantuan number, but transcribing each digit to a letter in the range A-S spells PARALLELOGRAMS. (RECTANGLES unfortunately exceeds the base-20 notation of the Mayans.)

The total number of parallelograms in the grid is 153234. When this is written in base 20, it is 19 3 1 14, or SCAN.