Solution - Blocks and Blocks

by Nathan Fung, Nick Poulos, and Bowen Kerins

Answer: Click here to reveal

While colorful, the colors are not relevant to the puzzle. The first words of each painting say as much: "The colors are there just to look pretty. However, some searching will reveal that the eight artists are all topologists (or slightly altered names thereof). This hints that the images are not just "art", but are also graphs. In fact, they are all topologically equivalent to maps of neighborhoods in eight American cities.

The cities correspond to the homes of the institutions at which the topologists teach: Boston (Boston University), Philadelphia (Penn), San Francisco (USF), Cambridge (MIT), New York (Columbia), Providence (Brown), Chicago (Chicago), and Honolulu (UH-Mānoa). Some of these cities have multiple definitions for neighborhood; the titles contain hints as to which map you should use. For instance, the "Just Authority" in Boston's hints at the Boston Redevelopment Authority, and "To Analyze a Plan" hints at the Planning Analysis Sections for Philadelphia.

Boston


Philadelphia


San Francisco


Cambridge


New York


Providence


Chicago


Honolulu

Outlined above are the neighborhoods with numbers given. The first numbers go from 1 to 21, providing an ordering. The parenthetical numbers tell to take that letter of the neighborhood name:

NeighborhoodNumberLetter
Allston4S
South Boston3U
Jamaica Plain8P
Center City5E
Germantown/Chestnut Hill3R
Nob Hill4H
Excelsior4E
Haight Ashbury12R
Cambridgeport11O
Strawberry Hill8R
The Bronx6O
Brooklyn1B
Olneyville4E
Federal Hill5R
Blackstone7T
Lincoln Square6L
West Garfield Park8F
Greater Grand Crossing7R
Manoa5A
Nanakuli/Maili3N
Kaneohe1K

Robert L. Frank was known as WHIZZER, which is the answer.