Software Engineer Cracks Three-Year-Old Puzzle on Adobe Headquarters Roof in San Jose

A mysterious puzzle displayed on the roof of Adobe's headquarters in San Jose, California, has been solved after three years by software engineer Brian Vincent. The puzzle, known as "San Jose Semaphore" and created by artist Ben Rubin, featured a cyclic animation of four circles appearing in various patterns since May 2023. After extensive analysis, Vincent discovered the patterns encoded pixel colors of a digital image depicting a single rose from a famous painting by Italian artist Sandro Botticelli.

Vincent described the puzzle's difficulty as nearly perfect, noting it appeared simple but required significant effort to solve, remaining unsolved for years. This puzzle is the third in the "San Jose Semaphore" series; the first concealed the full text of Thomas Pynchon's novel "The Crying of Lot 49," and the second contained an audio clip of astronaut Neil Armstrong saying, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

Adobe announced that a new puzzle will soon be installed on the building's roof, with a special prize for the first person worldwide to solve it: a two-year free subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud, a suite of creative and design software.