Find the final number, and reveal something on the way

Question

Note: there are multiple steps needed in this puzzle. The final answer is a 3-digit number, which is important in this puzzle.

• Nothing as beautiful as colorful hills! You have a nice view and can look down at this puzzle. Each of the 7 colors represents one digit. You should calculate all of them, but two digits are already given: You know that the deep violet and the Mersenne blue are both safe primes.

• Groups of very strange words you have come across here. What could they mean? And how could they be used?

  ss-uuuuuuuuuu-mmeee-vee-rryy-nnuumm-bbbbbbbeeeeeeeee-
  rrrrrrrrryyyoooooo-uuccaaannf-innnnnnndddddiiiiinnt-
  hhhhhhhhhecaabbb-aaaannnndinnnnntt-hhheeehheaaaaaaad-
  llaaammppaaaaannnn-ddiiinnbboooothhh-rriiimmmmmmmmmmmssstt-
  ooofffiinndtt-hhhheeeeaaannn-ssssssssswwwwwww-eeeeeeerrrrr
  

• Among all letters below, there are some letters that could be useful. But don't search for them, unless you know what you are doing. (if you don't know what you are doing, and you want to find red herrings, feel free to do a word search, there are a lot of them :)

  R E D H E R R I N G B S E E A J I O E K H F E E V D S T
  A V G E H T X F F E F A A D O I D G N I R R E H D E R H
  O M N B A S D I A M O D D S D I O A T S E Z W R S D F I
  L C I F S I O R E M O V E F A V A E W R E V G H J C S S
  P V R U J V E S O N E A N M B I S D U E F O R E E E A I
  Y H R E B S B K D D Y I A B E S R E Y D D X N Y D X E S
  H Y E X D D E Y H T G M E A S D A D G H U D O W N A V A
  D M H W E H P O I B M V E E F E C X D E A S U P D S A R
  S L D E I R E B Y D S E N R E D H E R R I N G U D S H E
  A K E P D Q S R A S C V D C N A G B D R O U H D N V G D
  E J R U X A E X R E W Q B N M N A B S I B E E D A S D H
  T G R S L O T P W I A G D E I O A D D N D E E W R B A E
  N O O O F F I S E V N E S R U E R Y A G A K L O Y D Z R
  J X H I R E D S A D X G R R T Y D E S O F N I N P H D R
  I E T R D S A I A H V E D C B G G Y D K E D A E T A S I
  G V N G D E R U L D H D E A B R A H J D T E D S Y E B N
  D V V A R N U M X D E E R X H E R G M S A T F N O X A G
  F Q D E B E R H E I N G E S E D D E A N M O R E F D R F
  A E W E A D B R S G N D R R D P I A F S A E X Q E R U O
  G R E D H E R R I N G R E D H E R R I N G R E D H E R X
  

---

Hint:

The bold words contain an important hint how to solve this puzzle.

Answer 1

The answer is

256

First of all

We should notice that the letter grid has 20 rows and 28 columns. Also the picture of hills has 28 columns while the text in the second section has 20 groupings of letters!

Furthermore, we are told that each colour in the picture corresponds to a digit and the letter-groupings can also easily be turned to numbers based on the repeated letters. This means that for each row and column in the 20x28 grid, we can assign a set of numbers.

This is starting to sound like a Nonogram!

First we need to solve the colours though! We are told that the violet and blue are Safe primes so the only options (for digits) are 5 and 7. Furthermore, the blue is called Mersenne blue hinting at Mersenne primes, so we know that it must be 7 while the violet is 5. How to get the rest though?

In order for this to be a valid nonogram, the sum of the row clues should match the sum of the column clues. The sum of the row clues, i.e., the total number of letters in the "ss-uuuuuuuuuu-mmeee..." is 256 so the sum of the column clues needs to be that as well. Considering the number of occurrences of each colour (25 dark green, 24 yellow, 16 light green, 7 brown, 4 orange, 8 blue and 3 violet), we quickly find that then only way to give each colour a unique number is

Dark green = 1
Yellow = 2
Light green = 3
Brown = 4
Orange = 9
(Blue = 7)
(Violet = 5)

So, now we have finally found our nonogram clues!


Solving this is very straightforward and gives an image of a tractor.


Next, we should look at what the text in the second section actually said:

Sum every number you can find in the cab and in the headlamp and in both rims to find the answer.

Overlaying the grid of letters with the tractor indeed gives us some clues in the cab, headlamp and rims.


In the cab we have

I am odd. Remove one and I am even.

While this would clearly be true for any odd number, the solution to this riddle is seven which becomes even by removing the first letter.

In the headlamp we have just

Hg

which is the chemical symbol for mercury with atomic number 80.

In the rear wheel we have

Lot of fish is a triangular number.

The "lot of fish" is some kind of bible reference but the answer to this riddle is 153 which is a triangular number.

The front wheel says

Ninety-one rotated

And rotating 91 by 180 degrees gives us 16.

Summing these up gives 256 which was indeed important in this puzzle as it was the sum of the row/column clues of the nonogram, i.e., the total number of coloured cells!