6-Gingerol
File sealed
The detectives are still writing this one up. The poster and the facts are below; the film and the interrogation room open soon.
Booking photographs


The suspect, from its real atomic coordinates. Drag to turn it. Height chart in nanometers, ruled every 0.1 nm. A one-inch slice of ginger root is about fourteen million times wider.
Rap sheet
- Answers to
- 6-Gingerol. Head of the gingerol family.
- Height
- 1.8 nm, tail and all.
- Weight
- 0.49 zeptograms
- Build
- Capsaicin’s look-alike: same vanillyl head, long greasy tail.
- Habits
- Trips the same heat sensor as chili peppers.
- Associates
- Capsaicin, at least twenty times stronger at the same sensor.
- Smell
- None to speak of. Ginger’s smell is other molecules.
- Weakness
- Heat. Drying turns it into shogaol; cooking breaks off mild zingerone.
- Hours
- Four months on the counter and shogaol moves in.
- Last seen
- A 5 mL tube marked GINGER in the fridge at HQ.
of them in a tablespoon of grated fresh ginger, give or take.
Roots vary. You’ve never seen one.
The poster on the street
This is the photocopied wanted poster for 6-Gingerol, No. 43. They were made for noticeboards around Boston, Cambridge and the rest of the east coast.
Found one? Scan its QR code with your phone. If you're a signed-in player, the sighting goes on your record with +1 XP.
Not a player yet? Join the Epic Quest: the real role-playing game of Molecular Reality, a nanopore lab, with the CEO as gamemaster.