I was thinking about this, is a good hashing analogy something like mixing paint? Ie a defined set of constituent colours will produce a particular colour pain

I was thinking about this, is a good hashing analogy something like mixing paint? Ie a defined set of constituent colours will produce a particular colour paint. But you can't go from a mixed colour back to the constituents. The only way to find out what constituents are required to create a colour is to try lots of constituents.