Solutions

Huh?

The best way to get caught up on this whole thing is to read our Intro page.

Solutions

🚨🚨 SPOILERS BELOW! 🚨🚨 Visit the puzzles page if you want to try to crack these puzzles yourself.

Endgame

We collected 21 words from the 21 puzzles. Each of those words corresponded to a Practical Application from a Field Notes edition (e.g. ‘Bart’s Calls to Moes’ from Drink Local).

Sorting the keywords by edition, then by Practical Application number, yielded 7 what3words combinations, allowing us to locate 7 addresses, each with a Little Free Library. At the Libraries, we found envelopes containing a 3-pack of the corresponding edition (e.g. Drink Local) with stickers on various pages and one Practical Application highlighted per book.

Each sticker corresponded to one of the Practical Enumerations in the Clandestine edition – for instance, a sticker with a picture of the band Genesis corresponded to ‘Books of the Bible.’ We could then find what number that item was on the list – for instance, Genesis is #1 because it is the first book of the Bible.

We then indexed the # on the list into the highlighted Practical Application. In the notebook that had the Genesis sticker, the highlighted Practical Application was ‘IOUs to Forget,’ so we indexed by 1 to yield the letter “I”.

We noticed that across all the books, each page number (1-48 for a Field Notes book) was only used once, so we knew we were looking for 48 total pages and could use that to order. After completing all the enumeration indexes and sorting, we obtained a string:

IOBSERVEARCTURUSFREAKOUTGARRIGOUFIDELITYNITROGEN

These corresponded to Clandestine Enumerations as well. “I OBSERVE,” for instance, matches with “David Copperfield Chapters.” It is the second chapter, so we recorded “2”.

In total, this gave us 251937 – or 25-19-37 – the combination to the final safe.

Puzzle #21

• Code: 8EQ7 HPV6 ULVB 6TJS 131F
• Quote: n/a
• Video showed all numbers from 1-21.
• Key: Each of the previous 20 key, in order, for each of the 20 letters in the code.
• Solution: PLAY JACKBOX TWITCH 330
• Enumeration: 6
• Video here

The Jackbox stream was a commentated set of Drawful 2 games. The VIP player in each game was a Dr. Field. The Drawful prompts were all Nick Drake lyrics. Dr. Field’s guesses for each of the fourteen prompts all began with unique sequential letters, giving an ordering. During each drawing phase, the hosts were shown in studio, with some number of a set of five mugs present, giving an index. In the twitch chat, a user named fieldphd repeatedly said “*hiccup*,” cluing (along with Nick Drake lyrics), How To Train Your Dragon. Dr. Field’s guesses all ended with the first half of a HTTYD dragon species. The remainder of the species name was the string to be sorted and indexed as described earlier. This gave NICK OF NOTEBOOK, cluing SPARKS. 

Puzzle #20

• Code: 3STO IDV3 AIDT 7RPM PATF H04N
• Quote: “Anybody want to shut down the Federal Reserve?”
• Key: IE for Irwin “Whistler” Emery
• Solution: PEACE VALLEY DRY GOODS 83702
• Enumeration: 6
• Photos and PDF here

The four digit location codes corresponded to FedEx store ID numbers, yielding 16 FedEx stores across the country. Agents were dispatched to these locations and, upon requesting the document print out for “Dr. Field”, were given line graphs. Each line graph contained a title describing some sort of SALES figure, a different range for the y-axis values, and the full year’s months on the x-axis. 

Various references were made using each line graph’s title and y-axis value range (e.g., DRAPERY SALES with a range of 0-100 yielded WINDOWS 95). The number in each reference corresponded to a value on the line graphs. The month that this value fell under was used as an index into the reference and then sorted by FedEx city location giving the phrase BETWEENLOANDHIGH. 

Finally, by taking the difference in months of maximum and minimum values in each graph, applying that number as an index into the merchandise sales title, and sorting by original notebook order, the phrase ANSWER IS COMBINES.

Puzzle #19

• Code: 3STO IDV3 AIDT 7RPM PATF H04N
• Quote: “I don’t want to alarm you but something very sinister is going on here.”
• Key: JB for J.B. Fletcher
• Solution: DAYTRIP SOCIETY 04046
• Enumeration: 5
• Photos here

Group the stamps by color, in the order they appear in the book. This yields 9 series of letters. Prepend each letter group with its stamps’ value. This yields 9 phrases such as “30 YEW”, “5 SOGM”.

Each of these are acronyms to to some oft-used phrase or cultural reference beginning with a number, with one extra (unused) letter. These cultural references also could be paired with one of the phrases on the last phrase, filling in each number with a word of that length.

For example:

• The yellow stamps, all valued 30¢, spelled the letters YEW.
• 30 YEW stands for 30 Years’ War, with the E unused.
• The 30 Years’ War was “Followed by the peace of Westphalia (5 2 10)”.

Each unused letter, sorted in descending order of its corresponding stamp’s height on the page, spells EGSTOMACH, or ORGAN.

Puzzle #18

• Code: U6FF WWAT CD06 OIOM I
• Quote: “Sometimes you gotta run before you can walk.”
• Key: FE for Iron Man
• Solution: COFFEE STUDIO 60640
• Enumeration: 6
• Photos here

Each 5-word phrase is crossword-style clue to a 5-letter word, and the length of each word within the 5-word phrase forms a ZIP code.

Example:

• WISE SCHOLARS’ BIG HUGE NOVELS.
• solves to the word TOMES
• and indicates the ZIP code 48346 (the lengths of each word)

The ZIP codes, when indexed into the name of the town they belong to, give another 5-letter word. Example:

• 48346 is in Clarkston, MI.
• The 4th, 8th, 3rd, 4th, then 6th letters of CLARKSTON spell ROARS.

Each of these words is one letter off from another 5-letter phrase solution. Example:

• O, HE GOES. SHE ROVES.
• solves to the word ROAMS
• The letter M is changed to R to turn ROAMS to ROARS

Arranging the words so that each zip code word is placed before the clue whose answer it is one letter off from, then taking the changed letter from the zip-code-indexed word, in order, yields MOWGLIBOOK, or JUNGLE.

Puzzle #17

• Code: G5XZ GHVG GCKU LWSL
• Quote: “It’s handled.”
• Key: 54 for LIV, Olivia Pope’s nickname
• Solution: OLD FOX BOOKS 21401
• Enumeration: 9
• Photos here

The first syllable of each phrase was the pronunciation of a single letter. For example, the phrase beginning with “Elliptical” starts with the sound “el”. In order of the numbers written before each phrase, these spelled “LUNAQUIPS”.

This led to lunaquips.tumblr.com, a blog with 9 posts, each containing a single GIF. Each GIF could be paired with a word from one of the nine notebook phrases. For example, a post containing a GIF of two men boxing was paired with the phrase “Cubically, you might be drawn as a big box!”.

The moon’s fullness at the precise posting datetimes of each GIF, when calculated in Central Time (Chicago), were notably round fractions. For example: 50.00%, 66.66%, etc.

Noting whether the moon was waxing (right side lit) or waning (left side lit) on the date of the post, we applied the “lit” percentage of the moon to the single GIF-related word from each phrase. For example, the seventh phrase:

• “4. A half-dozen US flags fly on you!”
• A GIF of a dog flying was dated 6/28/2013, 10:04am.
• The moon at that time was 66.66% full waning gibbous, meaning the left side was lit.
• 66.66%, starting from the left, of the word FLY yields “FL”.

The “lit” portions of all 9 words yielded 17 letters, all unique: PMNBOXJGHTQUFLZCK. 9 letters of the alphabet are missing from this list of “"it” letters: ADEIRSVWY. The out-of-order numbering of each phrase from the original notebook provide a position for each letter:

• A D E I R S V W Y
• 7 1 5 3 2 9 4 6 8

Or, in order, .

Puzzle #16

• Code: TC4I OPF7 PQRT RYUN E5GH
• Quote: “This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.”
• Key: First shift each quartet by 2-0-0-1. Then decode with H9 for HAL 9000.
• Solution: TWO HANDS PAPERIE 80302
• Enumeration: 5
• Photos here

The scores are all current arcade game high scores, as recorded by Twin Galaxies, for games with titles that have the same letter pattern (length and punctuation) as the given names. Each actual game name and given name overlap at a single letter (e.g. lasSo and jouSt). These letters, taken in page order, spell NFL SCORIGAMI. The date the high score was verified by Twin Galaxies, plus the notebook-listed number of days held, gives the date of an NFL game where the competing teams are indicated by a clue in the form of the record breaker’s name. The final scores in these games each has happened a small number of times (i.e., a carefully crafted scorigami); the number of times each score has occurred can be used an an alphabetic index to give a letter. Sorting the list alphabetically by actual arcade game name, these scorigami letters spell ANSWER IS ABOUT.

Puzzle #15

• Code: EADA 5WEW 4BAH XUXM O
• Quote: “Okay. Get a pen. Write this down. E M E T I B. You got that? Okay. Now reverse it.”
• Key: BS for Sydney Bristow, reversed.
• Solution: SON OF A SAILOR 78702 in Austin
• Enumeration: 7
• Photos here

Some phrases had dots under some letters, which spelled out fieldnotes.com/move. This link went to a video of a kid doing different dances to different songs.  During each dance/song, a score bubble pops up with a negative score.  The dances were identified as emotes from the video game Fortnite.  Each phrase in the notebook then matched up with the description of an item from Fortnite, with the ink color indicating item type.  For each page of the notebook, the first initials of the corresponding items matched the initials of the description of one of the dance emotes.  Taking the total in-game cost for the items on each page and subtratcting the score for the corresponding emote gave a number.  Indexing into the title of the corresponding song by that number (after removing two zeros) gave the word GUARDED.

Puzzle #14

• Code: LT8L PWHE P
• Quote: “But I am the heroine. Don’t I get away?”
• Key: MB for Modesty Blaise
• Solution: AIDA E1 6JE in London
• Enumeration: 6
• Photos here

The closing times for each bar, taken as a pair of hour-hand positions on an analog clock, can be read as semaphore. When ordered alphabetically by the bar names, the semaphore spells GOOD NEWS. This led to the The Good News podcast. In its eight most recent episodes, this podcast mentioned one of the bar names. The minute in which this mention occurs can be used as a word index into the episode description. These eight words, when sorted by total episode length, give the message “Find a special message in the episode descriptions.” Among all the episode descriptions is, for the episode Emoji, a suspicious long string of emoji. These emoji are a series of rebuses for other episode titles. The first letters of the indicated episode titles, taken in the emoji rebus order, give STEVIE THEN JODECI SONG, cluing LATELY, a song by Stevie Wonder later covered by Jodeci.

Puzzle #13

• Code: T5K1 MO29 S17K QOIJ AFH
• Quote: “It is my duty to fight, so can we all just wrap it up and go home?”
• Key: NS for Nakia / Shuri
• Solution: FRANCES VINTAGE 85013
• Enumeration: 5
• Photos here

Each person’s name in each three-person firm paired with a supervisor from the Clandestine Field Notes ID Card puzzles. The first letters of the three supervisors’ names made an IOC country code for each firm. Each of these countries had an associated city on the ID cards, giving each firm a city. The task list needed one of the firms to complete each task. Taking the first letters of the associated cities gave the list: HIVES, GRAMMAR, LUMBAR, WALLE, KERNING. When these are referenced to ID card specialties, the first letters of the specialties (Apiology, Lingustics, Ergonomics, Robotics, Typography) spelled ALERT.

Puzzle #12

• Code: TOXX 3W5U T9SA 6JXI IJ
• Quote: "To a guy in Kentucky / I’m Mister Unlucky" 
• Key: JS for Jack Skellington
• Solution: BAFF LING BREW S1F4 41, which is a clue for Puzzled Pint plus the 👁 emoji, for determining which locations to go to.
• Enumeration: 5
• Photos here

The final puzzle of the Puzzled Pint set involved a list of characters and objects from The Nightmare Before Christmas, which was a superset of the list in the notebook. Solvers of the Puzzled Pint at each location were able to ask about a single one of the notebook characters, and were told that character was feeling some five-letter adjective, like LUCID or VAGUE. The categories from the notebook had (except in the case of Villagers) their only capital letters as B or W. If this was treated as the hidden identity game Mastermind, with each B indicating that a single letter in the character’s associated five-letter adjective was in the correct position, and each W indicating that a single letter was correct but in the wrong position. The Villager words had none of either. Based on these clues, it was possible to deduce the only five-letter word possible: RAVED.

Puzzle #11

• Code: T2PR PK5S W GV LIZ6 ST82
• Quote: “I can tell you the license plate numbers of all six cars outside.”
• Key: JB for Jason Bourne
• Solution: VORTEX SOUVENIR 67214, via reading in a spiral 
• Enumeration: 5
• Photos here

Each license plate was a clue for a word or phrase. When that answer was combined with the two-letter abbreviation for the state represented by the plate, we got a one-letter transdeletion of a car model. In addition, each page had a dot on the back that was aligned with one of the letters from A-M. This provided our order. When the extra letters were put in order, they spelled VT MOTTO ENDING. The Vermont state motto is “Freedom and Unity”, giving the answer UNITY.

Puzzle #10

• Code: 8RP4 0FIB LP8L
• Quote: “I am not a number! I am a free man!”
• Key: 06 for Number 6, from The Prisoner
• Solution: LUSH DIVE OSLO
• Enumeration: 6
• Photos here

The lists appeared to be website domains. Each page of domains referenced a particular culture and country. The first letters of each entry could be decoded with the cipher wheel, using the top-level domain of the country as the key. Each decoded word was a translation of “field” in that language, with a letter missing. The missing letters from each page spelled out the solution, PENCIL.

Puzzle #9

• Code: FU41 C9F6 SQTR S
• Quote: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
• Key: VK, then KS, for Verbal Kint & Keyser Söze
• Solution: OBLATION 97209, using a double decode.
• Enumeration: 6
• Photos here

Each sketch showed a frame from a Field Notes edition video. While examining the edition videos, we noticed that 8 of them had caption options in 1 of 8 different languages, with each translating to “Look elsewhere.” This led us to the Clandestine edition video, which had captions in all 8 languages, each consisting of a string of words, the final word of which referenced one of the original eight videos. For each of the 8 original videos referenced, we found the timestamp of the sketch and mapped it to the Clandestine video, with the corresponding caption language turned on. The 8 words that appeared at those moments translated to LOOK FOR DIFFERENCE IN EIGHT PAIRS OF EYES. Eight other videos had single-frame flashes of the Clandestine eye logo — two per video. Finding the time differences between these eye appearances, converting that value to alphabetical, and sorting by edition number yielded the word HOLIDAYS.

Puzzle #8

• Code: 9M OO 7U QB 5M QO OQ
• Quote: “I’m gonna steal it. I’m gonna steal The Declaration of Independence.”
• Key: BG for Benjamin Gates
• Solution: TTM EP LA via book cipher with Declaration of Independence. Time Travel Mart Echo Park LA.
• Enumeration: 5
• Photos here

Each name was a clue for a prank name that Bart used on Moe on The Simpsons. Agents called the phone number and asked for the Bart names, and Moe responded with a line. Those lines ended up being re-phrasings of lyrics from the musical “Five Guys Named Moe.” Each line was from a certain track of the musical. When sorted alphabetically by prank name used by Bart, the alphabetical mapping of each track number spelled PLAYHOUSEOFTHEBARD – which is the GLOBE Theatre.

Puzzle #7

• Code: T8OZ B83I HK
• Quote: “Anonymity is like a warm blanket.“
• Key: EH for Ethan Hunt
• Solution: ABRGS BKLYN, or Annie’s Blue Ribbon General Store in Brooklyn.
• Enumeration: 5
• Photos here.

The cutouts, when laid over the three crosswords, revealed 12 clues, which led to 12 answers, 4 from each of 3 puzzles. If you take the first three answers together in a group — SUDDENLY SUSAN, NOVA, VENT — you can find that they only have one letter in common: N. Do the same for all 4 groups, going top to bottom:

• SUDDENLY SUSAN, NOVA, VENT — N
• CALIFORNIA, ABIDE, SCABBARD — A
• ORCS, ENLACES, CHAP — C
• ALANKING, LENS, MLK — L

Taken together that yields NACL or SALT.

Puzzle #6

• Code: 436T R0X1 6TDQ OHFK
• Quote: “The fanatic is always concealing a secret doubt.“
• Key: GS for George Smiley
• Solution: LONE CHIMNEY 75201, in Dallas, which came from encoding, not decoding, the original code.
• Photos here.

The sixth book had a list of phrases that started with “Because”. Each phrase clued two things that were one letter off. (Like FELIX and HELIX). The two letters were all two steps away in the alphabet. By taking the letter in between each pair (in this example, G), we got the phrase A BLANK OF SEAGULLS, which solves to FLOCK.

Puzzle #5

• Code: QLQ1 PO2E WJP1 0PBE WS65
• Quote: “In my business, you prepare for the unexpected.”
• Key: JB for James Bond
• Solution: CNC3RAO0ILR3MRD0IES7, which had to be read as a box cipher (stacked 4x5 and read the columns left-to-right) to get CRIMINAL RECORDS 30307 in Atlanta.

The fifth book had a Scrabble scoresheet:

First step was to recreate the board, like so:

Once the tiles were in place, it was clear that all the Triple Letter Score spaces were used up, since none were visible anymore. Reading the letters on those spaces left to right, top to bottom, we got PETE ROSE TEAM, which is REDS.

Puzzle #4

• Code: 2XVN 1IRL JU9S 9Y
• Quote: “There are as many ways to live in this world as there are people in this world.”
• Key: OG for Ole Golly
• Solution: DOMESTICA 50309

The fourth book was a single list of sports players, on a team called the Badass Sports Krew:

• ‘Matchmaker’ Russell
• ‘Sasquatch’ Miñoso
• ‘Lycanthrope’ McAfee
• ‘Extraterrestrial’ Sawchuk
• ‘One-Eye’ Toler
• ‘Stoneface’ Lasorda
• ‘Mogwai’ Ruth
• ‘Bridge Dweller’ Maradona
• ‘Bloodsucker’ Leslie
• ‘Bad Frosty’ Favre
• 'Evil Spirit’ Goldsworthy

Each last name was a clue for a sports player with a retired number. Each nickname was a clue for a fantastical creature, which was part of the title of a Bailey School Kids book. By using the retired number of each athlete as an index into the second half of the book title (the part after “Don’t” or “Doesn’t”), you get ANSWER ERASE.

Puzzle #3

• Code: F3U8 F4S0 Y8FO KNGR
• Quote: “Those who have listened do not find it easy to talk; they keep their sorrows and joys to themselves and tell no one.”
• Key: HP for Hercule Poirot
• Solution: THE STOCKIST 84105
• Photo post

The third book was filled with IOUs: names, dollar amounts, and what the money was owed for. Each “for” described a Field Notes editions. Also one letter of the text was in red.

It turned out that each “for” was exactly 30 characters long. Each FN edition had 30 Practical Applications on the back inside cover. By counting the position of the red letter, that led you to a certain practical app. Take the first letters of those apps, put them in order by name (there was A-L listed in the book), and you get the answer TWOAFTERECHO, which in NATO language is GOLF.

Puzzle #2

• Code: 7K4N GZNM MRKJ WUUU
• Quote: “Here’s to plain speaking and clear understanding.”
• Key: KG for Kasper Gutman from Maltese Falcon.
• Solution: URBAN MATTER 63111. 
• Photo post

The second book was filled with names of ballparks and dates. By grouping the dates by day of the week, and then drawing paths on a map between ballparks within each group, in date order, we got six letters: PROPER. 

Puzzle #1

The first code is D7BH 0NB5 B77. 

The first video features the line “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”, which is a quote by Sherlock Holmes.

Using SH as the key on the subscriber code wheel, we decrypted the above code to 826 CHI 60622, a clue for the Secret Agent Supply Store in Chicago. An agent visited the store and spoke the Holmes line above, and was handed a single Field Notes notebook.

Inside were 15 first lines of books, with one word changed. The first letters of the changed word spelled ANSWER IS FLIPPER. Full post here.

Covers

Two of the three books in the 3-pack have different text instead of FIELD NOTES ®. They are:

• SBSRS UTDFW (J)
• JPNDC ATCWB (G)

When illuminated with a UV light, the inside front covers show a message in Morse code which translates to:

• Eleven foursomes far afield
• Need one last shift to yield
• Clarity out of gobbledygook
• And your mission for this book

The inside back covers show 11 numbers. When compiled together in order, they are:

1. -12
2. +2
3. -3
4. -10
5. +10
6. -2
7. -3
8. -8
9. +8
10. -2
11. -9

ID Cards

Every 3-pack of Clandestine Field Notes books comes with an ID card for membership in the Agents of F.I.E.L.D. In the dot grids within each notebook, some dots are different. Interpreting these dots using the code sheet on the back of the book yields this phrase:

“VIGENERE KEY IS THIRD LETTER OF PRIME LIST TITLES.”

The three keys end up being:

• OUTOFSORTS
• STEREOTYPE
• IMPRESSION

By using these with Vigenere decoding, you can solve your three ID card codes. There are quite a few of each category!