Hello, fellow agent. 

I’ve liberated some Clandestine Field Notes notebooks from a library, and inside were the secrets we’ve been seeking for years.

But, as expected, they’re in code. And we need help cracking them.

To join the hunt:

  • Read the rest of this page.
  • Meet and communicate in Agents of Field HQ, our Slack space.
  • Follow this blog and/or my Twitter.
  • Solve puzzles.

We’ll post updates daily, and we’ll update the What We Know page with everything we’ve solved so far.

HOPEFULLY OBVIOUS CAVEAT: You won’t need to post anyone’s personal details, stalk anyone, harass anyone, make anyone sad or uncomfortable, hack into anything, or do anything even close to illegal to solve this hunt. If you do those things, we’ll kick you out. Don’t be a Philby.

— Agent Em Dash

How To Play

(The following is an archive of instructions for the game.)

Backstory

Agent Em is a spy who has stolen a notebook and thumb drive. 

  • The notebook has pages filled with numbers and letters that don’t make sense. 
  • The thumb drive has videos on it, but Em has only been able to crack them at a rate of about one per day. 

She’s sharing their contents with us, Agent HQ, so we can help her find notebooks hidden around the world, and crack the puzzles within.

How each puzzle starts

As soon Agent Em decrypts a video, which she does about once per day, she uploads it — along with its associated notebook page — to f1eldn0tes.com. That’s our signal to gather and get cracking in the #solving channel on Slack. (Which you can join by following this link.)

So far, this has been true:

  1. Each video typically contains a Field Notes employee quoting a line from a famous fictional character — or a variation on such a quote.
  2. Once we attribute the quote to someone, their initials give us our cipher wheel¹ setting, which we can use to decode that day’s notebook page.
  3. Each page decodes to the name of a store and a ZIP code.

We then locate or recruit an agent local to that store, and task them with their assignment: go inside the store, approach an employee, and repeat the quote referenced in the video.

The employee—a secret agent themself, though you are not to acknowledge it—will hand you a notebook with writing in it. 

The agent photographs the relevant pages of the book and posts them in Slack. Then we get to work.

Solving the puzzles

Once we see the pages, we get to work. Each puzzle is independent, meaning we’re always starting from scratch. A solver could come in cold at this point and be just as useful as someone who’s read all 10,000 Slack messages. Seriously.

Solving happens in #solving and our Google Sheet. (Access is open, but editing is restricted. If you’d like to contribute, just request edit access. One of us will vet you as quickly as possible.)

Each puzzle solves to a word. The solutions so far have been very clear, meaning we are pretty sure when we have it. Once we do, we notify Agent Em, and the cycle ends for another day.

Puzzle recap

Read everything we know here. If it’s not here, we don’t know it or think it’s important. 

What we do with all the solutions

We have no idea yet.

Questions?

Agent Em is very receptive to questions; feel free to DM her on Slack. Also she does the occasional fireside chat (in the #fireside-chat) channel, where you can ask her anything and get caught up on the hunt so far.

Looking to the Futura,

Agents of F.I.E.L.D.

¹ Cipher Wheels were distributed to Field Notes subscribers, but we only need one decipherer to share with the group. Plus, now, we’ve built a Slack bot to decipher codes for us.

This briefing was prepared for you by fellow F.I.E.L.D. agents. We do not know the codes and riddles to come. The below is what we’ve come to expect from the codes and riddles so far. Accordingly, the information herein is prone to change throughout the monthlong mission.