Shoe Tag has now entered its third week and residents are growing tired and paranoid, but still no one has won.
How can we end the madness?
The Visitor Center is a good place to START
Some of the pictures on the HINCKO board look familiar from the other parts of the Gazette.
The picture in second row of the second column of the HINCKO board matches the top of the rightmost bottle in the Hops or Scotch section.
There are nine images on the HINCKO board that show up in other parts of the paper. Completely fill in those squares of the HINCKO board.
But wait, didn't it say 10? One more square can now be filled in, and it gives you a clue of where to go next.
The final square of the HINCKO board to fill in is the fifth column and fourth row.
By shading in the other 9 squares, you can now fill in the two blanks within that square.
When you look at the entire HINCKO board, it forms the letters “IT” and you can combine that with the final square to get “all italics end in IT.”
The word "hare" seems a little out of place. There's another more common word "hare" could be replaced with.
Each italicized word or phrase in the Visitor Center can be replaced by a single word ending in IT. For example, another word for “hare” is “RABBIT.”
The words from the Visitor Center are
Hare = RABBIT
Display area = EXHIBIT
Travel here briefly = VISIT
Make changes = EDIT
Enlist = RECRUIT
Enthusiasm = SPIRIT
Leave = EXIT
Short drama = SKIT
Conveyance = TRANSIT
Allow entrance to = ADMIT
Return for another stay = REVISIT
Formal clothes = SUIT
The end of the Visitor Center section tells you to “string together the firsts.”
Taking the first letter of each replacement word from the section gives you the phrase “REVERSE STARS”
Hops Or Scotch seems to provide classic games to play but only if played by their house rules.
Each star represents a letter in the name of the game being described. For example, the first game is “HOPSCOTCH.”
From top to bottom, the games in the Hops or Scotch section are:
HOPSCOTCH
LAWN DARTS
YAHTZEE
MARBLES
TELEPHONE
HORSE SHOES
MUSICAL CHAIRS
JUMP ROPE
SIMON SAYS
TIC TAC TOE
GO FISH
HIDE AND SEEK
Taking the letters represented by the stars generates the letters “OWTYBNOSAESNITFIHS” which can be reversed to create “SHIFT IN SEASON BY TWO”
In the “Back By So-So Demand” section, there’s a note at the bottom that mentions that some ingredients in the dishes are out of season.
The name of each dish from The Kitchen Sink is based on the ingredients used to make it. Some of the ingredients are unavailable (out of season), so the name of the dish needs to change.
The foods that are out of season, found in order:
Foods with "rain" in the name (3): Grain, Rainbow Sprinkles, Grain
Foods with double letters (13): Pancetta, Jelly, Beets. Mushrooms, Meatballs, Pizza, Pineapple, Cherries, Cheddar, Kettle Corn, Cherries, Butter, Apples
Foods with a hard shell (11): Crab, Pistachios, Clams, Peanuts, Escargot, Oysters, Pistachios, Pistachios, Peanuts, Coconut, Crab
Dehydrated foods (5): Jerky, Raisins, Prunes, Powdered Milk, Raisins
Frozen food (6): Popsicles, Ice Cream, Froyo, Lemon Sherbet, Popsicles, Ice Cream
The foods that are out of season can by taken out of both the description and the title.
By removing all the out of season ingredients the dishes at the The Kitchen Sink become:
AMLTCPR
YQICPQ GLGRGYJQ RM LSKZCPQ RFCL QCJCAR
Now that only in-season ingredients remain, you need to shift the names of each dish by 2.
Shifting the in season dishes gives you the message “CONVERT ASKERS INITIALS TO NUMBERS THEN SELECT.”
The Dear Hincksy section includes a lot of people who are ASKING for advice.
Each person asks Hincksy a question, but he doesn’t always understand them correctly. For example, Concerned Buddy is asking about the weapon called a bow, but Hincksy thinks that they are talking about a decorative wrapping piece.
For each question in Dear Hincksy, you need to find the word that Hincksy and the writer are confused about.
In order, the words that Hincksy is confused by are:
BOW
ROUND
FAIR
LETTER
CABINET
HIT
TONGUE
The asker of the first question is “Concerned Buddy,” which means that the initials are CB. If A = 1, B = 2 and so on, then the numbers you get from the first set of initials are 3 and 2.
The first question has now generated the word BOW and the numbers 3 and 2. Select the 3rd letter and the 2nd letter to generate "WO."
The letters you get from the Dear Hincksy questions, in order, is:
WO
RD
AF
TER
EAC
HI
NGO
which can be combined to give you the phrase "WORD AFTER EACH INGO."
The name of the birdbot in the article on the front of the paper is Ringo.
In the Birdbot article, you’ll need the next word after you see the letters “INGO.” You will end up with six words.
The words after each “ingo” tell you to “SHADE ODD NUMBERS THEN HOLD UP.”
In the Fan Art Contest section, the picture of the dinosaur is a mosaic of even and odd numbers. Color in all the odd numbers.
When you fill in all the odd numbers, you’ll see that the new dinosaur’s name appears to be “ED.” But don’t forget to hold the paper up.
There is no left side to the frame around the picture of the dino, but when the paper is held up, you may notice the frame is extended.
At the beginning of paper, 10 of the HINCKO squares were completely filled in.
When you hold up the paper, the letters “TI” from the HINCKO board line up with “ED,” to create the final answer of “TIED.”
But wait, I thought there was only supposed to be one winner?!