How It Worked in 2018

Gathering intel:

About the KEY:

Six Feet Under Menu Challenge told you it was ON ANSWER SHEET

Viva Las Vegas Challenge told you it was NOT A NUMBER

Brew-a-Rama Challenge told you it was NOT A PRINTED WORD

About the SOLUTION:

Maze Challenge told you it was a COMMON WORD(S)

Groundhog Words Challenge told you it was ONE WORD LONG

Other stuff:

Backwards on an Instruction page was YOU WILL NEED ONLY THE ANSWER SHEET AT THE END

If you followed the web link example on the Phastest page, you get SOLUTION IS NOT A HUMAN OR ANIMAL – REAL OR STUFFED

On Phastest 1 you learning what INDEXING is

Solving it:

Your Final Clue was KEY IS FOUR LETTERS LONG – USE KEY NUMBERS ON KEY WORDS

We know the KEY is on the Answer Sheet, four letters long, not a number and not a printed word – so what is on the sheet that matches that?  The color BLUE (it’s not on any other sheet).

Substituting that in, you get USE BLUE NUMBERS ON BLUE WORDS – the blue numbers are 3, 2, 4, 3, 4; and the blue words are SHOVEL, CHARLIES, TWA, LINCOLN and NINE.

From Phastest 1, we learned that given a series of numbers and words, you should take the first number (in place) letter of the first word, etc. (this is called Indexing).  That gets you O, H, n/a, N, E.  The TWA tells us the order is incorrect (since there’s no fourth letter).

So, you have to run through the options of using one second letter (an H, W or I), two third letters (O, A or N) and two fourth letters (V, R, C or E).

While you can unscramble many words, most are not options.  There are a few animal and (type of) human names, but we know they aren’t options (by the web hint).  So that leaves:

CROWN – Phil was hidden in the paper mache crown sitting high up near the women’s bathroom.  He’s been there for several months!