Field Notes’ Winter 2018 limited edition features a secret-agent black-on-black theme. We worked with Sandor Weisz of The Mystery League to hide two puzzles within in the books, and to develop a collaborative online month-long puzzle/experience that involved customers, retailers, a secret Slack channel, hidden html code, and even the New York Times crossword puzzle.
The puzzles in the books are both hidden and in plain sight. The Mohawk “Urban Gray” covers features seemingly-gibberish logo text (in black foil!) and a code key on the back. The inside cover features digitally-printed codewords that changed book-to-book and invisible UV ink clues that required a black light to see! Even the dot-grids on the body pages included hidden patterns that were all part of the fun. The back page of each of the three books in a 3-Pack included a three-part history of cryptography. The edition also includes an identification card with blanks that can be filled using one set of the clues in the books.
A short film (featuring our agent “Em Dash”) set the whole project in motion:
Subscribers also recieved an elaborate three-piece three-color die-cut cipher wheel, allowing them to decode subscriber-only “Agents of F.I.E.L.D.”messages in tweets and emails, and compose and share their own messages.
