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This is a set of 25 playing cards. Each trio of letters gives the rank (2-9,T,J,Q,K,A) and the suit (Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, Spades), followed by a letter or "*" which will be used at the end of the puzzle.
As the title and instruction imply, these 25 cards can be arranged into one each of the top 5 poker hands (Royal Straight Flush, Straight Flush, Four of a Kind, Full House, and Flush) as follows:
AC, KC, QC, JC, TC (royal straight flush)
7S, 6S, 5S, 4S, 3S (straight flush)
9H, 8S, 8H, 8D, 8C (4 of a kind)
AH, AD, 4H, 4D, 4C (full house)
KD, QD, JD, TD, 3D (flush)
Note that within each hand, cards are kept in the same descending order as in the original puzzle listing. Now, by reading off the third letter (or "*") associated with each card in this new order, we get:
T*T*L*FR*NKS*NF**R*F*K*ND
By filling in the vowels, we get "Total of ranks in four of a kind." The cards involved in the four of a kind are four 8s and a 9, which total up to 41, a number between 33 and 52, and the solution to this puzzle.
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The list of letters forms a sentence with some letters removed. Each line break indicates at least one missing letter. The full sentence reads:
asnWer HIdes itSelf unTiL assEmBLing 13 cOWardly lettERs
By assembling the missing (cowardly) letters (capitalized above), you will spell out an appropriate 13-letter word, and the solution to this puzzle, WHISTLEBLOWER.
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Each of the 16 images leads to a four-letter word. The 16 words are in alphabetical order:
acne, bulb, dial, glue
hula, kiss, note, pita
salt, test, thor, tool
tray, vane, well, wink
As suggested by "1xxx, x2xx, xx3x, xxx4", the 16 words can be grouped into sets of four, where the first group shares a common 1st letter, the second shares a common 2nd letter, etc. The four groups are:
Test, Thor, Tool, Tray
dIal, kIss, pIta, wInk
buLb, huLa, saLt, weLl
acnE, gluE, notE, vanE
Reading the four common letters in order (bolded above) spells out the four-letter solution, "TILE".
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The list is a list of nine 5-letter words, typed on a standard keyboard, where the typist has positioned his fingers some number of keys to the right or left. For example, the first word "awyvh" decodes to the word "drink" if you type it after moving your fingers 2 keys to the right. Note that two words use some of the characters to the right of the letter keys, like "[" "." and ";", and one word uses the "Tab" key ("rxq [TAB] t") on the left. Here is the list of the decoded words and the key transformations used to decode each:
2R drink
2L shave
3R lofty
3L hyena
0- pasta
4R intro
4L eight
1L cargo
1R usher
Stacking the words from "left to right" by key transformation gives:
4L eiGht
3L hyEna
2L shAve
1L caRgo
0- paSta
1R usHer
2R drInk
3R loFty
4R inTro
Reading the center letters down the stack spells out an appropriate 9-letter word, and the solution to this puzzle, "gearshift".
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As clued by the title, each row of numbers (and one letter) can be read as a 10-digit ISBN number for a book. Searching with something like Amazon.com turns up the 6 books identified by the ISBN numbers:
Be Your Own Boss At Your Current Job
We Are All Fine Here
Why New Orleans Matters
S is for Silence
Oh, the Places You'll Go!
Stitch 'N Bitch: The Knitter's Handbook
Each of the titles contains a letter:
"Be" "Are" "Why" "S" "Oh" "'N"
Strung together, the letters form BRYSON, which (when combined with the clue that the solution is a "bill") is the last name of author Bill Bryson, the solution to this puzzle.
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The numbers can be arranged to form a number line from "1" to "26", with a few numbers missing:
1 234 578 910 111 213 141 617 192 122 232 426
1 2 3 4 5 _ 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 _ 16 17 _ 19 _ 21 22 23 24 _ 26
The number line represents the 26 letters of the alphabet and the missing letters are F O R T Y, which spell "FORTY", the missing number and the solution to this puzzle.