Can these weird clovers tell your fortune? is the first puzzle of the 2022 Cryptex Hunt, and is presented as one of each letter of the Latin alphabet among a field of clovers.
Solvers' initial instincts should be to follow the prompt at the top of the page, specifically to find the four-leaf clovers amongst the three- and two-leaved variants. Doing so, they should discover that there are exactly 5 of them, with each touching a single one of the letters. Taking these letters in reading order spells the part 1 answer.
Part 1 Final Answer: Click to revealLUCKY.
Now that the four-leaf clovers have been used, one other odd thing solvers should notice are the oddly-shaped two-leaf clovers (another not-too-common variant). Each leaf's long edge points in one of the 8 ordinal or cardinal directions. This paired with the fact that there are always two different directions being pointed to clues to flag semaphore, a common method of decryption involving pairs of directions. The two-leaf clovers are arranged on the page approximately into two lines of length 6 and 5. Reading each line using semaphore yields POTATO STATE, which is a clue for the part 2 answer.
Part 2 Final Answer: Click to revealIDAHO.
Puzzle Elements
Part 1
Hint in Flavortext - The puzzle asks solvers to find all of the four-leaf clovers, a relatively simple task.
Marked Letters - The letters marked with lucky clovers can simply be read in reading order to get the final answer.
Part 2
Odd One Out - While the flavortext mentions 3- and 4-leaf clovers, it makes no mention of two-leaf clovers, which end up being the most important for this part.
Semaphore - By reading the two-leaf clovers as pairs of semaphore flags, solvers can read their last clue...
