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Solution: The State Puzzle
Answer: AGATE

Written by Thomas Gordon, Reagan Guan, and Abhinav Makam

The clues can be reassembled into complete clues, like so:

1. Official colors are blue, gold, and one other color (9)
2. Graham Hill won a race here in 1966 (3)
3. Borders no other states or countries (6)
4. Flag contains a cross with an image at its center and contains part of its coat-of-arms (1)
5. Occupies the greatest proportion of the west coast (5)
6. Of those with the smallest scrabble score, this one has the longest name (3)
7. Location of the headquarters of the nation's main antarctic program (3)
8. Lays claim to the title "The First State" (2)
9. Panthers play professionally with an egg-shaped ball here (12)
10. Birthplace of the first national leader to both be formerly of the red party and die in office (4)
11. Named after an English queen's real name (7)
12. Contains a sister city of Zhenjiang, China (1)
13. Official gemstone is sapphire (4)
14. Formerly home of the largest inland port in the nation (6)
15. Name contains 4 different consonants and 2 different vowels, with one vowel being repeated 3 times, and the other vowel being the third one (2)
16. Name contains the strings "li" and "south" (12)

This is the only ordering where each of the clues makes sense.

Each of these clues uniquely identifies a US state. Indexing into the US state identified by each clue gives the cluephrase A DIFFERENT NATION:

1 Official colors are blue, gold, and one other color LOUISIANA A
2 Graham Hill won a race here in 1966 INDIANA D
3 Borders no other states or countries HAWAII I
4 Flag contains a cross with an image at its center and contains part of its coat-of-arms FLORIDA F
5 Occupies the greatest proportion of the west coast CALIFORNIA F
6 Of those with the smallest scrabble score, this one has the longest name OREGON E
7 Location of the headquarters of nation's main antarctic program VIRGINIA R
8 Lays claim to the title "The First State" DELAWARE E
9 Panthers play professionally with an egg-shaped ball here NORTH CAROLINA N
10 Birthplace of the first national leader to both be formerly of the red party and die in office KENTUCKY T
11 Named after an English queen's real name MARYLAND N
12 Contains a sister city of Zhenjiang, China ARIZONA A
13 Official gemstone is sapphire MONTANA T
14 Formerly home of the largest inland port in the nation WEST VIRGINIA I
15 Name contains 4 different consonants and 2 different vowels, with one vowel being repeated 3 times COLORADO O
16 Name contains the strings "li" and "south" SOUTH CAROLINA N

It turns out that each of the clues can also uniquely identify a state from a different country with a red, white, and blue flag: Australia!

We can identify the states and then index like so:

Official colors are blue, gold, and one other color SOUTH AUSTRALIA T
Graham Hill won a race here in 1966 QUEENSLAND E
Borders no other states or countries TASMANIA N
Flag contains a cross with an image at its center and contains part of its coat-of-arms NEW SOUTH WALES N
Occupies the greatest proportion of the west coast WESTERN AUSTRALIA E
Of those with the smallest scrabble score, this one has the longest name TASMANIA S
Location of the headquarters of nation's main antarctic program TASMANIA S
Lays claim to the title "The First State" NEW SOUTH WALES E
Panthers play professionally with an egg-shaped ball here NEW SOUTH WALES E
Birthplace of the first national leader to both be formerly of the red party and die in office TASMANIA M
Named after an English queen's real name VICTORIA I
Contains a sister city of Zhenjiang, China NEW SOUTH WALES N
Official gemstone is sapphire QUEENSLAND E
Formerly home of the largest inland port in the nation VICTORIA R
Name contains 4 different consonants and 2 different vowels, with one vowel being repeated 3 times TASMANIA A
Name contains the strings "li" and "south" SOUTH AUSTRALIA L

Which gives the cluephrase TENNESSEE MINERAL. Tennessee's official state mineral is AGATE, which is the answer.

Author’s Notes

Thomas: The story of this puzzle is fun. It was a little bit because I thought it would be neat, and a little bit because it played into some untapped datasets, but it was primarily revenge.

Friends of mine will know that I didn't grow up in the United States; which means I have a personal vendetta (pointless and all) against puzzles and hunts which assume, unclued, that solvers will have a familiarity with American culture. I'm not talking about, like, TV shows. I mean stuff which only Americans would possibly know. Which is perfectly fine, but every now and again, the puzzle doesn't bother to clue that the puzzle requires American knowledge; it will just assume that you Are American. I remember making it to the end of one of these puzzles or another, not very long after writing for Shardhunt started, and for one associated reason or another, wrote the phrase, The US State Puzzle To Which We Have Never Not Pledged Allegiance into my ideas list. I knew it would be a puzzle which would kind of spoof the stateside-centric head-scratchers.

This idea marinated for a while; I knew I wanted to use the (extremely well-documented) datasets of state symbols somehow, but any individual set of state symbols wouldn't be comprehensive enough to carry an entire puzzle. It was after I solved the extremely excellent puzzle Cheers from the hunt 2022 MIT Mystery Hunt that I made the core breakthrough on the solve path I wanted to use.

I believe a lot in the power of puzzles as vehicles for humour, so I hope that this puzzle made people laugh. It certainly made me and my guest co-authors laugh enough to weather the various corrections, data dives, rabbit holes, and endless checking and cross-checking that was required to make this puzzle work.

Until somewhat late in the hunt-writing process, this puzzle was still entitled The State Puzzle To Which You Have Never Not Pledged Allegiance.

Only one obscure Wikipedia page needed to be updated with correct information in order to make this puzzle work. (According to some hint requests we received during the hunt, maybe we should have updated a few more.)