• Check for acrostics. If the puzzle has a long list of clues, look down the first letters; do they spell out a phrase? (Same thing with a list of answers.) Sometimes, this will be the extraction method directly; other times, it can clue you toward the next step, or tell you explicitly that it’s NOT the right thing to do.
• Look for orderings. Are the clues, or their answers, all in alphabetical order? If something is in order at the start of the puzzle, it most likely won’t be at the end; look for something else that can be sorted into a unique order for reading off the final answer. (For example, if you have a bunch of songs, and the order they’re presented to you happens to be alphabetical by song title, try sorting them by the name of the band, or by year.) Once you have a different ordering, try looking for acrostics again (in a group that you didn’t just alphabetize).
• Read the flavor text and the title carefully. The conventions here vary a lot by puzzle writer, but usually the flavor text has something to do with the puzzle content, or the extraction method. For example, “feeling around” might clue that at some point you’re going to need to read off Braille letters. Also, the title might be a clue for what you’re supposed to do or even the solution (either by acronym, alliteration, or some other wordplay).

• Example: In a puzzle titled “The Last Airbender”, the solution required getting three-letter abbreviations (TLAs) representing all the clues.

• Just try Googling some stuff. It can be easy to get something like a list of names, but not know how they’re related and miss a crucial extraction step. If you’re stuck, just try searching for the information you have and see what connections come up. While it can lead to some red herrings, if what comes up in the search results is related to the title or flavor text in some way, that can be a good sign you’re on the right track.
• When looking at a puzzle for the first time, re-check work. If a puzzle has been sitting without work for a significant amount of time, it’s possible some data was entered in some wrong fashion, or some indexing scheme hasn’t been tried yet. Be exhaustive.
• Document attempted extractions. Sometimes you will attempt an extraction unsuccessfully but will have been going down the right path. It is important that the team knows what you have tried, because it may have been a good idea that just needs another set of eyes.
• Have you tried… The MIT Mystery Hunt home page has some great resources for first time solvers. Check these out for ideas: http://www.mit.edu/~puzzle/resources/haveyoutried.pdf

Common patterns and codes

• Mapping numbers 1-26 onto A-Z
• Braille (look for anything organized in 2x3 rectangles)
• Morse code (look for a long string of dots and dashes with gaps in between)
• Caesar shifts (will usually be clued by flavor text or context)
• NATO alphabet letters
• Plotting map points to give letters visually