Solvers are presented with 7 ‘political’ posters featuring defamatory content towards certain types of bagels. Each poster features the bagel being slandered and a second type of bagel doing the slandering, as indicated by the speech bubbles at the top of each graphic. The relationships between who is slandering who form a chain between all 7 bagels.
Solvers should first notice that the bagels in each image are positioned in strange poses. Some are missing arms or have otherwise asymmetrical arm and leg positions. This suspicious positioning, along with the flavortext, should lead to the realization that the positions of the bagels represent the dancing man cipher.
Taking the letters from both the slanderer and the slanderee on each poster will extract 14 letters. Ordering the bagels based on the schmear chain (starting with the poster which includes the word "start" and ending with the one that has "end") extracts the cluephrase FIX FAKE NUMBERS.
This clues to look closer at the information on the posters. Each poster contains one blurb with numbers in it. Factchecking these claims, solvers will find that all of the numbers are slightly off. By finding how incorrect each number is and translating the differences into letters (with A being 1 and Z being 26), we get the following information:
| Fake number | Correct number | Difference | A1Z26 |
|---|---|---|---|
| January 2nd | January 15th | 13 | M |
| 2006 | 2015 | 9 | I |
| 11M | 30M | 19 | S |
| iOS 3.1 | iOS 12.1 | 9 | I |
| 2004 | 2018 | 14 | N |
| 2002 | 2008 | 6 | F |
| 3 | 18 | 15 | O |
| STS-106 | STS-124 | 18 | R |
| 7,691 poppy seeds | 7,704 poppy seeds | 13 | M |
| 5-0 | 6-0 | 1 | A |
| 848 pounds | 868 pounds | 20 | T |
| 1 hour | 10 hours | 9 | I |
| 1085 pounds | 1100 pounds | 15 | O |
| 886 gallons | 900 gallons | 14 | N |
Reading the letters in schmear chain order gives the answer, MISINFORMATION.