Many puzzles result in a list of words that somehow must be filtered further to obtain the final result. There are several common ways to do this. Here are a couple.

1) Take the first letter of each word or phrase – as seen in this simple example:

Taking first at the Olympics earns you a ____.
Tie a yellow ribbon ’round the ole ____ tree.
____ Butter and Jelly
____ Birthday is one of the most often sung songs ever.
____ Loves Raymond was a popular TV show.
____, Green and Blue pigment make up colors on your monitor.

Here, even though there are six answers along the way, there is one final answer. The six answers of Gold, Oak, Peanut, Happy, Everybody, and Red have first letters that spell the word GOPHER.

2) Index into each word by a certain amount. If there is a logical number to associate with each word, counting that many letters can help. Say you had a picture of some trees and you were able to identify that there were:

2 Ash trees
2 Fig trees
3 Elm trees
1 Pine tree
4 Maple trees
6 Spruce trees

Your keen ability to identify trees aside, you would now have a number that would be associated with each set you found. Using the quantity of trees to index into the type of tree would reveal an S, an I, an M, a P, an L and an E for the final answer: SIMPLE.