Directive 3: Uppercase Letter (Hints & Answer)

Hint first (no full spoiler): Somewhere in your password, one letter should be standing at attention while the rest slouch.

Directive 3 requires at least one uppercase letter, A through Z. The Committee believes every password should contain one letter that takes the job seriously.

This is the easiest fix in the game: capitalize something. But the Committee’s future paperwork has opinions about which letters are allowed to be capital, so a moment of planning here saves an annoying rewrite in Act III.

The full solution

Capitalize any one letter.

• Friday9! (APPROVED)
• potatO7 (APPROVED, though the Committee finds it unsettling)
• Escape5! (APPROVED, and the capital vowel up front is a deliberate investment)

If you want the durable answer rather than the quick one: put an uppercase vowel at the start of your password. Here is why.

Directive 22 will require your first character to be an uppercase vowel. Directive 26 will require ALL vowels to be uppercase and all consonants to be lowercase. A password that opens with A, E, I, O, or U in capital form satisfies directive 3 today, directive 22 later, and does not fight directive 26 at all. One character, three stamps.

If you capitalized a consonant instead (the F in Friday, say), nothing bad happens yet. You will simply be re-casing letters in Act III while Fern watches.

What breaks later

Directive 3 gets satisfied automatically once the later casing rules land, but the road there is bumpy:

• Directive 22 forces the first character to be an uppercase vowel. That character alone satisfies directive 3 forever after, so this rule effectively retires in Act III.
• Directive 26 forces every vowel uppercase and every consonant lowercase. Any capital consonant you are fond of gets demoted. The F in Friday becomes f, the i, a, and y situation gets reviewed, and your password briefly looks like a ransom note written by a vowel enthusiast.
• The required weekday from Directive 5 and planet from Directive 7 both contain vowels, so their casing will churn under directive 26 too. The day-name check is case-insensitive, so frIdAy still counts as friday. Small mercies.

Practical play: satisfy directive 3 with a capital vowel, ideally in position one, and never think about it again. Players who capitalize consonants are not wrong, merely creating future correspondence with the Committee.

See also Directive 4, which arrives next and asks for punctuation with the same bureaucratic calm.

Stamp: APPROVED. The letter has been noted in the register.

Stuck on a different directive? Browse all 30 rule guides or return to the vault. Fern believes in you.