This puzzle consists of 13 license plates from 13 different U.S. states (presented in alphabetical order by state), each with a slogan and a license plate number.
The letters of the plate are the initials of a poet who was born in the given state. The corresponding slogan is a phrase found in one of that poet’s works. The three numbers index into the quoted poem, as indicated by the first three lines of the flavortext:
(The word has gone out that he’s jolly and kind.)
The letters he gets come from state after state,
And the traffic’s unlike any other you’d find.
For example, on the Massachusetts plate the letters EAP indicate Edgar Allan Poe, the slogan “Kingdom by the Sea” is a phrase from Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” and the number 183 indicates the first line, eighth word, third letter:
which gives us the letter O.
The states chosen can be linked in a continuous line from west to east, giving an ordering of the extracted letters. In that order, the authors, poems, lines and extracted letters are:
| State | Plate # | Slogan | Poet | Title | Relevant Line | Letter |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WA | KRA 112 | If You’re Wishing For Rain... | Kelli Russell Agodon | Writing Studio D: A Retrospective in Spring | Imagine this: it’s the day before Easter | M |
| ID | EWLP 126 | Faces in the Crowd | Ezra Weston Loomis Pound | In a Station of the Metro | The apparition of these faces in the crowd | I |
| WY | LAR 732 | This Happened In Wyoming | Lee Ann Roripaugh | Happy Hour | heads, the clockwork machinery | L |
| NE | TMH 574 | Rolling Grasslands | Twyla M. Hansen | August 12 in the Nebraska Sand Hills Watching the Perseids Meteor Shower | Out from the corners, our eyes detect a maverick meteor | E |
| MO | MA 333 | A Rock, A River, A Tree | Maya Angelou | On the Pulse of Morning | Mark the mastodon | S |
| IL | CAS 151 | Born on the Prairie | Carl August Sandburg | Cornhuskers (1. Prairie) | I WAS born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat | T |
| IN | JWR 655 | At the Crossroads | James Whitcomb Riley | The Loehrs And The Hammonds | From Bixlers’, and came galloping to meet | O |
| OH | HHC 174 | At the Prairie’s Door | Harold Hart Crane | Eldorado | The morning glory, climbing the morning long | G |
| PA | SVB 776 | American Light | Stephen Vincent Benét | John Brown’s Body | As native as the shape of Navajo quivers, | O |
| NY | FON 263 | The Loving Cup | (Frederic) Ogden Nash | A Word to Husbands | With love in the loving cup, | P |
| MA | EAP 183 | Kingdom by the Sea | Edgar Allen Poe | Annabel Lee | It was many and many a year ago, | O |
| NH | CLT 975 | Wilderness of Flowers | Celia Laighton Thaxter | Guests | And oh, the bees and the butterflies, the humming-birds and sparrows, | E |
| ME | ESM 445 | Too Beautiful This Year | Edna St. Vincent Millay | God’s World | Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag | M |
The extracted letters spell MILES TO GO POEM, which is Robert Frost’s STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING, which is the answer to this puzzle.