Clue of Few Words

Unsolvable mystery unless you have the right clue

It becomes apparent that a mystery or a puzzle is in play. The problem is that only a single word or two gives any clue of what to do next. Perhaps it was all a dying person could give before they died. Of course, someone could have simply been too weak and passed out before they could communicate more. Perhaps there wasn't room or ink enough to make more than one word. Perhaps a puzzlemaster wants to make things difficult for the player. Maybe it was all they could write because they Couldn't Find a Pen. Regardless, this is all one has to work with. There is not enough even for a riddle; just a couple random words to work with.

This is frequently with the Dying Clue trope, but not necessarily.

Index: The One and Only Index, This Index Is a Clue

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Fate/Zero: a dying Risei Kotomine writes "jn424" on the floor near him, which turns out to be a coded reference to John 4:24, which helps his son inherit his Command Seals.
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Solid State Society: "Puppeteer" is written in blood by the General after he's forced to commit suicide by the hacker.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: In Part 3, when Kakyoin encounters Death 13 in his dream world he realizes that anything that happens to him also happens to his body in the waking world. So to help him remember that the infant child is actually Death's user, he takes a pocketknife and carves the words "BABY STAND" into his forearm. However, revealing this to the rest of the crew doesn't do him much good in convincing them that he isn't insane.

Comic Books

• In a late 1970s crossover between The Amazing Spider-Man (1963) and Nova, a murder victim tried to leave the clue JASON D as that was the name of his murderer, in the form of leaving pages of calendar July, August, September, October, November, and December. The heroes did not catch on to the clue until the final panel of the crossover.

Films — Animated

• The Incredibles: Gazerbeam used his laser vision to zap the word "KRONOS" into the wall of the cave he died in. Mr. Incredible finds it and eventually figures out that it's the password to the latest project that Syndrome's been planning.

Films — Live-Action

• Citizen Kane: A mystery derives from wondering why Kane's final word was "Rosebud". As everyone knows at this point, It Was His Sled.
• In The Fifth Element, Korben asks a severely injured Leeloo how to work the ancient weapon. All she can manage to utter is "Wind blows, fire burns...". He eventually figures out that they have to activate each elemental stone with its corresponding element. And the "fifth element", Leeloo herself, is activated by The Power of Love.
• Ghostbusters: A voice in Dana's fridge says, "Zuul!", confusing her. It later turns out that Zuul is the name of a demon.
• Men in Black: the dying alien struggles to say the words "Orion's Belt" before he perishes, leaving the agents to wonder what he was referring to.
• Midnight Madness: After looking between the "two giant melons", the only clue to the next destination is a necklace that says "Hug Me".
• National Treasure: The first clue that sets the film into motion which Bill Gates sought out to find. "Charlotte. The secret lies with Charlotte." A clue which would eventually lead to the quest to obtain the Declaration of Independence.
• Se7en: The first five crime scenes have the name of one of the Seven Deadly Sins written on a wall. The detectives originally missed it at the first scene, only discovering it when coming back after the second.
• The Shining: One recurring mystery is why Danny keeps repeating, "Redrum", at one point writing it on the wall. It later turns out to be because he has Psychic Powers and was predicting John becoming murderous (since "redrum" spells "murder" backwards).
• When the Bough Breaks: Jordan borrowed Macleah's lipstick to write "Two Rivers" on the wall of his Room Full of Crazy. Two Rivers turns out to be the killer's hometown.

Literature

• The Da Vinci Code: When museum curator Jacques Sauniere is found murdered in the Louvre, detectives find him lying naked and supine in The Vitruvian Pose. He'd also scribed "O draconian devil" and "Oh lame saint" in his blood on the parquet floor. Cryptologist Robert Langdon deduces the phrases are anagrams for "Leonardo da Vinci" and "the Mona Lisa," where a further clue can be found.
• This happens twice in The Famous Five. When George is kidnapped, she manages to write a very short message. In both cases, the others recognise George's handwriting, and the message only makes sense to the gypsy girl Jo.
  • In Five Fall into Adventure, George writes "Red Tower" many times on the inside wall of a caravan. When the others find it, they assume it is a place, but Jo points out that it is the name of a villain.
  • In Five Have Plenty of Fun, George writes a note saying "Gringo". Jo recognises the name, which they use to find George.
• The Fellowship of the Ring has the questing party come to the huge gates of Moria, the ancient home base of dwarves. Inscribed on the lintel are the words "Speak friend and enter." Gandalf tries spell after spell to get the gate to open, but nothing works. Then, Gandalf rebukes himself for a fool, and utters "Mellon!" which is the elvish word for "friend." The gates open up grandly at this word.
  Legolas: So, one has only to speak "friend" to enter.
  Gimli: [wistfully] Those were happier times.
• The Lorax: At the end, the Once-ler mentions that after he destroyed the truffula forest, the Lorax left, leaving behind a pile of rocks with "UNLESS" written on it. He mentions he was never able to determine the meaning, but has now realised it means that nothing will improve unless somebody cares.
• In Larry Niven's The Patchwork Girl the victim leaves "NAKF" written in his own blood on the rocks of the lunar surface. He was trying to write "NAKED" indicating that his killer was naked: i.e. not wearing a spacesuit, which is quite a trick out on the surface of the moon.
• Something Wicked: In this murder mystery based on Macbeth, Duncan is found dead with "Malcolm" written on the wall of his tent in blood, which seems to implicate his son... except the hero realizes that everyone, including Duncan, called his son Mal, and it's unlikely that a dying man would have bothered with the extra letters. It turns out to be a frame-up by the real killer.
• A Study in Scarlet: The word Rache is found written on the wall at a murder scene. The police inspectors think someone was interrupted while trying to write the name Rachel, but Sherlock Holmes points out that "rache" is German for "revenge". This turns out to be a complete Red Herring. While the murder was an act of vengeance, the killer doesn't speak German and only wrote the word on the wall because he'd read about it happening in another murder case.
• The Top Secret Files Of Buttons Mc Ginty: One plot point involves Buttons being sent a mysterious note that reads, "BO BEVIL". It turns out to be an anagram for "Bob evil" or "Evil Bob", warning him that another character, Bob, is evil.
• Wagons West: in Kentucky!, the murdered Secret Service agent was only able to leave the word "Talcott" before he died. Talcott refers to Talcott, Connecticut, where the assassination of President Grant is to take place
• The West End Horror, written by Nicholas Meyer, has Sherlock Holmes investigate the murder of theater critic Jonathan McCarthy, who died with Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet open to the page where Mercutio chastens Romeo with "a plague on both your houses." Both Inspector Lestrade and Holmes delve into a family or clan rivalry, which dead ends. The operative word was "plague," as a strain of the contagion was used as the murder weapon.

Live-Action Series

• Angel: In one episode, Spike has been reduced to being a ghost and can't be seen and can barely interact with the world. He manages to write a single word in the condensation while Fred showers.
• Ghosts: In the second Halloween episode, Sam gets locked into the ghost-proof (and air-tight) secret vault. Jay remembers a previous condensation trick, fogs up the mirror and waits. Unfortunately, Trevor tries to by succinct, writing "SAM SAFE." Jay mis-interprets until Trevor changes it to "SAM in SAFE".
• Highlander: In the second season episode ''An Eye for an Eye", Richie hears Annie scream "Chuck Salis" to her henchmen who got away. When Richie tells Duncan what she said, Duncan was able to interpret it. She was actually saying the Gaelic word for "lighthouse", which is their hideout
• Lupin: The last letter Babakar wrote for Assane has exactly two misspelled words: "libraries" and "commit". Assane correctly interprets this as a direction to a man named Comet^note Comit in the English dub, who pulled the library book where Babakar concealed a more extensive secret message.
• Red Dwarf: One plot point in "Me2" is Lister trying to figure out exactly why Rimmer's last words before his death were "Gazpacho Soup". It eventually turns out that Rimmer was referencing an embarrassing situation where he, unaware of the fact that gazpacho soup was meant to be served cold, asked for it to be reheated whilst having dinner with the Captain, something which he felt destroyed his chance of moving up the career ladder.
• Sapphire and Steel: In "Assignment 2", a series of 11s appears repeatedly in the grime on a hotel room window, indicating the exact date and time of Private Sam Pierce's death.
• Sherlock: in "A Study in Pink", the primary clue in the mystery is that the murder victim scrawled the word "rache" in their dying moments. This is directly lifted from being an adaptation of "A Study in Scarlet". It goes in a different direction, however.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: In the episode "Cause and Effect", during the last time loop, the number 3 keeps popping up conspicuously. The crew figures out it was a clue they sent to themselves from the prior time loop but need to figure out what it means. three refers to the number of pips on Riker's rank insignia, meaning his suggestion to avoid the collision should be done.

Pro Wrestling

• In the first half of 2006, the big mystery for WWE was why Kane went nuts whenever he heard "May 19th". Kane would later reveal that this was the date of the fire that turned him into what he is. ^note The real reason for the date was that May 19, 2006 was the release date of his movie See No Evil and WWE wanted fans to remember the release date.

Puppet Shows

• Sesame Street: One episode involves everyone trying to figure out why Natasha, a baby, keeps tearfully yelling, "Hoongie!". It turns out that's the name of her doll, which she lost.

Tabletop Games

• Dead of Winter: The Fortune Teller Talia Jones has the special ability that her player can look at the top two cards in the Crisis Deck and give the rest of the table a two-word hint of the troubles ahead.
• Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder: The spell "Contact Other Plane" petitions gods or other eldritch forces for information. However, they only give one-word answers like "Yes", "Maybe", or "Irrelevant", or at most a short phrase.

Theatre

• Netajin: Parodied in one of Japanese comedian Tomonori Jinnai's skits; he plays a police officer who is investigating a series of murders, where the victim has written a clue in their own blood as they died. However, the clues are not as straightforward, do not make sense, or, for humor, outright defy the trope. As a few examples out of the two versions of the skit that were performed, one victim has written what appears to be the name of the suspect, but when read in Kansai dialect in Kanji, it translates to "What the hell?!" Another one has written and drawn an apology notice for inconveniencing their friends and family (even with a bowing character), and as a final example, one drew the music staff and notes for the death theme from Super Mario Bros..

Video Games

• Dark Souls III: In the Ringed City there's a wall with an inscription that tells you to "Show your Humanity". You need to use a White Branch or the Chameleon spell while standing in a nearby swamp in order to be disguised as a Giant Humanity from Dark Souls and approach the wall. This causes a ladder to descend. This is the only puzzle in the game that uses this mechanic.
• Elden Ring: The only hint so as to how to get to the top of the Converted Tower in Liurnia of the Lakes is a one-word message that says "Erudition". You need to perform the "Erudition" gesture in front of the statue of Marika inside the tower.
• Final Fantasy X-2: One group of treasure hunters in Zanarkand was given the clue "Key", while a different group had the clue of "Mon". The Gullwings determine the true one word clue is "Monkey".
• In the Gold Box game Pool of Radiance, when you first arrive at Sokol Keep you can find an elf skeleton that has the word "Lux". This is the word to use to avoid battles with spectres, the leader of which is quite deadly.
• The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: "Swamp, Mountain, Ocean, Canyon,... the four who are there... bring them here!" Those are the words Tael give to his sister Tatl during the final hours before the moon's impact on Termina. Once Link and Tatl returns to the first day, the latter complains about Tael's statements being always cryptic, since Tael merely mentioned the four major regions surrounding Termina Field without specifying who are the ones needed (the Skull Kid did know what Tael meant to say, so he hit him for talking too much). It's not until Link conquers the Woodfall Temple when he and Tatl realize that the four ones are the Giants who protect the land.
• Mortal Kombat 9: Before being killed by Shao Khan in the apocalyptic future, Raiden sends a vague message to his past self: "He must win". The past-era Raiden think the one who must win is Liu Kang, but upon realizing that the events in his era are still heading to the wrong direction, he thinks his future self was wrong. In reality, the future Raiden was talking about Shao Khan, as him winning would lead to him illegally attempting to merge the worlds, thus prompting the intervention of the Elder Gods for his punishment.

Visual Novels

• Played with in one of Virtue's Last Reward's bad endings. A dying woman writes 'dio' in blood on her leg. This is a perfectly good dying message and would easily have revealed the killer, Dio...except for the fact, after her death, a reversal of that message was imprinted on her other leg, and that message just so happened to be the one everyone else saw and assumed to be what she wrote. So it instead looks like '016', and the cast- having recently discovered a room full of Ridiculously Human Robots- start searching for a robot with that serial number. Hilarity does not ensue, especially because there actually is a robot with that serial number Hiding in Plain Sight amongst the cast, but she's completely innocent of any crime..

Western Animation

• Ace Ventura: Pet Detective: In the episode "Night of the Gorilla", Ace tries to prove that a gorilla did not killed the scientist that raised her. The gorilla is trained to use sign language and can write so Ace tries to use her as a witness, but all she repeats over and over again is the word "murder”. Turns out that the actual murderer is a rival scientist named Dr. Redrum (Ace finally figures it out when he sees one of the gorilla's writings of "murder" in a mirror, even).
• G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero: In The Viper is Coming, the Joes believe they are being given clues from someone calling as The Viper. First was "five-seventy-five", leading the Joes to a hidden Cobra R&R base in Antarctica. Afterward, the clue "west corner" leads the Joes to stop a Cobra attack on West Point. After that, clue from the third phone call was "top floor:, leading the Joes to raid Cobra's offices at the Extensive Enterprises office building (the tallest building in the world). it was all a misunderstanding of a window washer with an accent telling Barbeque how he'd wash Barbecue's firehouse windows.
• Peg + Cat: In "Peg Meets Cat", the plot of the episode is that Peg's mother is trying to figure out why an approximately eighteen-month-old Peg keeps repeating, "Two!". It turns out to be because she wants to keep Cat for a pet (because her plus him equals two).
• The Real Ghostbusters: In "Ghostbuster of the Year", the Ghostbusters have to determine why a ghost keeps chanting, "Rosebud!" in reference to Citizen Kane.
• Tiny Toon Adventures: One episode parodied Citizen Kane with Montana Max screaming the word "Acme", with Babs & Buster wondering for the rest of the episode what he meant.Max later revealed that he actually shouted "Acne", as he had a bad pimple.

Real Life

• The clues to a Crossword Puzzle are often a single word.
• According to a legend that arose soon after his death, Dominican friar and Inquisitor Peter of Verona (canonized as Saint Petrus Martyr) wrote "credo" on the ground in his own blood while dying when he was murdered by Cathars in a forest near Milano in 1252.
• "Croatoan" remains the keyword for those that keep trying to solve the disappearance of the Roanoke colony (and don't just assume they intermarried with nearby natives).