The clues have been solved, the forms have been turned in, and those slightly squished banners atop Red Mill are finally coming down. (Apparently, the Gumshoe Answer Man has not allowed anyone to forget their less-than-perfect installation.) That can mean only one thing: the 2026 Gumshoe is officially in the books, and it was a very good year.
$11,677 for Ballard Food Bank and Aurora Commons
This year’s Gumshoe raised and donated $11,677 to Ballard Food Bank and Aurora Commons—a whopping 33% increase over last year’s $8,773. As the Gumshoe team put it, “We don’t want to get too far into our own spreadsheet feelings about that, but it’s a good number.” Whether participants solved every clue, found themselves hopelessly stumped somewhere around Clue #19, or bought an entry form with every intention of participating and somehow never quite got around to it, it all counted. Even better, the 2026 contribution brings the Gumshoe’s cumulative fundraising to more than $125,000 since 2006.
Not bad for a neighborhood walk!
A Big Thank You to 15 Neighborhood Businesses
The Gumshoe wouldn’t happen without local businesses willing to get in on the fun, and this year 15 neighborhood businesses donated prizes for the people spending their summer wandering PhinneyWood looking suspiciously closely at buildings, signs, alleys, and other neighborhood oddities. A huge thank you goes to El Chupacabra, Pete’s Eggnest, PCC Greenlake, Halcyon, Chicken Supply, Take 5 Urban Market, Ridge Pizza, Nutty Squirrel, Cheeky & Dry, Kym’s Kiddy Corner, Greenwood Hardware, Chez Phinney, Red Mill Burgers, Phinney Books, and Gorgeous George’s.
The Gumshoe team’s suggestion for thanking them? Go spend some actual money at these businesses. “Not as a guilt trip,” they clarified. “Okay, a little as a guilt trip.”
More Than a Walking Quiz
For anyone new to the neighborhood, the annual Gumshoe is part scavenger hunt, part walking tour, part fundraiser, and part elaborate excuse to make people pay closer attention to the place they call home. Participants might find themselves studying a hand-painted fire hydrant, discovering a shortcut through an alley, or finally noticing a shop they’ve walked past hundreds of times without ever stepping inside. And yes, sometimes solving a clue apparently requires finding a mug hidden in a Ridwell bin.
The whole wonderfully quirky tradition even caught the attention of The Seattle Times this year, which featured the Gumshoe as one of three Seattle neighborhood traditions helping build community connections. As the Gumshoe team observed, it took a professional journalist to confirm that “a homemade walking quiz about alleys and hand-painted signs is, in fact, a real thing that brings a neighborhood together.” Around here, we already knew that.
Want to Help Make Gumshoe 2027 Happen?
Here’s where you come in. The Gumshoe may look effortless when you’re strolling around the neighborhood puzzling over clues, but putting it together each summer takes a crew of volunteers—and the team is actively looking for more people to help in 2027. This isn’t a request for a second job or a summer-long commitment. They’re looking for neighbors who can lend a few hours here and there with things like selling entry forms outside Greenwood Hardware, test-walking the route before it goes public, and hanging posters and yard signs around the neighborhood.
The test-walkers have a particularly important job: making sure a tree hasn’t been trimmed, a sign hasn’t disappeared, or some other neighborhood change hasn’t rendered an otherwise brilliant clue completely nonsensical before hundreds of Gumshoes encounter it. If spending a few hours next summer helping perpetuate one of PhinneyWood’s strangest and most beloved traditions sounds like fun, reach out to the Gumshoe team at [email protected].
Congratulations to everyone who walked, solved, donated, sponsored, volunteered—and eventually came back to collect their free mug.