Sheriff's Stars
by Yar Woo, Ian Tullis (original concept)
Answer: BADGES
The bolded phrases clue font names. The star-shapes and asterisk-marked footnote nudge solvers to consider these fonts' asterisks. Different fonts' asterisks have different numbers of points.
To extract a message, figure out which font is clued, note the number of points on its asterisk, and take that letter from the font name.
| Font Name | #* pts. | Letter |
|---|---|---|
| yellowballoon | 6 | w |
| winner | 5 | e |
| trend | 5 | d |
| meritocracy | 6 | o |
| serpentine | 6 | n |
| appetite | 5 | t |
| freudian | 8 | n |
| poster | 5 | e |
| sunshinedaisies | 8 | e |
| fieldwork | 5 | d |
| turbinado | 6 | n |
| stormyyouth | 8 | o |
| quotes | 6 | s |
| beatle | 4 | t |
| breakingbread | 6 | i |
| southernbelle | 8 | n |
| backlash | 4 | k |
| blogscript | 8 | i |
| chinupbuttercup | 4 | n |
| bloomingelegant | 8 | g |
This yields the phrase WE DON'T NEED NO STINKING… The word that finishes the phrase, this puzzle's solution, is BADGES.