The flavour text contains many words consisting of the letters RATE plus an extra letter, hinting that the feeder answers for this meta are answers that are similarly one letter away from a common set of letters. That common set turns out to be STARE.
The puzzle’s title refers to vexillology, which hints at Semaphore (the Vexillology module did not exist at the time). Encoding each of the extra letters into flag semaphore and using those flag positions to refer to the letter grid provided, a set of letter pairs is obtained. When ordered by the numbers the relevant puzzles have by their titles, they form a solution word.
| Number | Puzzle | Answer | Letter | Semaphore | Decoded |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3.2 | Paint By Number | BREAST | B | W.S | CA |
| 4.2 | CDO2 | ARREST | R | W.E | CL |
| 19.7 | Over/Under | STREAM | M | SW.E | UL |
| 26.12 | Story Time | EASTER | E | S.NE | AT |
| 27.10 | Snack Time | TREATS | T | NW.N | DE |
CALCULATED