Each of the 99 square tiles of the large image comes from one of nine larger images. Each of these images represents a word that can precede PHONE in a common word or phrase. Each image has been broken into an equally spaced grid of three columns and four rows, and one piece is not included in the collage. Since the words are all related to PHONE, one can think of the 3×4 grid as a phone keypad, and the missing “key” corresponds to a digit.
= CELL (8)
= EAR (2)
= FLIP (5) [Flip Wilson]
= FRANCO (7) [James Franco]
= PAY (7)
= ROTARY (2)
= SMART (9) [Maxwell Smart]
= SOUSA (6) [John Philip Sousa]
= SPEAKER (7) [Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House]
The nine words can be filled into the “cord” image so that each square is used once:
This provides an ordering for the digits that correspond to the words: 767872925. Given the words’ relations to PHONE, the squares’ correspondence to phone keys, and the fact that none of the extracted digits are 0 or 1, it makes sense to see if this sequence of digits can spell a word in phonespell (2 = ABC, 3 = DEF, et cetera). The only valid word 767872925 translates to is PORTRAYAL, the answer to this puzzle.