The mystery of Amazon HQ2 has finalists who see clues everywhere

Some economic and urban development officials seem tired of waiting. "It's likely that every dinner they attend, every neighborhood meeting takes place," said Pearlstein. "They're probably fed up with wanting to stall" when they were asked about the last one.

Those whose cities are not selected will be eager to move forward, using what they have learned during the process.

According to Bailey, "Amazon's comments are very relevant and can help shape public policy, economic development and housing investment strategies for growing economies in the United States." "If the eastern time zone was a big problem for them, I can not change it. But I can help policy makers change their workforce development plans.

An Amazon spokeswoman said Thursday that the company pledged to choose a location this year.

Silence over the decision – which could affect local housing and employment markets, not to mention the culture of the city – has led residents and even some public servants to fill in the information vacuum they could muster.

Some even act on their intuitions.

Eric Fidler, a software developer in Washington DC, lives next to one of Washington's proposed sites for the new headquarters. He was so optimistic that the region would be chosen to invest in three real estate companies that he thought would benefit if Amazon chose the region. Then, he thought he had received a HQ2 crumb when he heard a recruiter from Amazon's retail division, who does not have a significant engineering presence locally.

He followed up with the recruiter and learned that the job was in Palo Alto, California or Seattle. But he was not dissuaded.

"Some people do fantastic football," Fidler said. "I prefer to speculate on Amazon."

District of Columbia The city council also participated in the guessing game. The Amazon site usually displays a picture of an employee's dog if a user accesses a broken link on the site. The official Twitter account of the board recently released a screen shot of an Amazon webpage composed of a black mix of Border Collie named Bowser, who shares a name with the mayor of the district, Muriel Bowser.