by clivej
The topic of this should probably be "End of July spoilers: how exactly do they work?" to avoid letting people who haven't got that far know about Binoculars. (You can go back and edit it - please do.)Whenever you search, there is a criterion for what to discard in order to perform the search. You must discard that, to search. Then, if you like, you may discard again matching the criterion of the spot you're now at, and so on.
Some searches may give bonuses for discarding specific cards, or for discarding in particular circumstances. If so, you apply those bonuses as described.
It is possible that a search might have criteria that varied as the search progressed. If so, it would be ambiguous whether you applied the bonuses as you went along, or at the end - and therefore which criteria you'd need to meet when discarding extra cards. As a minor spoiler: this ambiguity never happens. (-8
Having discarded all the cards you want to for the search, and advanced accordingly, then you may discard pairs of Binoculars or similar to advance further.