Some city and economic development officials seem tired of waiting. “Probably every dinner party they go to, every neighborhood meeting, it comes up,” Mr. Pearlstein said. “They probably get sick of wanting to stall” when queried about the latest.

Those whose cities aren’t selected will be eager to move on, using what they learned in the process.

Amazon’s “feedback is very relevant and can help shape public policy, economic development and housing investment strategies for growing economies across the United States,” Mr. Bailey said. “If Eastern time zone was a big deal for them, I can’t change that. But I can help policy leaders change their work force development plans.”

An Amazon spokesman said on Thursday that the company was committed to choosing a location this year.

The silence on the decision — which could affect local housing and job markets, not to mention a city’s culture — has led residents and even some officials to fill the information void with any scrap they can muster.

Some are even acting on their hunches.

Eric Fidler, a software developer, lives next to one of the sites that Washington, D.C., has proposed for the headquarters. He was so optimistic the region would be selected that he invested in three real estate companies he thought would benefit if Amazon chose the area. Then he thought he got an HQ2 crumb when he heard from a recruiter for Amazon’s retail division, which doesn’t have a large engineering presence locally.

He followed up with the recruiter, and learned the position was in Palo Alto, Calif., or Seattle. But he was not deterred.