The Potato Chip Puzzles_ The Puzzling World of Winston Breen - Eric Berlin [1]
Winston, of course, was solving a puzzle. He kept a couple of puzzle books in his schoolbag at all times. There had been a day earlier in the year when he found himself puzzleless in study hall, and Mrs. Livetta refused to let him go to his locker. With nothing to read and nothing to solve, he sat there for a while in utter boredom. In fact, that was the day he discovered that the letters of BOREDOM can be scrambled to make the word BEDROOM. That was a pleasing discovery, at least.
Now he was always prepared. He clicked a few times on his mechanical pencil and doodled in the margin while he thought.
In a word square, words read the same both across and down. In the following two puzzles, solve the clues to create the word square.
This last word square has five letters in each word . . . and the clues aren’t given in order, so you’ll have to figure out which word goes where.
(Answers, page 239.)
“Winston!” Mrs. Livetta all but screamed in his ear.
Winston jerked like a freshly caught fish, nearly falling out of his chair. The other kids in the study hall laughed. Mrs. Livetta was standing in front of him, hands on hips.
“Wh-what? Yes?” Winston tried to regain his wits. He knew what had happened. Sometimes he became so absorbed in a puzzle that the world around him simply faded away. Mrs. Livetta must have called him once or twice from the comfort of her chair and then, when Winston didn’t answer, said his name louder, and then louder still, and then she finally came over and yelled at him. The next step might have been to hit him with a textbook.
The kids laughed again, but Mrs. Livetta wasn’t laughing. “You are wanted down at the principal’s office. Didn’t you hear the announcement?” She pointed at the loudspeaker on the wall.
Winston reddened. It was worse than he thought. The loudspeaker, which was indeed loud, had barked his name, and he hadn’t heard it at all. Wow. That had to be some kind of record.
Wait a minute—the principal’s office wanted to see him?
“Why does the principal want to see me?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Livetta said. “It’s a loudspeaker—you can’t have a conversation with it. Ask when you get down there. Now go!”
Was he in trouble? He couldn’t see how. Was something wrong at home? His mind reached in every direction at once as he walked through the empty hallways down to the main office. As he rounded the corner to the school’s large central lobby, the intercom system crackled and chirped. The school secretary said once again, in the voice of an old lady robot: “Winston Breen, please report to the principal’s office. Winston Breen, to the principal’s office.” Boy, whatever the reason was, they sure wanted to see him. He bit his lower lip and tried to prepare himself.
When he reached the main office, Mrs. Lembo was still returning to her desk from the PA system. “Ah, there you are,” she said.
“Yes, sorry,” said Winston.
“Well, go right in. Mr. Unger’s expecting you.”
The principal’s office was down a short hallway, ending in a door you never wanted to open. Winston had never had a reason to knock on this door, and that was fine with him. He was still trying to figure out some way he might be in trouble. He took a deep breath and knocked softly. “Come in,” said a brusque voice. Winston creaked the door open.
Mr. Unger was not behind his desk. He was up and pacing. “Ah, Winston. Good. Thought maybe you were absent today. Or cutting class!”
Winston recognized that as a joke but had no idea how to respond. “Yes, no, um, I was—”
But Mr. Unger wasn’t looking for any explanations. “You’re still the puzzle person, right?”
“Sure. . . .” Winston