The Potato Chip Puzzles_ The Puzzling World of Winston Breen - Eric Berlin [61]
Jake said, “I think we need to give each answer to the person who asked the riddle. Remember? They were giving something away when you told them the right answer.”
Mr. Garvey looked startled for a moment, then smiled sheepishly. “Of course. That’s clearly what we need to do. I should have thought of that myself.”
Jake nodded with mock sympathy. “Too many blows to the head,” Jake said, tapping the side of his own head. “Affects the thinking.”
Winston looked at his friend and then quickly over to Mr. Garvey, who by his expression was trying to figure out how to accept this obvious jab. For a moment, Mr. Garvey looked like he was going to begin a long discussion with Jake about the things you are and are not allowed to say to one’s teachers—that teachers are allowed to rib you, but you had better watch your step if you wanted to rib back. But they didn’t have time for that. Mr. Garvey decided only to put on a weak smile and say, “Touché, Jake. Now, let’s go.”
They ran up to the closest person, who grinned broadly when he saw them coming. “I will not burn in a fire, and I will not drown in the water. What am I?” he asked.
“Ice!” said Winston.
“Well done!” said the guy. He reached into this pocket and pulled out a small piece of plastic. “For you.”
It was a letter tile, perhaps from a board game. It was cherry red, with a white letter engraved into it: R. The three boys and their teacher huddled around this small tile, staring at it like it contained the wisdom of the ages.
Mal finally looked up. “That’s it? That’s all we get?”
“Yep.” The guy walked away.
“All right,” said Mr. Garvey. “We need to answer every single one of these riddles and get all their letters.” He shook his head and looked around at the many colored T-shirts. “This is going to take forever.”
“Wait a minute,” Winston said. He’d had an idea—not a bright lightbulb but a quick little firefly wink. He looked at the R in his hands. “We’re going to get a letter from every single person here, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know,” said Jake. “Probably.”
“What are we going to do with them?”
“Scramble the letters into an answer,” Mr. Garvey said. “Why are we talking about this? Let’s go!”
“Wait!” Winston said. The firefly was growing. “There are eighteen riddles. If that means we’re going to wind up with eighteen different letters, that’s going to be a problem.”
“Why?”
“Because scrambling that many letters into an answer is really, really hard. That’s a lot of letters.”
They dwelled on that for a moment. Even Mr. Garvey could see that Winston was right. It was easy to envision sitting on the ground, shifting around letter tiles until the sun went down.
“So what are we supposed to do?” said Mal.
Winston said, “I think there’s something more to this puzzle. I think the pictures on the back of these shirts are important.”
“Well, yeah,” Jake said. “I wouldn’t have gotten half these riddles if I didn’t have the answers in front of me.”
Winston shook his head. “The answer to this guy’s riddle was ice. I think we need to find the volunteer who has the picture of an ice cube on the back of his shirt.”
“Yes!” said Mal, seeing the whole thing now. “That has to be it. It’s a connect the dots!”
“It is?” Mr. Garvey said doubtfully. “A connect the dots?”
“Well, no,” said Mal, correcting himself. “It’s a connect the riddles! Where’s the guy with the ice cube?”
They looked around. Were there really only eighteen college kids? The way their bright T-shirts blended in with the innocent bystanders walking around, it looked like there were a hundred of them. How were they supposed to find a particular T-shirt in all this?
They spread out, walking slowly away from each other, four pairs of eyes scanning the green, trying to find a single moving detail in all this chaos. Winston saw other teams running around.