The Potato Chip Puzzles_ The Puzzling World of Winston Breen - Eric Berlin [63]
“Do you think that’s the answer?” Jake said anxiously.
“I think it’s worth trying.”
Jake didn’t need to be told twice. Mr. Garvey had given him the mini computer, and now he turned it on. There was the initial teedly-teedly-tee that Winston was going to hear in his dreams tonight and then Jake got busy pushing buttons.
“Three teams have solved this puzzle,” Jake said.
“Did anybody solve the sixth puzzle?” Mal asked.
Jake shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Plug in our answer already,” Winston told him.
“All right . . . hold on . . . ” Jake pushed more buttons. He looked up, startled. “Four teams have solved this puzzle!”
Mal said, “Who’s the fourth?”
“We are, dummy! That was it! UNSURE is the answer.” Jake danced around, pumping his arms in the air.
Winston felt like he’d been whapped over the head with a huge, soft pillow. “Are you sure?” he said.
“No, I’m unsure!” Jake said happily. “Come on!” He started running back to Mr. Garvey.
Winston worked out the rest of it while he ran. It was simple enough, when he thought it through: He’d been right all along that each riddle led to a picture on a different shirt. Winston assumed that they’d have to follow a trail made up of all eighteen people, running from one to the next. But they had the answer after solving only six riddles. Winston guessed that this puzzle consisted of three different riddle trails, each made up of six riddles. You didn’t have to solve every single riddle to get the answer, and part of the puzzle was simply realizing that. Tricky stuff.
Mr. Garvey was happily stunned when they told him they’d figured out the answer and already plugged it in. He stood up and looked around, as if expecting someone to hand them an award. “We did it,” he said. “We really did it.”
“Not yet,” Mal said. “One more puzzle to go.”
“Right,” said the teacher. He looked sharply over to Brendan Root’s team. They were still on their park bench on the other side of the green. Winston smiled in recognition when he saw that Brendan was pacing, staring at the ground. He was deep in thought, waiting for a lightning bolt of inspiration to strike. Brendan’s teammates were slumped on either end of the bench like broken bookends. Winston recognized that, too: They were out of ideas and giving in to hopelessness. Brendan’s teacher was sitting on the bench, waving his arms with emotion. All in all, they looked pretty stuck. Winston felt a small blossoming of hope.
“All right,” said Mr. Garvey. “We can do it. I know we can. We can come from behind and win it all, cheater or no cheater.” He took out a fresh piece of paper and wrote down all the answer words.
QUASAR
THRESH
ICARUS
ACQUIT
UNSURE
“That’s it,” said Mr. Garvey. “That’s all we get.”
“There was a clue in the computer,” said Winston. “Wasn’t there?”
“Oh, yeah!” Mal said. “What does it say?”
Jake pressed more buttons on the computer. Then he groaned. “Oh, no,” he said. “That’s the clue?”
“What? What is it?” Winston peeked over Jake’s shoulder, saw the computer screen, and smacked himself in the forehead.
The clue to the sixth puzzle was the same sign they’d seen all day long—the guy with the shiny teeth, holding up a bag of square potato chips. “Think square!” the man was eternally saying.
“That’s all we get?” Mal said. “Think square? What does that mean?”
Silence descended on the team. Winston didn’t know how to “think square,” and nobody else had any ideas, either.
Mr. Garvey’s phone rang, a shrill jangling tweet. He answered it, listened for a moment, and then handed it to Winston. “It’s for you,” he said.
“For me?” Winston said, and then he remembered: Ray Marietta! Could the ex-cop really have figured something out? He took the phone from his teacher. “Ray?” he said.
“All right,” Ray said brusquely. “I had someone look into your little problem.”
Winston was puzzled. “Really? Who?”
“I do a little private detective work once in a while,” Ray