The Potato Chip Puzzles_ The Puzzling World of Winston Breen - Eric Berlin [65]
Why had Winston said yes to the mysterious caller’s questions? Why did Winston tell a total stranger—and one trying to disguise his voice!—that he planned to be at the puzzle contest? He should have just hung up and then Winston’s name wouldn’t have been on that list and then maybe they would have won this whole thing by now.
“Winston!” said Mr. Garvey. Winston looked up at his teacher, who shook the list of words yet again.
Right. The puzzle. They still had work to do. Reluctantly, Winston stood up and looked again at the five answer words.
QUASAR
THRESH
ICARUS
ACQUIT
UNSURE
“Let’s hear some suggestions,” Mr. Garvey said.
Mal said slowly, “Maybe these words are all clues.”
“To what?”
“To the sixth word.”
Winston looked at the word list. “You’re saying that quasar, thresh, and Icarus are all clues to the same answer? What answer could that be?”
“I don’t know,” Mal said. “Some word I’ve never heard of, would be my guess. Is there a mythological farmer who lives in outer space?”
No, there wasn’t, of course. That was a dead end, so they all tried to think of new ideas. The four of them paced, and stared at the words, waiting and hoping for something to jump out at them. “There are two Q’s,” Jake said after a while.
“So?” said Mr. Garvey.
“There are two H’s,” Jake continued. “There are two C’s. There are two I’s. . . . Isn’t that strange? There’s two of just about everything.”
“There are four U’s,” Mal said. “There are four A’s.”
Jake counted and saw Mal was right. “That’s still an even number,” he said.
“But what does it mean?” Mal asked.
Jake didn’t know. He shook his head and went back to staring at the words.
Silence fell on the group once again. Winston looked back over to Brendan Root, still pacing over there on the other side of the green. His team had a pretty big jump on the sixth puzzle, but so far they hadn’t gotten anywhere. That momentary spark of hope Winston had felt was dying out. How could they catch up when Brendan and his team had been thinking about this for so much longer?
Jake was poking at the mini computer again. “Five teams have solved everything but the final puzzle. It’s anybody’s ball game.”
There was shouting to their right. They looked over to see the Lincoln kids on the next bench down, maybe twenty yards away. They were jumping around and slapping each other happily.
Mal said, “Make that six teams have solved everything but the final puzzle.”
Mr. Garvey stood up as if to make a pronouncement. He was pretending to ignore the team from Lincoln, but Winston could see he was fueled with a new urgency. “These are all six-letter words,” he declared.
“Do you think the final answer is going to be six letters, too?” Winston asked.
“I think that’s likely,” the math teacher said.
“There’s the library,” Mal said. “Let’s go get a dictionary. We’ll plug every six-letter word into the computer, one at a time.”
“Brilliant, Mal,” said Jake. “We’ll have the right answer in fifty or a hundred years.”
“Better than never,” Mal said. “The first word is probably . . . AAAAAA!” He pronounced this by emitting a weird and strangled yell.
Jake and Winston laughed. “I don’t think that’s a word,” Jake said.
“Sure it is,” Mal said. “Along with YAAARGH and BLAAAGH and all those comic-book screams.”
Mr. Garvey was suddenly standing over Mal, glaring down at him. “If you can’t take this seriously,” he said, “then go wait in the car.”
Mal shrank as if Mr. Garvey was about to stomp on him. “I’m taking this seriously!” he squeaked.
“You’re making jokes,” said Mr. Garvey. “Not even funny jokes. If you don’t have something useful to add, then keep your mouth shut.”
Mal slowly crawled backward a few feet, like a wounded crab, to get away from the teacher.
Mr. Garvey wasn’t done. He had anger and frustration to spare. “You too, Jake,” he said. “If you don’t want to solve this last puzzle, then take Mal back to the car.”
Jake was