The Potato Chip Puzzles_ The Puzzling World of Winston Breen - Eric Berlin [68]
Winston had never seen a grown-up this angry.
“You’re kicking him off the team?” Mal said.
Mr. Garvey turned on him. “You want to go, too?”
“Uh, guys,” Winston said again.
“What is it, Winston?” asked the teacher. “You want to leave, too? Fine. What does it matter now? We’re disbanded. Is everybody happy?”
“I solved the sixth puzzle,” Winston said.
Mr. Garvey blinked at him. So did Mal and Jake. It was like Winston had reached into all of them and switched them off. Mr. Garvey’s mouth opened and closed a few times and then he said, “You did what?”
“I solved it. I solved the last puzzle.” He showed them what he had scribbled on the paper in his hand. “Think square. That was the only clue Simon gave us, and I finally realized what it meant.”
“You solved the puzzle?” Mr. Garvey was still catching up to this new development.
Winston said, “It’s a puzzle I’ve seen in one of my magazines. You guys know what a word square is?”
“It’s the same as a crossword puzzle, isn’t it?” Mal said.
“Sort of. Not really. It’s a square, and each word in the square is written twice—once reading across and once reading down.”
“So all of these words can fit into a word square?”
“These five words . . . and a sixth. And that final word is the answer we’re looking for.”
QUASAR
THRESH
ICARUS
ACQUIT
UNSURE
(Continue reading to see the answer to this puzzle.)
Mr. Garvey’s delight was short-lived. Without thinking, he pushed the On button again and was quickly reminded that the thing was broken, its screen now gray and lifeless. Winston had had the vague and silly notion that solving the sixth puzzle would cause the computer to magically heal itself. But no.
A lot of good having the final answer would do them when they had no way to send it to Dmitri Simon back at the potato chip factory. They just couldn’t win.
Mr. Garvey kept pushing the power button as if something different might happen. He mashed the other keys on the keyboard. He smacked it on the back like a father burping a baby. Finally, he gave up and sat on the park bench, his arms dangling at his sides, a man who has reached the end of the road. He wasn’t happy about finding the sixth answer, nor was he angry at the boys anymore. In a way, Mr. Garvey looked a bit broken himself.
“There must be something we can do,” said Winston.
“Drive to the factory?” Mal suggested. “Real, real fast?”
Mr. Garvey looked up, considering that. Winston envisioned him zigzagging through traffic like a madman, refusing to hit the brake for any reason. They might not even stop in the parking lot—they could crash through the front door of the building, bulldozing down the narrow hallway and into Dmitri Simon’s office.
But Mr. Garvey shook his head. “It’s half an hour away, maybe more,” he said in his new, defeated voice. “By the time we get there, someone else will have figured this out.”
“I have an idea,” Jake said softly. “We should go to the girls and tell them what happened. They can submit the answer for us.”
Mal was bewildered. “Why on earth would they do that?”
“Because we’ll split the prize money with them.”
If Jake had said that even five minutes ago, Winston guessed that Mr. Garvey’s head would have simply exploded. But now the math teacher looked thoughtful. Then he frowned and slumped back on his bench. “No. They wouldn’t help us after what we did at the space museum.”
“What we did?” Mal said, making we sound like the most unbelievable two-letter word in the English language.
Mr. Garvey sighed. “What I did. Okay? What I did. I double-crossed them, and there’s no way they’re going to help us now.”
“They might,” Jake said. “Yeah, you played that trick on them, and that wasn’t very nice. But Winston helped them back in the amusement park. They might not want to help you, but they might help him.”
“Winston helped them?” Mr. Garvey said. “How?”
Jake filled