The Potato Chip Puzzles: The Puzzling World of Winston Breen (10 page)

That was recognizably a word, but none of the boys knew exactly what it meant. Winston thought he might have heard the word on a science-fiction television show—which only made sense, seeing as the puzzle was in a planetarium. Mr. Garvey tried explaining it, eyebrows scrunching as if he wasn’t all that sure himself: “It’s an object in outer space,” he said. “Something extremely bright and very far away. It’s one of those things astronomers are always looking for with those gigantic telescopes.”

Whatever else a quasar might be, it was definitely the answer to the puzzle. It had to be, but there was still a tense moment until Jake confirmed the answer with the mini computer. Then there were high fives all around, even with Mr. Garvey.

They rushed out to the parking lot. Jake glanced under each tire before getting into the car. Mr. Garvey barked at him to stop dawdling, but Winston knew he was looking for more signs of sabotage.

“What’s the next stop?” said Mr. Garvey when they were all settled in.

Jake studied the computer. “Sutherland Farms.”

“Sounds familiar. Where is it?”

“West Meadow. I have directions.”

“All right,” said Mr. Garvey. “We’re off.”

They drove along, and Jake read directions off the computer screen in a low and distant monotone. Winston suspected he was still upset about the trick they had played on the girls’ team. It was all Mr. Garvey’s doing, of course, but the girls wouldn’t know that. And even if they never saw the girls again after this was over, they would return home convinced that all of them—not just Mr. Garvey but
all of them
—were underhanded and scheming, full of smiles when needing a little help but also willing to stab a friend in the back for a few seconds’ worth of advantage. The girls would say to their friends, “Some of those people we met today were just awful,” and they would be referring in part to Jake.

And the fact was, Jake would never cheat. Never.

If Winston was playing Monopoly with his sister Katie and had to leave the room for some reason, he would take all his money with him. If he didn’t, his stack would be a little lighter when he returned. Katie was a good kid and a good sister, but the temptation to pinch a hundred dollars or slip an extra house onto Pennsylvania Avenue was, for her, too much to resist.

Jake would resist. Winston could stop the game, take a bicycle ride around the neighborhood, and come back to find the board and his bank account exactly as he’d left it. Jake was competitive—in fact, very competitive—but he was what Winston’s dad called “the right kind of competitive.” If he won, he wanted to know he had earned it from start to finish, fair and square.

And Mal? He might give himself five hotels on Boardwalk or rob the bank entirely so that Winston would return to see his friend sitting behind a huge pile of money and a big, fat grin. That wasn’t cheating. That was just being Mal.

Winston understood why Jake was upset, but Winston wasn’t entirely sure that their teacher
had
cheated. He had played a trick, certainly—offered to help another team and then snatched that help away. It was bad sportsmanship, but was it cheating? Winston couldn’t quite pin that label on it . . . not when somebody else out there had given them a flat tire with a broken bottle.
That
was cheating.

And now he realized something else, something so obvious he didn’t know how he’d missed it: Whoever had wedged that bottle under their tire had also moved the signs at the space museum. The signs were supposed to have been in front of the planetarium doors, guiding all the teams inside. But someone—the cheater, surely—had moved the signs to that small, dark hallway.

First the flat tire, then the disappearing signs. Someone was trying to knock them out of the race and doing a fine job of it. Was there a way to figure out who it was?

He could rule out the girls from Greater Oaks right off the bat. They wouldn’t move the signs and then pretend they couldn’t find the puzzle. The point of cheating is to slow down everybody else, not your own team.

That left eight other teams. Could he eliminate any others? Could he eliminate all but one?

Maybe it wasn’t a cheating
team.
The cheater could be flying solo—his or her teammates might not even know what was happening. Winston could almost see it: The cheater sees the signs in front of the planetarium theater and gets the idea to move them. His team settles into the theater, looks up at the fake starry sky and those floating words. The cheater says he has to go to the bathroom and leaves. He moves the signs and then comes back to help solve the puzzle. Easy.

Well, maybe not
easy.
The cheater had to drag those signs a good fifty feet without being spotted by any of the museum staff. But somehow he had accomplished this, just in time for Winston’s team to arrive and be thrown off track. The cheater sure had luck on his side.

Something in that thought shined out at him like a quarter on the sidewalk. There was a clue here to the cheater’s identity. But Winston couldn’t quite get a handle on it. “We were the last ones there,” he muttered.

Mal had been tapping a rhythm on the car window, but now turned to look at him. “What?”

Winston didn’t know he’d said anything out loud. He said, “I’m trying to figure out who’s cheating.”

Mal shrugged. “Sounds like a plan.”

“The cheater’s team got to the planetarium before we did. Right?”

Jake said, “
Everybody
got to the planetarium before we did.”

“Okay,” said Winston. “The cheater also arrived at the potato chip factory
after
we did.” Winston expected cheers or gasps at this revelation, but instead all he got was a thoughtful and puzzled silence.

Mal finally said, “How do you figure?”

Winston sat forward. “We pulled into the parking lot and went inside. Sometime after that, the cheater’s team arrived. Before they came inside, the cheater put that bottle under our tire.”

Jake said, “Why did it have to be then? Why not when we were all rushing back to our cars?”

Mr. Garvey chimed in. “That would have been incredibly risky, doing it with so many people around. Winston, I think you may be right. But let me ask you this: How did the cheater know which cars were involved in the contest? Not every car in the visitor parking lot belonged to a team.”

Mal said, “Maybe they pulled in just after we did. The cheater saw a grown-up and three kids. Not too hard to figure out why they were there.”

Jake twisted around in his seat and said, “Who came into the conference room immediately after us? Whoever it was, that’s our cheater.”

“Maybe,” Mr. Garvey said.

“All right, maybe,” Jake said grudgingly. “But who was it? Who came in after we did?”

They all thought about it.

“Those private school kids,” Mal said. “The ones dressed like waiters at a fancy restaurant.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I remember thinking they were somebody official, that the game was about to start.”

“How soon after did they get there?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t bring a stopwatch with me,” Mal said.

“Who else arrived after we did?” Winston asked. Silence greeted this question. “All right. Turn it around. Who was in the conference room when we got there? We can rule out all those teams.”

“Maybe,”
Mr. Garvey said again, more loudly this time.

“That Brendan Root kid was there,” said Mal.

“The girls were there,” said Winston.

“Oh, you noticed the girls, did you?” Mal teased. Winston turned crimson.

“That other math teacher was there,” Jake said. “Your friend, Mr. Denham.”

Mr. Garvey said, “He’s not my friend.”

“There were other teams there, too,” said Mal, “but I can’t think who they were. So I guess right now we think the cheater is on that private school team. Right?”

“Okay, that’s enough,” said Mr. Garvey. “You have no idea one way or the other. We’re not going to accuse anybody of cheating unless we catch them in the act. I’m not a hundred percent certain that somebody is cheating
at all.
Go ahead and discuss this all you want, but I’m drawing the line at accusing anybody. Even here in the car. I don’t want to hear ‘I think so-and-so is the cheater.’ I don’t want to hear it. All right?”

The boys mumbled agreement.

“Let’s just see what happens next,” said Mr. Garvey.

The name Sutherland Farms meant nothing to Winston, but as soon as they pulled into the dusty parking lot, he realized he’d been here before: The farm had a petting zoo, which he’d visited back in the first or second grade, and he was pretty sure his parents had come out here to buy vegetables and fresh pies. The air was filled with a thick, earthy smell, like you could plant a seed right there in the parking lot and it would blossom before your eyes.

Winston got out of the car and looked around. The sun was really beating down now.

“Where to, do you think?” Jake asked, shielding his eyes.

“There. Look,” Winston said, and pointed.

Another feature of Sutherland Farms was a maze—giant bales of hay stacked five high, creating very effective walls. Today there was a sign at the entrance: CLOSED FOR PRIVATE EVENT. Next to that stood an advertisement for Simon’s Potato Squares. There was no question where the puzzle was this time around.

“That’s what I like to see,” said Mal. “Let’s go.”

They reached the maze entrance, and Winston could hear the shrieks of kids running around in there. An oldish fellow with a significant belly came over to see if they should be allowed to enter. They showed him the mini computer and the man walked away, mollified.

“A maze,” said Mr. Garvey, doubtfully. “Isn’t the answer supposed be a word? How is a romp through a maze going to lead to an answer word?”

Winston said, “Maybe it’s hidden somewhere? Maybe they hand you the answer when you find the exit?”

“Only one way to find out,” Mal said, taking a step forward. “Shall we?”

Mr. Garvey raised a hand. “Let’s just think for one moment. What’s the fastest way of doing this? Maybe we should all take different routes through the maze. This way one of us will definitely find the answer.”

Jake said, “If Winston’s waiting by the car with the answer and I’m still wandering around in there with the computer, that doesn’t help us much.”

Mr. Garvey nodded. “You’re right. Bad idea. We stay together. Let’s go. Keep your eyes sharp.”

The entrance was blocked by an elaborate curtain of corn husks. They parted this, and immediately came upon a sign bearing a single handwritten letter:
T
.

“That’s probably important,” said Mal.

“All right,” said Mr. Garvey. “Look out for more letters.” He headed off in a random direction. The three boys rushed to catch up.

 

Hay dust floated around like snow in a snowglobe—it felt like the air itself was made out of bits of straw. It was impossible to walk around the maze without a great big sneeze welling up in the back of your head.

No one was talking about it, but everyone on the team knew this was their opportunity to catch up to the rest of the pack. If they could burn through the maze quickly, and if other teams stumbled into a lot of dead ends, then Winston’s team might gain back several minutes lost to the flat tire and the time spent wandering around the planetarium.

By the time they reached their fourth dead end, however, it no longer looked like they were going to solve this thing quickly. And with each new dead end, Mr. Garvey became a little more intense. He was no longer interested in any opinions his kids might have; in fact, it was all Winston could do just to keep up with him. At one point, Mr. Garvey rounded a corner, saw it was a dead end, and wheeled around again so quickly that Jake slammed into him.

“Jake, watch where you’re going,” Mr. Garvey said angrily. “This is hard enough without you getting under my feet.” He stormed off in a new direction. The boys glanced at each other with irritation and then ran to follow him. This was anything but fun.

There were definitely other kids in the maze—Winston could hear them—but they encountered only one team face-to-face: the kids from the Demilla Academy, who were the closest thing right now to suspects in the cheating mystery.

They ran into the Demilla team no less than three times. The first time, there were nods of acknowledgment, but no words passed between them. The second time, there was some mild laughter. “What, you again?” said the boy on their team with a friendly smirk.

The third time, nobody was laughing. Winston was fed up with the maze, but the Demilla kids looked utterly exhausted and at the end of their rope. The boy had loosened his necktie and untucked his shirt from his pants. The girls’ long hair had grown limp and heavy with sweat. They looked like they would rather be anywhere else on earth.

At this point, it was clear that the two teams were heading in the same direction, so they informally joined up. Mr. Garvey, rather tired himself after going full throttle for so long, slowed down so he could talk to the Demilla teacher. The two girls fell to the back of the group where they complained to each other, hissing like peevish old cats. The boy introduced himself to Winston and his friends as Michael Scott.