The Potato Chip Puzzles: The Puzzling World of Winston Breen (21 page)

Up ahead was a girl in a green T-shirt with a picture of a snail on the back. How strange. Winston ran up to her.

“Uh, hi!” he said to her. “You’re . . . you’re giving away something?”

“Do you have an answer for me?” she said.

Winston didn’t know what that meant. “An answer? To what?”

“To my riddle: If you beat me, I will yell. What am I?” She looked at him expectantly.

“That’s a riddle?” Winston asked.

“It is. Do you know the answer?”

He didn’t. The girl saw the blankness on his face and nodded with sympathy. She said, “You can come back and tell me the answer whenever you have it. Bye, now.” She wandered off.

Could the answer be a snail—the picture on the back of her shirt? No, that didn’t make much sense, funny as it might be to imagine hitting a snail and having it yell at you, angrily waving its slimy little antennae.

All at once he had a blast of realization—the right answer was going to be on one of these shirts. He just had to find the right person. And one of these other people had a riddle, the answer to which would be a snail.

Winston was suddenly whipping his head around, trying to see everywhere at once. The town green never seemed larger, and the college kids in the colored T-shirts were all over the place. He ran to the next closest person and looked at his back. This guy’s picture was a can of paint. That wasn’t the answer to the girl’s riddle, either.

The guy noticed Winston and turned to face him. He was frowning and spread his arms out like he was about to sing opera. “I have a riddle for you,” he intoned gravely. “Tell me the answer if you can.” This guy was definitely taking his role seriously. Maybe too seriously.

“Okay,” Winston said.

The guy cleared his throat theatrically and said, “I get shorter the longer I stand. What am I?”

Winston sighed. He didn’t know the answer to this one, either.

The guy saw that Winston didn’t know and shook his head, clucking with pity. “If you cannot answer, I cannot help you. Good day to you.” He swept himself around as if he thought he was wearing a great royal robe instead of a purple T-shirt.

Had it been ten minutes yet? Winston had only spoken with two people. Maybe they shouldn’t have split up in the first place. He looked around for Mal and Jake and didn’t see either of them. Winston could swear the town green was lengthening before his eyes, as if two giants had grabbed it from either end and were stretching it out.

He heard someone call his name and spun around. He was glad to see it was Brendan Root, who was practically skipping toward him. Winston grinned. He’d have to figure out a way to get in touch with Brendan when this was all over. They would have a lot to talk about, if Winston was able to get a word in edgewise.

“Winston!” Brendan said again. “You caught up!”

“Have you guys finished?” Winston asked, dreading the answer.

He was relieved when Brendan only shook his head. “I think we’re almost done with this puzzle. I’m looking for a”—he gave Winston a look like a kid caught stealing cookies. “I can’t tell you what I’m looking for, can I?”

“Probably you shouldn’t.”

Brendan rubbed his hands together hard, as if not blurting things out required a real and true effort on his part. “Are you almost there, too?” he asked.

“We just got here a few minutes ago, so it looks like you guys are still pretty far ahead.”

Brendan couldn’t hide his satisfaction. “I thought maybe we weren’t winning anymore,” Brendan said. “We got hung up at the police station. We lost a lot of time there.”

“Oh?” Winston thought of the cheater. Had he struck again? “What happened?”

Brendan said, “We spent forever staring at those signs, and we didn’t think to move closer to examine the prison or the prisoners. So we didn’t see the numbers on those uniforms for a long, long time. Man, were we stuck. Mr. Lester was going crazy.”

Winston nodded in understanding. “My teacher has had some crazy moments today, too.”

As if responding to his cue, Winston heard his name bellowed from across the park. Winston saw Mr. Garvey, back where they were supposed to meet, waving his hands in the universal gesture of
Come on, already!

“I gotta go,” he told Brendan.

“All right. I’ll see you back at the potato chip factory! Good luck!” He was standing less than two feet away, but he waved happily. This was someone having a mighty good time.

When Winston arrived back at the park bench, Mr. Garvey was frowning and tapping his foot impatiently. Mal and Jake had already returned. “Let’s have the report. These people had riddles for you, right?”

“Yeah,” said Winston. “Although nothing I could answer.”

“Me neither,” Mal said. “I kept waiting for ‘Why did the man throw the clock out the window?’ but it never came up.”

Jake said, “I think I know what’s going on, though.”

“Me, too,” Winston said.

“It’s clear what’s going on,” Mr. Garvey said curtly. His state of agitation was on the rise again. “The answers to the riddles are on the backs of these shirts. We need to collect all the riddles and write down all these pictures. Then we can sit quietly and match them up. That’s the cleanest, most straightforward way of attacking this problem.” He withdrew his memo pad and a pen. “Okay, give me the riddles you’ve heard so far.”

Winston recited the two riddles he had heard.

“Only two?” Mr. Garvey said.

“That’s all I had time for before you called me back.”

Mr. Garvey grunted and turned to Mal. “All right, go ahead.”

Mal recited three riddles in his most serious tone. He saw that Mr. Garvey was in no mood for fooling around.

“Jake?”

“Uh . . . I can only remember two,” Jake said. He recited his two riddles.

Mr. Garvey said, “We need them all, Jake. What were the others?”

Jake looked off in the distance as if hoping the riddles had been written on the side of the town hall. He tapped his forehead, looking frustrated.

Mr. Garvey sighed. “Too many knocks in the head playing football, I’d imagine,” he said.

Jake was offended. “I don’t play football. I play baseball.”

Mr. Garvey rolled his eyes as if the distinction between various sports was so small that it was hardly worth arguing about. “Baseball, football. It doesn’t matter.” He tapped his memo pad with his pen. “This is unacceptable. We need the rest of those riddles, and we need them now. We’re
close
, gentlemen. We’re close! Winston, I saw you talking to that young man again. What did he say about their progress?”

“He said they were almost done with this puzzle.”

Mr. Garvey looked like he’d bitten into a lemon. He tore pages out of his memo pad and handed them to the three boys. “Okay. We’re separating again. Go back to the same area you covered before.
Run
and write down every riddle these people have to say. Don’t worry about answering them. Don’t even
think.
Just write down the riddles. And write down what each person has on their back. Write it all down and get back here
fast.
Do you hear me? Fast!” He looked at them, trying to drill his intensity into them with his stare. Winston, for one, got the message. “Do you each have a pen?” They all did. “Then go!”

It took a while, and toward the end, Winston could feel Mr. Garvey’s agitation like radio waves from across the green. But the college kids in the colored T-shirts kept walking around, and it was hard to keep track of which ones he had spoken to and which ones he had not. He went up to the same bland-faced, sandy-haired kid three times in ten minutes.

Mr. Garvey was again the first back at the park bench they were using as a home base. When Winston returned, he was slumped over, frowning deeply and looking at the mini computer. “West Meadow has solved this,” Mr. Garvey said. “That’s your friend, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Brendan Root’s team.”

“They’re almost done. All they need now is the sixth answer.” Mr. Garvey looked up. He looked like he had aged ten years since this morning. “We’re running out of time,” he said. “We could have won this whole thing if hadn’t been for the cheater. We caught up, but it wasn’t enough.” He shook his head, too tired to be angry.

Mal and Jake got back within thirty seconds of each other. “Did you get all the riddles?” Mr. Garvey asked. “And all the pictures on the back of their shirts?”

“I think so,” Mal said.

“Let’s see.”

They sat together on the bench and compared notes. Winston could see that Jake was still sore about Mr. Garvey’s sports comment—their teacher had practically called him a dumb jock. But he was willing to put aside his disgust for the sake of the team. He wondered if Mr. Garvey noticed that.

They matched up all the answers, with only the occasional stumble. (“Does a sponge grow shorter the longer it stands?” Mal asked.) After they had solved all the riddles, there were high fives all around . . . until they realized that they still needed to turn all these answers into something they could type into the mini computer.

“All right,” said Mr. Garvey, a distant expression on his face. “We have eighteen answers. They’re all of various lengths. Do they begin with different letters?” He looked at the scribbles in his notebook. “No. We have to turn these into an answer word. Do the answers have anything in common? I want to hear some ideas! Let’s go, don’t make me do this by myself.”

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?”