The Puzzler's Mansion by Eric Berlin

Author:Eric Berlin [Berlin, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101591475
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2012-05-10T04:00:00+00:00

Passing through the smaller living room on his way to find Jake and Mal, Winston spied a cabinet filled with board games. Now we were talking. Winston looked through them and selected an interesting one he’d never seen before. He didn’t think Richard would mind.

He finally found Jake and Mal in the library—they were in there looking for him. They were okay with playing a game, so they spread out at one of the tables and tried to figure out the rules, which unfortunately went on for many pages.

“Holy smokes,” said Mal after five minutes of reading. “Don’t they have Chutes and Ladders or something? I know how to play that game.”

They didn’t give up, exactly, but Winston started telling his friends about the conversation he’d had with Larry Rossdale, and pretty soon the board game seemed not very important.

Jake was skeptical. “She’s like the meanest schoolteacher ever, but I can’t believe she’d steal from her boss.”

“She’s not stealing from her boss,” said Mal. “She’s stealing from everybody else. She knew Richard was going to give away that program, so she got to it first. Makes perfect sense to me.”

“Larry’s right, though—there’s no way to prove it,” Winston said. “Unless we want to break into the guesthouse and find all the stolen stuff.”

Jake laughed mirthlessly. “Too bad I forgot my ninja costume.”

They discussed it a bit more, trying to come up with some clever way of asking Norma a question so that she revealed herself as the thief. They didn’t get very far on this. Through it all, Winston slid letter tiles this way and that along the tabletop.

“Okay,” said Mal. “Boredom setting in. Make us a puzzle.” Winston didn’t need to be asked twice.

The two halves of each grid can be pushed together in two different ways—horizontally or vertically. Pushing them together horizontally creates a set of short words. A vertical push creates a set of longer words. In the smaller example seen here, a horizontal push creates HOP, COW, FLY, and ARM. A vertical push creates the words CHOP, FLOW, and ARMY.

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