Read The Potato Chip Puzzles: The Puzzling World of Winston Breen for Free Online Page A

be really hard! I hope not. I don’t like getting stuck on a puzzle. But I want them to be a little hard, because I don’t want them to be too easy. You know? I hope they’re just right.”
    Mal finally cut in, waving his hands to get the boy’s attention. “Hey!” he said.
    The boy, startled, turned away from Winston, as if he hadn’t been aware of anyone else sitting there. The boy’s big eyes blinked.
    Mal, not unkindly, said, “Who are you?”
    “Oh. Me? I’m Brendan. Brendan Root. I go to West Meadow. That’s my team over there.” He pointed to two kids, who were playing rock-paper-scissors, and their teacher, who was reading the sports section of the newspaper. “I’m not really friends with them, but they asked me because they know I like puzzles. Not as much as you, ” Brendan said suddenly, as if afraid he had offended Winston. “But I like them. What do you think the puzzles will be like today? Hard, right?”
    “Maybe,” said Winston. He was glad to have gotten a word into this conversation. Maybe in time he could work his way up to longer sentences.
    “I hope they’re not too hard,” Brendan said again. “Want to see a puzzle I made up?”
    “Sure,” said Winston.
    “I made this up myself. Are you ready?”
    “Yes!” Winston had been in Brendan Root’s company for perhaps sixty seconds and was already fully exasperated.
    “Okay, here it is.” He took a crumpled-up piece of paper out of his pocket. “I wrote this down to show people. What do these words have in common?”
    BONY EACH INK LACK LIVE OLD RAY RANGE
    (Answer, page 240.)
     
    After they had solved it, Brendan said, “Did you like it? Isn’t that good?”
    “Pretty good,” Winston agreed.
    “I bet you make up twenty of those a day,” said Brendan.
    “More like seventeen,” Winston said, trying for a joke.
    And the joke was apparently achieved, because Brendan threw his head back and laughed. “Seventeen!” he said. He laughed again for several moments and then said, “I’m glad you’re here. I’m looking forward to beating you at this.”
    Winston blinked. He could almost hear Mal and Jake, on either side of him, also blinking. But Brendan Root just continued smiling.
    “You think you’re going to beat Winston?” said Mal.
    Brendan shrugged. “Sure. I mean, I’m going to try. Right? You don’t mind, do you, Winston?”
    Winston shook his head. “No. No. Try your best.”
    “Nobody here likes puzzles more than you and me,” said Brendan. “So one of our teams is going to win. I think it might be mine.” He was beaming with pride, as if he had won already. He caught himself and tried on a serious expression. “But if you win, that’s okay, too.”
    “Thanks,” Winston said dryly. He was wondering how they were supposed to get rid of this kid when Brendan was called away by his teacher. He waved to them all, smiling gleefully, and walked back to his group. The three boys watched him go with a mixture of amusement and awe.
    “Am I like that?” Winston said in a low voice.
    “No,” said Jake.
    “Not even close,” said Mal.
    “You let other people talk sometimes,” said Jake.
    “Sometimes,” Mal agreed. “It’s been known to happen.” They watched Brendan’s teacher gather his students into a team meeting.
    Jake said, “He’s going to be tough, don’t you think?”
    Winston nodded. Brendan was a little weird. But weird did not mean dumb. Often the opposite, in fact.
    There were enough people in the conference room now that the noise level had risen to a steady, murmuring hum. Winston kept glancing over to the door on the stage, which would surely open at any moment. He had an alarming thought: What if the contest had already started—if the puzzle was right here in front of them and Dmitri Simon was waiting for somebody clever enough to notice it? Winston looked around for anything that might qualify as a clue and saw nothing. There were a number of whiteboards on the wall, but these