Free The Potato Chip Puzzles: The Puzzling World of Winston Breen by Eric Berlin Page B

have been embarrassed at his teacher’s actions, but he wasn’t about to walk away from a day of puzzles. Neither were his friends. Jake looked up at the floating words. They were shimmering and golden. “I understand bull and ram and fish,” said Jake, “but what is a water carrier? What’s that supposed to be?”
    “These are all constellations,” Winston said. “Symbols of the zodiac. Water carrier is . . . um.”
    “Aquarius,” said Mal. “That’s what I am.”
    “Right,” said Mr. Garvey. “The bull is Taurus, the ram is Aries, the fish is Pisces, the scales is Libra, and the goat is Capricorn. They’re all constellations.”
    Winston gazed up at the floating words. The missing letters didn’t spell anything—at least not anything important. Those letters had to be missing for a reason, though.
    All at once he saw it. It was almost as if some unseen force had whispered the answer into his ear. “I need a pencil and paper,” he said urgently. “And I need to see.”
    Mr. Garvey said, “You have it?”
    “I might. I need to see. It’s too dark in here.” He marched toward the exit without even making sure the others were behind him.
    When they got back out to the main exhibit hall, Winston grabbed a pencil and a scrap of paper and wrote hastily:
    AQUARIUS
    TAURUS
    ARIES
    PISCES
    LIBRA
    CAPRICORN
    “Okay,” said Mal. “Those are the signs of the zodiac.”
    Winston nodded. “And that’s the key to the whole thing.”
     
     
    (Continue reading to see the answer to this puzzle.)

CHAPTER SIX
     
    WINSTON EXPLAINED THE ANSWER to his friends: One of the phrases floating up there on the theater ceiling had been WATER CARRIER. The sign of the water carrier is AQUARIUS. WATER CARRIER was missing its second letter; if you took the second letter out of the word AQUARIUS, that gave you the letter Q.
    You had to do that for each word. BULL was missing its third letter, so Winston took the third letter—U—from the word TAURUS. And so on, until Winston had spelled the word QUASAR.

    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