Free The Puzzler's Mansion by Eric Berlin

plural.”
    â€œBesides that,” said Penrose, “that idea doesn’t seem to work for any other group.”
    â€œWait a minute,” said Winston. He was still thinking of these things as
foods.
But Jake was surely right—the answer would have something to do with the words themselves. Maybe not the number of letters in each one, but
something
along those lines.
    And, boom, he saw what it had to be. His finger traced down each short column, and his idea was confirmed as he went along. “I have it,” he whispered excitedly.
    â€œYou do? Really?” Jake leaned in.
    Winston squinted at his paper. “I have everything but an actual answer,” he said. Then, almost immediately, the rest of the answer slid neatly into place. He stood up breathlessly.
    â€œThe answer is LARGE,” he said to Richard, nearly shouting in his excitement.
    Richard shook his head. “No.”
    â€œNo?” Winston couldn’t believe it. He looked down at his paper. The answer had to be an anagram of those letters. “Then the answer is REGAL,” he said.
    â€œSorry,” said their host.
    â€œUm, Winston . . . ,” said Penrose, patting Winston on the shoulder in an attempt to make him sit down. Winston barely noticed. He was studying his notebook furiously.
    â€œWhere are you getting this from?” Larry asked.
    â€œI don’t get it either,” said Kimberly.
    Incredibly, it was Amanda Deburgh who spoke up next. Winston had dismissed her entirely. She’d been dragged here by her parents—it was clear that she had no interest in Richard Overton’s games. But now she announced, “The answer is ELGAR.”
    â€œExactly so!” Richard clapped his hands together with joy.
    â€œELGAR?” Winston said. “What sort of word is ELGAR?”
    â€œHe’s a composer,” said Amanda. “Everybody knows that.”
    â€œDon’t be rude, Amanda,” said her mother. “Obviously
not
everybody knows that.”
    â€œWhatever. Do I win?”
    â€œYou do indeed!” said Richard. “Well done.”
    â€œWait a minute, wait a minute,” said Chase, standing up. “How did we get from a bunch of breakfast foods to Edward Elgar?” He scanned the table for the signs that had eluded him. Next to him, Zook kept on eating.
    â€œWould you like to explain, Amanda?” Richard asked her.
    Amanda shrugged. “This kid,” she said, nodding her head at Winston, “thought the answer was LARGE or REGAL. I figured if the answer had those letters in it, it might be a famous composer like ELGAR. So I guessed that.”
    Winston turned to Jake, his jaw open in disbelief. She hadn’t solved the puzzle at all! She just rode in on Winston’s back and snatched the answer away! And she called him a
kid
! She couldn’t be more than a year or two older.
    â€œBut how did you get those letters in the first place?” Chase asked. He, anyway, was looking at Winston and not Amanda when he asked this question.
    â€œIn each group, the three foods have something in common,” Winston said. “It turns out, the three foods all share exactly one letter.”He pointed to the oatmeal, cheese, and sausage. “All three of those foods have a letter E. The next group shares an L, and then it’s G, A, and R.”
    â€œSo you solved it,” said Derek, “but you didn’t realize those letters spelled something.”
    Winston nodded, trying not to seem upset about it. “I thought I had to anagram them into a word. That’s why I said LARGE and REGAL.”
    â€œWell!” Gerard beamed around the table, trying to get the attention back over to his daughter. “Good job, Amanda! First puzzle out, and you’ve already won a prize. How about that?”
    â€œCool,” Amanda said. “What’d I win?”
    Richard paused before answering, and Winston thought maybe he