Super Puzzletastic Mysteries

by Chris Grabenstein

  “New rule,” he announced, shouting over the raised voices. “New rule!”

  “Good grief, what now?” Kip demanded. “This game had too many rules from the beginning, and I’d just as soon get on with whatever suffering I’ve got coming my way.”

  “Just listen.” Milo cleared his throat. “I hereby declare that, if a spy is discovered on any given team, he may be turned into a double agent by capturing his contraband back.” He pointed at Kip. “You haven’t told us where the jars are: don’t. If we can figure it out and steal them from you, we win you back over to our team, and you help us steal back the jars the secret team took.” He looked at the others. “Agreed?”

  “What if we don’t want him back?” Josh mumbled.

  “One moment.” Rayhan motioned to him, Toby, and Phero, and the four of them ducked into a huddle by the fireplace. There a moment’s hushed discussion followed this. Then, “Fine,” Rayhan announced. “We accept. Kip?”

  “I also accept,” said the disgraced Senior Dapperling.

  “Do I get a vote?” Meddy asked. “Because I vote yes, as long as I can still untie his shoes for an hour.”

  Everyone looked to Milo. “This is acceptable,” he said. He took a deep breath. “The specimen jars are in—”

  For the solution to this story, please turn here.

  Codename: Mom

  by Laura Brennan

  Most people think spies are cool. And they are. James Bond (a fictional spy), Mata Hari (who may have been a double agent), and James Armistead Lafayette (one of the first Revolutionary War spies).

  But it’s a little less cool when your mom is a spy.

  I mean, it’s so weird. There she is, packing lunches and changing your sister’s diaper, and in between she’s catching bad guys and saving the free world. Or at least, that’s what I imagine she’s doing. In front of me, she only ever graded papers and put together symposiums. She tells people that she’s the Chair of the Math Department at the private university where we live. And she is. But I know that’s just her cover job.

  “It’s brilliant,” I told her one night. She was helping me with my homework while Dad put my sister, Rosa, to bed.

  “Math?” Mom smiled at me. “Well, I’ve always loved it . . .”

  I rolled my eyes. “Not math! Your cover story. Not only does being a professor explain your trips all over the world—”

  “Mathematics is a universal language,” she said for the hundredth time.

  “—it also bores people to death! I mean, you just have to mention that you do math for a living and everyone changes the subject. It’s a perfect way to keep them from snooping. You’re a genius.”

  “Thanks. I think. Next question: what is five to the third power?”

  “How did you become a spy?” I asked. Mom sighed and gave me her I’m-almost-losing-my-patience face.

  “One hundred twenty-five,” I said, answering the math question. “It’s five times five, which is twenty-five, times five. Now will you tell me?”

  “Honey,” she said. “I’m not a spy.”

  “Let’s look at the facts.” I ticked the reasons off on my fingers. “One, you’re always flying off to ‘conferences.’” I went big with the air quotes to show how little I believed that. “Two, people call you in the middle of the night from places like Beijing and Paris. And three, you always keep your papers locked in your briefcase. What else could you be except a spy?”

  For a second, I thought she’d crack. But spies are made of tougher stuff. Instead, Mom picked up a pencil and made a mark in the margin of my homework. “What is that?” she asked.

  This was not rocket science. “It’s a line,” I answered.

  She put the number three after it. “Now what is it?” she asked.

  I had no idea where this was going, but I answered anyway. “It’s a minus sign. Minus three.”

  She nodded and erased the three. Instead of the number, this time she wrote the letter a next to the minus sign. “What about now?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Still minus, I guess.”

  Mom shook her head. “Not quite. With the variable a instead of a number, that short pencil line would be read as ‘the opposite of a,’ not ‘minus a.’ It’s the same line each time, I haven’t changed it, but it’s a different thing depending on the context.”

  I grumped and sank back into my chair.

  “Blake,” she continued, “I travel because I’m on too many committees, the phone rings at night because some of my colleagues have trouble remembering time zones, and I keep my papers locked up because once Rosa started walking, nothing in this house was safe anymore.” She erased the line. “But thanks for giving my overscheduled life a glamorous context for a change.”

  And that was it. I finished my homework, Dad came in and broke out the ice cream, and there was no more mention of spies.

  Not then, anyway.

  But I kept my eyes open. I took note of anything unusual that happened and copied it down in my notebook. I practiced shadowing people around campus and discovered how much more often college kids head to the coffee shop vs. the library.

  “Spycraft is science in action,” Dad told me. He had taken time off from teaching when Rosa was born. I think he was more excited than I was at the excuse to break out his old chemistry set. Dad helped me make invisible ink with lemon juice and listen through walls with drinking glasses. Even Mom eventually got into the spirit of things. She started writing me lunch notes in a substitution code, which meant she’d swap one letter for another. They weren’t too hard to break, but it was fun, even though they never said anything more interesting than “Don’t forget to eat your apple slices.”

  It was a month later, and Mom was dropping me off at school. I usually walked, but all that week, Mom had come up with reasons to drive me in and pick me up. I sat in the back, listening to the car radio and thinking about hanging out with my friends after class. All of a sudden, Mom turned the volume down and gestured toward the rearview mirror.

  “Without turning around,” she said, “can you see the car behind us?”

  I craned my neck to see in the rearview mirror. It was just a black Toyota behind us, nothing special. “I see it,” I said.

  “Did you look at the license plate?”

  I jockeyed around a bit until I could see the plate. It was reflected in the mirror, but not hard to figure out. “11SUS17,” I read.

  “That mean anything to you?” she asked.

  I thought for a minute. If it meant something to Mom, then it probably had to do with math. The numbers were 11 and 17, or three ones and a seven. I thought about what they had in common. Then I smiled.

  “They’re all prime numbers,” I said.

  “Good job,” Mom answered. “So with that license plate, I’d say that guy is a ‘prime suspect.’”

  I looked again. Prime plus SUS. That was pretty funny.

  “I hope he’s not a bank robber,” I said. “That would be tough luck, having that license plate.”

  “Tough on him,” she said as she pulled up to the drop-off spot. “Lucky for the police.”

  I scrambled out of the car and reached into the front seat for my backpack.

  “Don’t forget your lunchbox,” Mom said.

  She handed it to me and waved. I waved back. I noticed the Prime Suspect car was still behind her as she turned the corner. Then I got swept up by the rest of the kids going through the school gates and forgot all about the car. Until lunchtime.

  I was sitting with my friends Luisa and Dwayne when I unzipped my lunch bag. There, tucked next to the leftover chicken potpie, was my mom’s cell phone.

  “That’s weird,” I said. “How’d my mom’s phone get in my lunch?”

  “Are you sure it’s hers?” asked Luisa.

  “It’s got her phone case,” I said, looking at the bright yellow case covered in math equations. I hit the On button and the screen lit up. There was the picture of me, Mom, and Dad at the school fair las
t year. We had all entered the pie-eating contest and our faces were covered with blueberry gunk and pie crust crumbs. We looked super-dorky, but we all had these massive grins. I guess that’s why Mom liked the picture enough to use it as her phone screen.

  I hit the button again and the prompt came up to unlock the phone. Six numbers or letters. I didn’t know her password.

  “Maybe it fell out of your mom’s pocket,” Dwayne said.

  “And into my closed lunchbox? Which then zipped itself up again after the phone fell in?” I asked. “Mom must’ve put it there on purpose.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I didn’t have enough data. As lunch ended, I slipped Mom’s phone into my pocket and tried to concentrate on class. But all I could think of were possible passwords.

  I expected to see Mom’s car waiting out front when school let out, but it wasn’t there. Either she didn’t need her phone that bad or for some reason she couldn’t come get it. I decided to skip hanging out with my friends after all. As I walked home, I thought about her password and things that came in sixes. Birthdays were six numbers if you only used the last two numbers for the year, but Mom was nothing if not fair. I didn’t think she’d use my birthday but not Rosa’s, or use Dad’s instead of either of ours. She wouldn’t want anyone to feel left out. Of course, it might be her own birthday . . .

  I had just decided to try 01/18/82 when I turned the last corner and saw the car pull up to our house. A black Toyota, 11SUS17. I ducked behind a tree. A man got out and went up to our door. In that moment, I realized Mom had pointed that car out to me for a reason. She must’ve known the man was following her. She had slipped her phone into my lunchbox to make sure he didn’t get it. All of a sudden, the fun of playing at being a spy was replaced with the responsibility of actually needing to think like one. Mom had trusted me with her phone; I had to keep it safe.

  As the man rang our doorbell, I pulled out my own phone and took off the case. I put Mom’s math equations case on my phone and slipped it into my backpack. My jacket had an inside, zippered pocket, so I put Mom’s phone there for safekeeping. Then I took a deep breath, grabbed my backpack, and headed down the sidewalk.

  Dad stood in the doorway holding Rosa. He looked completely relaxed as the Prime Suspect man stood there smiling and talking, but I could tell he was blocking the door on purpose to keep the man from going inside.

  “Hi, Dad!” I said, moving up the steps to the house.

  “Hey, Blake,” Dad answered. “This gentleman says Mom sent him to get her phone from you. She thinks it fell into your backpack by mistake. Do you know anything about that?”

  I tried to look surprised. “Huh, let me look.” I unzipped my backpack and pretended to rummage. “Oh, yeah, here it is.”

  I pulled out my phone, wrapped in Mom’s bright yellow case. I could feel Prime Suspect tense at the sight of it. “Here you go,” I said. The man reached for it.

  “Hold up,” Dad said. “What’s the magic word?”

  The guy smiled. If he was a spy, he was pretty lousy at it; he oozed fake charm. “Please?” he asked. Dad narrowed his eyes and pulled out his own phone.

  Just then, Mrs. Gupta rounded the corner, walking her German shepherd. “Hi, Mrs. Gupta!” I called.

  She looked up and waved as she always does. I waved back and managed to “accidentally” drop the phone in the grass. Prime Suspect was on it in a flash.

  “Thanks!” he said.

  “Wait!” Dad tried to make a grab for him, but he was still holding Rosa. The guy ran to his car and took off. Dad managed to snap a few photos before the guy roared down the street and vanished.

  “It’s okay, Dad,” I said. “I have his license plate number.”

  “But he has your mom’s phone.” Dad looked really upset.

  “No, he doesn’t,” I told him. “I switched phone covers. He has my phone.”

  The one thing about Dad is, he never asks dopey questions. He didn’t want to know why I did it, or when, or how. The only question he had was the important one.

  “How long until he figures it out?” Dad asked.

  “Twenty minutes,” I answered. “Maybe twenty-five.”

  “Get in the car,” Dad said.

  I did. Dad buckled Rosa into her car seat. Within ninety seconds, we were pulling out of the driveway.

  I thought we’d be heading for the police station or at least Campus Security to report Mom missing, but instead we went to our favorite diner. Dad parked around back so the car couldn’t be seen from the street.

  “Take Rosa inside and get us a booth. I have to make a quick call.”

  “The CIA?” I asked. Dad smiled.

  “No, kiddo,” he answered. “Just a friend who can help us. What was that license plate?”

  I told him, and then I took Rosa inside and picked a booth in the back corner. The waitress came with waters and menus. Rosa loved pie, so I ordered a slice of apple for her and blueberry for me. After a couple of minutes, Dad joined us.

  “Okay,” he said. “My friend is on it. She thinks your mom may have some information on her phone that can help us. Can I see it?”

  I handed him the phone. He turned it on. There was the goofy picture of the three of us at the pie-eating contest. I expected him to smile when he saw it, but he didn’t. I realized he must be really worried. The prompt for the password came up.

  “Do you know how to unlock the phone?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Your mom’s pretty private about her stuff,” he said.

  “Try her birthday,” I suggested. “That’s what I was going to do when I got home.”

  He did. 0-1-1-8-8-2. Nothing.

  “Good idea,” he said. “But I bet Mom picked something a little harder to guess.”

  Suddenly, I remembered what Dad said when the man had reached for the phone. “You asked that man for the magic word,” I reminded him. “It wasn’t ‘please.’ So what is the magic word?”

  “Euclid,” he answered.

  Of course Mom would use the name of the father of geometry to signal that all was well. But Euclid also had six letters. “Try it,” I suggested.

  Dad put it in. No luck.

  “What about our birthdays?” I asked.

  Dad tried them all. He put in mine and Rosa’s and his own, and even Grandma’s and Poppy’s. He tried Mom’s middle name, which had six letters, and the name of her first pet, which I’d never even heard of, but he knew because it was one of the security answers on their bank account. Nothing. Meanwhile, time was ticking away. I didn’t know what Prime Suspect would do when he realized he’d been tricked. I didn’t want to think about it.

  The waitress arrived with our pie. Rosa reached into hers with both hands. Dad was so busy with the phone, he didn’t try to stop her.

  “I don’t think your mom put this in your backpack just to keep it from that man,” Dad said. “I think she gave it to you because she thought you’d know how to open it.”

  “I don’t know if it helps,” I said, “but she didn’t put it in my backpack, she put it in my lunchbox.”

  “Lunchbox is too many letters,” Dad said. “And lunch is too few.”

  “Maybe she wanted to let us know she was using a substitution code,” I said. “Like the notes in my lunchbox.”

  “If so,” said Dad, “we’ll never figure it out. We don’t know what word she’s substituting or the code. It would just be six random letters.”

  As he thought of another combination to try, I watched Rosa eat her apple pie. Somehow, she had already managed to get crumbs in her hair and on her chin, even in her eyebrows. I thought of the picture on Mom’s phone. I remembered how happy we had all been, covered in blueberry pie. For the first time, I was afraid that we would never be that happy again.

  And then all of a sudden, I knew what the password was.

  “Dad!” I almost knocked over my plate as I jumped out of the booth. “I’ve got it! Here are th
e numbers to type in!”

  For the solution to this story, please turn here.

  The Red Envelope

  by Lara Cassidy

  Catherine McCleary nudges a bulging backpack toward Mr. Michael’s classroom with her knee.

  Her bright blue eyes dart between the math book nestled in the crook of her left arm and the history timeline clenched in her right fist. She conjugates verbs in Latin as she inches down the hall.

  Mr. Michael’s placement exams are deceptively simple: one question, any subject. Answer correctly to join Mr. Michael’s middle school honors class. Answer first to win the Golden Answer Award.

  “Hey, McClever, it’s too late for studying now.” Kevin Lane stands directly in front of Mr. Michael’s classroom door. He is a tall boy with short brown hair, the captain of the middle school basketball team. “Just because you get the best grades in class doesn’t mean you’ll win.”

  Catherine drags her eyes away from her math book. “Challenge accepted,” she whispers to herself.

  Nine students soon gather outside Mr. Michael’s classroom. A buzz of questions and answers, whispers, and nervous giggles fills the air. Catherine stuffs her math book into her backpack, retightens her low blonde ponytail, and sizes up the competition.

  Two boys join Kevin near the door. Peter Montgomery has curly red hair that stands out in every direction. Tony Boyle is a head shorter than the other boys, with jet-black hair and large brown eyes.

  Janie Garcia, a petite girl with auburn hair that swings around her face, weaves through the crowd to Catherine. “You can do this,” she says. “Golden Answer all the way.”

  “Not so fast, Garcia.” Kevin overhears her. “I’m kickin’ it into high gear. Pullin’ away from McClever for the victory lap. Especially if the question involves sports. Carrots here”—he arcs his thumb toward the redhead, Peter—“knows grammar backward and forward. If the question is about science, it’ll be Tony Boy for the win.”