The Gollywhopper Games (16 page)

“Kack-kack-kack.”

The Octagon Map logo remained at the top, but the bottom half came back with
WHO
?

“Kack-kack-kack.”

Rocky ignored the cough again and typed
SANTA
at the prompt.

“Hey, Gil,” whispered Bianca. “How’s anyone supposed to know this?”

Buzz!

No trumpets, no light show, no fireworks. The monitor flashed
SORRY
.
TRY AGAIN
!

Apparently no one was supposed to know this.

But Gil knew he could still figure out the real answer first. At least he had to try.

He still had
Tadpole
on his paper.

Next:
Cut my second part short in this game.

The second part had to be the middle name, the name Gil was never excited about, the name written in every annual report. “Thaddeus Gilbert Golliwop.”

Gil did what he had done his whole life. He got rid of the Bert and was left with Gil. And tadpoles had gills. This was working.

Now discount the two…

Rocky had shortened it. But discount meant something else. Like ignore. Like when the judge said, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, please discount the testimony you just heard.”

Discount. Make them not count. He drew a box around the two words as if to set them aside, ready to use if he needed them for clues.

What came next?
And mix up the name that remains.

One name remained: Golliwop. Just one step more. Mix it up and find a real word.

Gil loved anagrams, he was good at anagrams, but his father was better. He wrote
GOLLIWOP
in the space below the discounted words.

TADPOLE

GIL(LS)

GOLLIWOP

It was so simple, so simple…if all the letters were there. He wrote down
P
, then crossed the
P
out of
Golliwop
to make sure he didn’t use the same letter twice. Then he wrote the
O
and
L
and crossed them out. The other
L
. The
I
.
W
. Another
O
. And the
G
.

Bingo! Tadpole. Gills. Polliwog.

Gil looked down. There. It’s there, Lavinia. The screen with the frog. C’mon, Lavinia. It’s
polliwog
. The answer’s
polliwog
. Go. Type in—

“Ladies and gentlemen! Ladies and gentlemen!” A voice boomed over the speaker system. “We’re having major technical difficulties. Please hold tight. We’ll be back in a minute.”

The monitors in the viewing area went blank. So did the computer screens down below.

Carol hustled to Rocky’s room; Bill to Lavinia’s. Then Carol and Bill whisked both players out of sight. Fast.

M
oments later, Bill whipped through the door, alone, and motioned Gil, Bianca, and Thorn to come closer. “Let me tell you what’s going on,” he said. “There was an irregularity in this puzzle.”

“Like Rocky’s answer?” asked Bianca. “That was so bizarre.”

“I’m not sure of the specifics,” Bill said, but if eyes could speak, his agreed with Bianca. “Anyway, we have backup plans. Carol is on her way with the official announcement and with your other two team-mates. Sit tight, and we’ll let you know what’s going on as soon as we can.”

Gil tried to imagine what that meant. Maybe a
computer glitch like at the stadium? Maybe Lavinia and Rocky had received different versions of the puzzle? Maybe before the maze…

The lounge door opened. Carol let Lavinia and Rocky into the room. “We need a few more minutes,” she said, and she ducked back out.

Bianca marched up to Rocky. “What was that weirdness? Even I knew it didn’t make sense.”

Rocky looked at her like she was nuts. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You do, too,” said Gil. “Santa. North Pole.”

“I guess you don’t own Octagon Map. Great video game.”

“No, I don’t own Octagon Map.”

“Well,” Rocky said, keeping his stare level, “you have to pick a starting point, and the demo mode starts at the North Pole.”

“Does not,” said Thorn, coming around. “It starts in Quito, Ecuador, on the equator.”

“Maybe I have a different version.”

“There is no different version.”

If Gil wasn’t going to get answers, he didn’t need to hear their verbal volleyball. He went over to Lavinia,
who was hunched in a spectator seat, still as a statue. “You okay?”

Her fingers gripped the railing. “I don’t know what happened. That last puzzle was hard, but I was so close when they stopped us.” She looked up at Gil. “Do you think I have another chance?”

“Who knows?” Gil sat next to her and stared down at the computer rooms, which were now revolving out of sight, leaving a bare warehouse floor. He drummed on the railing, tapped his toes. Tried to keep any ray of hope from creeping into his veins. Tried to stop—

“Good news, green team.” Carol dashed in.

Dreaming of a second chance?

“You’re all going back down. One puzzle. Our first emergency tiebreaker. Winner-take-all. Maybe a bonus for some. That’s all I can say. Follow me.” Carol started walking.

“That’s all you can say?” said Bianca, echoing Gil’s thoughts.

Carol stopped and turned around. “Sorry. That is absolutely all I can say. Except, if you want, you may choose not to play.” She walked out the door with
the five of them following her.

Bill fell into step, but then he put an arm around Rocky. “This way, pal.” They peeled off, down a different hallway.

“Where am I going?” said Rocky. “What’d I do? What’d Gil tell you? I wasn’t listening to my dad just now. Honest. I was…” His voice trailed off.

“Where is he going?” asked Bianca.

“Rocky won’t be joining you,” said Carol.

Gil just smiled.

“Why?” Bianca said.

No reaction from Carol.

“Carol,” she said. “You have to tell us something.”

Carol stopped again. “I can tell you to get your minds back into the Games. That’s my last word until I give you instructions.”

Except for their footsteps, it was silent. Gil thought he could hear the blood rush through his ears. That should have made him feel alive, but the sensation made his heart beat faster. He couldn’t let himself get too excited or his palms would sweat even more. He dried his hands on his jeans. If he would’ve done that before the maze…
Would
.
Could. Should.
Those words
never changed results. Only he could change results.

Carol led them back into the contestants’ lounge, back to the blue recliners. She looked at a sheet of paper, then lowered it to her side. “I know this must seem very strange,” she said. “This afternoon has been no skip in the park for us, either.” Then Carol read from the sheet, “‘But it appears there may have been a bit of impropriety surrounding the last few rounds.’”

“What’s impropriety?” asked Bianca.

“Impropriety,” said Carol. “Something not proper.”

“You mean fishy?” Bianca said. “Like North Pole and Santa Claus?”

“I need to read this from the sheet. That’s all they’ll allow me to do. Okay?”

Bianca nodded.

Carol looked back at the paper. “‘In a few minutes, the four of you will be led to your doors. When the chimes sound, follow the instructions provided to you. That’s all.’”

“That’s all?”

Carol smiled, tight-lipped. “Let’s go.”

They stopped in the hall with the four polka-dot doors they’d used for Uncle Eb.

Gil focused on the gold doorknob, how it reflected the gleam of the lights above. How—

Blong!

Gil grasped the knob. Stormed in. White walls. Brown desk. Computer. Black chair. With one movement, he pushed the mouse and sat. The screen popped to life.

Gil scrolled to a list of fifty Golly toys and games. They’d be no help now.

Puzzle A

Patric Gordo said give, Peter one card

Did that mean: “Patric,” Gordo said. “Give Peter one card” or was Patric Gordo the first guy’s name? And where were the quotation marks, and why was there a comma between—

Wait. The Salem Witch Game. It reeked of the Salem Witch puzzle and its misplaced comma. Answer, two words, split at the comma. First initials. PGSGPOC. That didn’t work. Still, this was so much like Salem Witch with its capitalized…Wait. The first initials weren’t capitalized here.

This puzzle had a new key. Okay. Analyze. First word, first. Patrick without the
K
. Then Gordon without the
N
. Why would they turn common names into weird names and leave out the last letters?
Last letters in each word.

Gil pulled out a pencil and pad of paper from the drawer and wrote the last letters in each word: C O D E, R E D. Bingo!

He scrolled up to the list and double-clicked number 15, Code Red.

The computer highlighted it in blue, but didn’t do anything else to show if he was right or wrong. Didn’t matter. He was right.

Go. Scroll.

Puzzle B

His recipe called for a carrot,
codfish, and cheese.

Which puzzle was this? What was the second team puzzle? First was Salem Witch and the piñatas. Then another puzzle and stunt. Palm trees? No. Something before. Island was with the palm trees. That huge doll was fourth. Hot-air balloons, fifth.

Gil jotted those down while he remembered them. But what was puzzle two? Think. First Thorn got that goo on his shirt and complained. Then he…he…he couldn’t bowl. Bowling!

Find the product spelled inside the sentence. Not between the first two words. Not the second and third. Not, not, not.

Maybe this was a backward version, too. He started at the end of the sentence. Nothing between the last two words. Not the second and third to last. Not the…

Yes! Backward between the carrot/codfish combo. Doctor.

Gil scrolled to the list. All right. Doctor, Doctor. Number 16.

He clicked it.

Next.

Puzzle C

Of brains and muscle,
spirit and integrity—

Gollywhopper Games

18, 4, 30, 23, 52, 13, 26, 40, 47, 22, 9, 2

No problem. Gil knew what to do. He counted the letters of the haiku until he reached eighteen and wrote
S
. Now the fourth letter.
R
? That couldn’t be right. No word begins
SR
….

Okay. Switch it around. Eighteenth from the end of the haiku, the
Y
in
integrity
. And the fourth letter from the end was
A
. And the thirtieth?
T
.

Gil looked at the list. No Golly toy or game started
with those letters. How else could he turn this around? How else? How else? Maybe the numbers were in reverse order.

Gil started at the end of the number chain. Two.
F
. Nine.
A
. Okay. Twenty-two.
I
. Forty-seven.
R
. This seemed to be working, but so many numbers to go. So much counting. Back to the list. Only two choices started with
F
. Only one had twelve letters.
Fairydusters
. He clicked number 19.

Puzzle D

Call
NEVENS.

The Wonder Tiny Dolls clone. But not. No numbers. Just letters.

Gil looked around the room. No phone. No problem. He’d recreate the phone’s numbers and corresponding letters on paper.

No, no, no.
One
in Wonder Tiny Dolls. That was the trick. One doesn’t have any corresponding letters. Neither does the zero. Eight numbers, twenty-six letters. Three letters each. Two left over.

The old trivia question. What two letters don’t appear on older phones? Q and Z. But they weren’t asking that. He wrote down the list:

Now, call who? NEVENS. He translated the name into numbers. 638367. Numbers don’t spell, like Rocky said earlier. So how should he turn this puzzle around?

He wrote down the letters that corresponded to NEVENS’ numbers:

Which Golly products started with
M
,
N
, or
O
? He scrolled to see his choices. He had eight of them. Three with six letters in the first word of their names: Melody Magic, Meteor Strike, Olivia the Octopus.

Gil glanced at the numbers and letters. One obvious choice. He checked it number by number to make sure.