The Potato Chip Puzzles

Author: Eric Berlin
Illustrator: Katrina Damkoehler

© Date: 2009
Publisher: Puffin Books
Pages: 227
Chapters: Yes
Illustrations: No, but a few puzzles involve an illustration
Publisher Recommended Age: 8-12
Bonus Activities at End of Book: More puzzles and answers to the puzzles that weren’t given in the text of the story

Summary from Book: When potato chip tycoon Dmitri Simon invites local kids to an all-day puzzle hunt, Winston Breen is psyched. But the day is not all fun and games: not only do they have a highly competitive teacher along, but the puzzles are hard (even for Winston!), the other schools’ teams are no joke, and someone in the contest is playing dirty in order to win the $50,000 grand prize. Trying to stop the mystery cheater before it’s too late takes an already tough challenge to a whole new level…

Page Pig Thoughts: This was a good read about a team of boys that spends the first day of their summer vacation at a puzzle solving contest. The story focuses on friendship and sportsmanship. The action is well paced and keeps you wondering how everything will end. The characters were relatable. Super competitive Mr. Garvey was a good reminder that teachers/adults are people too. Getting swept up in the heat of a competition is easy, so having someone to keep your emotions and attitude in check is a good thing. At the end of the day, being a good person is more important than winning, which is highlighted by the aftermath of the cheater.

Family Unit: Winston lives at home with his sister, Katie, and some sort of parental figures, but his home life was not really much of a discussion

Conflict/Social Issues:

Mr. Garvey is super competitive, which translates to choices that Winston, Jake, and Mal don’t appreciate or approve of. Mr. Garvey even packs snacks in his car so that they never have to stop and can keep going all day.
All of the teams struggle with the aftermath of things that the cheater does to sway the competition.

Positive Items:

All of the kids at the puzzle contest are there on the first day of summer vacation for the joy of solving puzzles. The grand prize is money for their school. Pride about winning is personal, but no other offers of personal prizes are made.
All of the teams wanted to solve the puzzles themselves. None of them wanted an answer from a team that was ahead of them.
Jake plays sports and is big on sportsmanship. He is very vocal about letting Mr. Garvey know when he has made choices that are not great.
Dmitri Simon sees the flaws in his contest organization. He learned from his mistakes and was willing to do what was in his power to set things as straight as he could.
Answers to all of the puzzles are provided. A note is made whether an answer will be given in the text of the story or in the back of the book. Which means you can make note of the puzzles and solve them in your own time, if you choose.

Items of Interest:

Winston is in junior high
Winston is chosen by his principal to represent his school at a puzzle solving contest with a $50,000 grand prize for the school. Winston asks his two best friends, Jake and Mal, to be his teammates.
Mr. Garvey, the advanced math teacher and mathlete team coach, is selected to be the puzzle contest chaperone/coach. He is rather competitive. He is known to make kids on the math team cry and feel bad. He apparently even gives homework on Fridays.
Mr. Garvey pulls Winston out of class to talk about who else should be on the team. Winston says he already asked his friends. Mr. Garvey said that he can break the news to them that they aren’t on the team because the team should have smart kids from his math class so that they can win. Winston says that he won’t be on the team if his friends aren’t on it. Mr. Garvey gives in, so Jake and Mal are on the team.
Before the day of the contest, Winston receives a call at home from someone trying to disguise their voice. The person was asking if Winston is going to be in the puzzle contest.
Mr. Garvey’s nemesis, Mr. Denham, a mathlete coach from a different school is at the puzzle contest. Mr. Denham has won for many years and is not afraid to rub it in Mr. Garvey’s face. They argue/bicker and are generally not nice to each other. Mr. Garvey is constantly looking for a way to gain an edge on Mr. Denham and every other team.
At the first stop of the contest, Winston’s team meets a team of girls that are also struggling to find the first puzzle. They said that they would work together to find the puzzle. When Mr. Garvey figures out where the puzzle is, he has the boys leave the girls behind. They boys were upset with Mr. Garvey for his cheating ways, but they also had a crush on the girls.
The main character team was all boys. A team of girls is in the contest. While the girls clearly solve puzzles on their own to keep going in the contest, the focus is more on the boys helping the girls through issues. And yes, the boys have a crush on the girls. Nothing wrong with a story for boys, just interesting.
When the puzzle contest starts, a cheater goes to work helping a team gain an edge. The cheater puts a bottle full of broken glass under tires of teacher cars to give them flat tires. Signs to find the first puzzle are moved. A girl from one team gets locked in the bathroom. Firecrackers are lit at an amusement park to create a distraction and allow the key to the ride to be stolen, which strands kids on the ride.
Jake chases the cheater through the amusement park and winds up with facial bruises, mostly from the sidewalk when Jake tried to tackled the guy and fell down. Jake was stunned and unable to get up. Mr. Garvey found him, helped him up, and helped collect a bag of stuff that was dropped by the cheater.
The cheater’s stuff included a bottle of broken glass, mousetraps in their packaging, and a memo pad. The memo pad included the name of someone from each team and a license plate number for the team car. Winston’s name was in the memo pad along with Mr. Garvey’s license plate number.
Mr. Garvey takes the memo pad back to a collection of teams at the amusement park in the hopes that he can get some of them to drop out of the competition because the cheater clearly has personal information. Some teams do drop out, and one nearly drops out.
When kids are stranded on the ferris wheel, Winston and one of the girls from the girls team runs to the management office to get the spare key. When the office lady slowly starts ambling back to the ride with them, Winston decides to steal the key to run it back and save time. In the end, the park manager catches him and kicks him and the girl out of the park.
The girls team hadn’t solved the amusement park puzzle before getting kicked out. They don’t want the answer to the puzzle, but Winston gives them his written note of what the puzzle looked like so the girls can keep going in the competition.
The students do not always listen to the teachers, they sometimes have their own ideas and act on them. Sometimes that works out, sometimes not so much.
Mr. Garvey is still bent on winning, and rather short on patience by the time the team gets to the last puzzle. He makes fun of Mal for saying that losing isn’t the end of the world. Mr. Garvey had also insinuated that Jake was a dumb jock. Mr. Garvey was starting to get desperate to win, so he takes a wild guess at the last answer and wants the handheld computer to try his guess. None of the boys think that Garvey has the answer, but Garvey makes a move to snatch the computer. Jake didn’t grip onto the computer in his lap. Garvey is surprise by that. Garvey grabs the computer with enough force that it slips out of his hands and flies into the nearest hard surface and breaks. Denham and his team snicker at him. Garvey is despondent, but then says he is kicking Jake off the team because the computer is his fault.
Winston solves the last puzzle while the others are arguing about the computer.
Winston and his team decide to make an offer to the girls team to split the prize. The girls don’t want the answer to the puzzle, but accept the split prize offer in exchange for a clue to solve the puzzle. While the girls are solving the puzzle, someone else wins.
Turns out that the winning team was being assisted by the cheater since they never had a time lapse from flat tires or anything else. Turns out the adult on the winning team was the vice principal with a gambling issue. He planned to sneak the prize money into his personal account to pay off some gambling debts. The cheater running around was a gambling card buddy.
One of the winning team boys is afraid that everyone will be mad at him because his team cheated. The other kids were not mad at him because the boy didn’t know about the cheating. Dmitri Simon, contest organizer and snack food millionaire, said that his cheating teacher was not fair to him because he played fairly and was just enjoying puzzles.
Mr. Garvey winds up telling Dmitri Simon the truth about the shared prize agreement to relay that another team had actually solved the last puzzle and was worthy of the prize. Winston, Jake, and Mal were not sure what Mr. Garvey was telling Dmitri Simon, but they thought that Mr. Garvey would leave the girls out of the story. Mr. Garvey later admits that while he had been called a bad teacher before for his strict policies and Friday homework, he had never before been called a bad person. Winston, Jake, and Mal had apparently made an impression on Mr. Garvey. Jake was a big vocalist in doing the right thing and not cheating or gaining unfair advantages.
In the end, Dmitri Simon winds up awarding some prize money to each team because they dealt with the cheater and didn’t have a way to call in to the contest organizers to tell them about the problem. The biggest prize goes to Winston and his team, along with the girls team.

Other Books in Series (At Time of Posting):

Book One – The Puzzling World of Winston Breen
Book Three – The Puzzler’s Mansion