Ficlets

Eric Berlin:

So I was having dinner with a bunch of friends who, like me, adore puzzles. Crosswords, cryptics, anagrams, visual puzzles, mechanical puzzles… if it’s something that needs to be solved, these people are going to want to solve it. At this particular dinner, conversation turned to the seminal moments in our lives – the moments when we realized we were budding puzzle-lovers. Everyone at that table – and it was a big table – remembered exactly where they were the first time they encountered Games magazine, far and away the best American magazine for puzzles through the 80s and early 90s. (I was eleven years old; we were picking up my father at an airport. I saw it on a magazine stand and fell madly in love. Devoured every issue and then went to work for them as a freelancer after I graduated college.)

Everybody at that table had also read a book called The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. Everybody, that is, but me. I had never heard of it. I bought it the next day.

The Westing Game is considered a classic of childrens’ literature. It won the Newbury award in 1979, and remains in print to this day. And I liked it… but because it had been recommended to me by a small phalanx of puzzle lovers, I think I was expecting something different. Ellen Raskin’s characters are all trying like mad to solve a large, confusing puzzle, yes, but the book itself is not as puzzle-oriented as I had imagined.

I started The Puzzling World of Winston Breen soon after that. The buzzing fly of the Big Idea had entered my brain and refused to leave. I was going to write the book that I, as a fourth-grader, would have gone cuckoo crazy to see on the shelf. Before I started, I knew only a few things: The book would feature a 12-year-old puzzle-obsessive. He would be thrown into a treasure hunt of some kind… and the reader, if he wished, could help find that treasure. There would be puzzles in every chapter – some relating to the treasure hunt, but others thrown in for the sheer joy of it. But the story would have to work as a straight-ahead mystery, too. The reader shouldn’t have to solve anything unless he wanted to.

It was important to me that the puzzles be seamlessly integrated into the story – it wouldn’t do to have them shoehorned in whether they made sense or not. (“Winston stopped running after the bad guy in order to solve a word search.”) And I really wanted to capture the joy and agony of what it’s like to be a puzzle person – the frustration of getting stuck, the inability to think one’s way out of a corner… and the great big AHA! that makes it all worthwhile.

This was a lot to ask of a first novel, even a relatively short one intended for young readers, and I started from scratch several times. I was surprised to learn that I, the author, was wrong about who the bad guy was going to be. I wanted it to be one particular character; the book itself had other ideas. I learned that plotting a solid mystery is a challenging juggling act – I found myself constantly rewriting, not only to phrase things more clearly, but to tweak the timeline, and the characters’ intentions, and the slow and hopefully subtle revelation of important clues. Perhaps it is overstating the obvious to say that constructing a mystery is a lot like solving a puzzle. In any event, even during the frustrating moments, I enjoyed myself tremendously while writing Winston Breen.

Since the publication of the book a few weeks ago, I’ve met a lot of kids. Some couldn’t care less about my book – fair enough; the sports stories are right over there, please go enjoy them. Another group is mildly enthusiastic about reading a good mystery, and when their parents buy the book, they accept it with thanks. And so far there have been perhaps a half-dozen kids – at bookstore signings or at school visits – who are clearly the bulls-eye of my intended audience. You can tell who they are, because their eyes begin to glow. Wait… this is a mystery with PUZZLES ALL THROUGH IT? Perhaps all authors know when the right kid has connected with their book. I hope so; it’s a great feeling. One child said to his mother in a calm, there-is-no-point-arguing tone, “You have to buy this for me.” And she did. I wrote Winston for the next generation of puzzle people; I am thrilled that at least a few of them have started to find it.

Visit Eric Berlin’s Web site, and visit the Winston Breen Web site, which include a puzzle blog.