The Square Root of Murder (34 page)

I felt a little better.

 

 

I checked my email before going to bed. I read one from Rachel with the subject, “Confession.”

“In police custody,” it read. “Kidding. But I’m happy to be assigned to community service all next semester.”

I smiled as I opened similar messages from Pam, Liz, and Casey, with the same general sentiment.

The community would be well served next semester.

 

 

By the end of the week, the heat wave had finally ended and cool breezes blew through the campus and the town of Henley. The weather was even better on Cape Cod when Bruce and I finally checked in to a cottage at a beach in Hyannis for a long weekend.

Bruce eventually stopped beating himself up for being miles away while I was being held hostage. Reminding him that he was exactly where I’d sent him that evening—looking for samples of Gil’s handwriting—and that he had sent the Henley PD to the shop, helped a little.

“A lot of good I was, camping out to protect you.”

“You could sign up for more shifts,” I said.

 

 

By Monday I was back in my office, filing some and tossing other material from the summer program. One thing I passed through the cross shredder was the difficult puzzle Gil had solved and returned to me. I wanted no reminders of the deadly weekend.

All my students had turned in their papers early. I guessed they were as eager as I was to put the summer session behind us.

Courtney called right before lunch. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”

“I took a few days off.”

“I know what it was.”

“You know what what was?”

“You know, the urgent matter you had to talk over with the dean the other night.”

I’d nearly forgotten and now I started. “You know?” Had the dean told Courtney about her son? That surprised me. Who else knew?

“Yeah, she came in the next day with the agenda for the faculty meeting. I’m not supposed to tell anyone. Big LOL here, ’cause I know you know you got your promotion. Full Professor. I’m so excited for you.”

In what corner of the world, academic or business, were administrative assistants not the first to know the latest news?

“Oh, that,” I said, containing my own excitement.

“So, of course that’s what your meeting was about the other night,” Courtney said, triumphant.

“Of course.”

“Awesome!” she said.

I had to agree.

Sophie Knowles doesn’t expect that everyone will be able to unwind with arithmetic, but she feels that doing puzzles and mental arithmetic keeps you sharp, and improves your memory and your powers of observation. Here are some samples of puzzles and games that exercise your wits.

Browse in your bookstore and library, and online for more brainteasers and have some fun!

 

 

 

1.
Why is 6 afraid of 7?

 

ANSWER: Because 7 8 9.

 

2.
Try solving this classic riddle.

ANSWER: Only 1, the narrator. There’s no indication that the others were going to St. Ives.

Another interpretation, that all were going to St. Ives, requires a considerable amount of arithmetic:

 

 

There are several shortcuts for this case. Here’s a two-step device for multiplying a 2-digit number by 11 without using paper.

 

1. Take the number (we’ll use 52) and imagine a space between the two digits:

2. Now add the two numbers together and put the sum in the middle:

That’s it!

If the numbers in the middle add up to a 2-digit number, just “carry 1 over”—that is, insert the second number in the middle, and add 1 to the number on the left. For example, for 99 x 11, the steps are:

Another way to multiply by 11 is to multiply the number by 10, then add the original number:

 

The doublet, attributed to Lewis Carroll, involves transforming one word into another by changing only one letter, with each intervening change being a word.

 

 

ANSWER: (the letter in bold is the letter changed on the way to the final word):