A Puzzling Day at Blake Middle School

It was the one-read that students puzzled over this summer.

And why not? After all, the book is called the “Potato Chip Puzzles,” the second in a series by Connecticut author and “life-long puzzler,” Eric Berlin.

“Every year, we pick one book that the entire school reads,” said Library Media teacher, Jon Haycock. “We try to [select books which] appeal to boys and girls in grades six through eight and also [be] something that can tie-in, academically, to all the different subjects.”

“The Potato Chip Puzzles” is part of a larger series called “The Puzzling World of Winston Breen” and relays the story of a 12-year old boy who  “gets involved in all these situations where he has to go and solve all of these mysteries with his friends,” as noted by the book’s author.

Berlin, who will publish the third book in the series, “The Puzzler’s Mansion,” in May, explained the books were written with “the puzzle-loving kid in mind.”

“I’m also hoping to convert other kids to puzzles,” he said.

While the students spent a portion of their summer reading the book, a committee of teachers, representing the different subjects, would meet to “brainstorm lessons that evolve from some connection with the book,” said Haycock.

“The last week and a half, English teachers have been discussing it. Science teachers have made a lesson ... social studies, math, art, health and a few others.”

The summer-read program culminated on Sept. 16, with a visit from the author, who also engineered a puzzle contest, which involved a full one-third of the school population. 

“I have seven puzzles for them,” Berlin said. “After they solve the first six, then I’ll give them the final seventh puzzle, which will require them to go back and get the other six answers and tie them together in such a way to solve a riddle. The first few teams to answer that riddle will win prizes.”

Berlin stressed team work was essential to solving the puzzles.

“They need to bounce things off of each other,” he said.

Prior to the contest, Berlin hosted three assemblies, one each for sixth, seventh and eighth grade.

“For the sixth graders,” he said, “I taught them how to make different kinds of puzzles. For seventh and eighth grade, I have a presentation where I talk about flexible thinking and creative thinking and how it’s by-no-means restricted to just crossword puzzles and word-seeks and how life will throw puzzles at you all the time.”

Berlin, who is Assistant Publisher for Penny Press, a division of Dell books, also worked with a smaller group of students, who expressed their interest in learning more about writing and being published.

“I took their questions for about an hour and a half about the mechanics of writing, the mechanics of selling a book ... just everything.”

The summer-reading program at Blake has been in existence for 12 years, according to Haycock.

“We were fortunate to get the author to come," he said. "His theme [of] ‘you solve puzzles to stretch your mind and keep your thinking flexible, so that when you get into other situations you can think creatively and come up with a solution’ [is] a good life skill.”

Berlin, who has also constructed puzzles for the New York Times, realizes puzzle-books may not appeal to everyone but, in his opinion, “the more [types of] books there are out there, the better chance a kid has of finding the book that’s just right for him/her.”

“I just had a girl bring her incredibly-battered paperback version of the book to be signed and she said ‘I never finish books, but I finished this book, it was so good’. That thrills me to hear things like that," he said.

More information on “The Potato Chip Puzzles” and author Eric Berlin can be found at: www.winstonbreen.com.