One by one, the togglers came to Alicia’s table to explain a feature of the Lexibus. Each one had to stand on the chair vacated by Sarah Gate. Their stubby fingers poked here and there on the screen, causing it to light up brightly as it displayed various lists, forms and puzzle templates. Alicia’s head was swirling, and her eyes soon glazed over.
Papaya was the first to notice that Alicia had stopped paying attention. Moe had been discussing the finer points of Sudoku Symmetry. Chute knowingly winked at Papaya from his table, vindicated. Papaya cleared her throat.
Moe looked up from the Lexibus. “Erm?”
“You’re losing her, Moe.”
Moe looked crestfallen. “Oh, dear. Forgive me. I only wanted you to see how the original designers intended to present these types of puzzles.”
Alicia turned her bleary eyes to Moe. “It’s okay. But will all of that help us to figure out the Evil Editor’s code?”
Moe shook his head. “I suppose not. But I hope you’ll forever appreciate the beauty of a blank Sudoku!” He jumped down from the chair and trudged back to his table. Alicia flushed, embarrassed. She hadn’t meant to zone out on the togglers. She was a bit overwhelmed with the strange device. In what she hoped was a perky tone, she said, “I think the patterns are lovely. Aren’t crossword puzzles designed the same way?”
Rocky answered, “Indeed. The Sudoku people borrowed symmetry from cruciverbalists. It’s all a bit inside-out, though, as crosswords preserve their beauty, even after the puzzle has been solved.”
Alicia thought about that for a second. She mused, “So, the pattern of Sudoku becomes hidden when it’s solved. Is that what you meant?” She looked over at Chute, whose gap-tooth smile could scarcely suppress the beam of pride that twinkled in his eyes.
“Exactly! The key to obscurity is to be clear.” Chute leaped to the floor. “I’ve been trying to get my colleagues to see this for weeks. T. T. is not sophisticated. Her pedestrian constructions were never imaginative enough to meet the minimum standards for membership into the Crypt.” He paused, as his gaze flickered briefly to Eenie, before refocusing on Alicia.
“If we are going to figure out her shenanigans, we have to stop assuming that she’s done something profound!” This last was punctuated with a stomp of his foot.
Minie chimed in. “Chute, dear, that’s all well and fine. However, neither we nor the Lexibus have been able to detect any simple patterns.”
Alicia interjected, “Have you looked at the pattern long enough?”
The crypt togglers stared at Alicia with varying degrees of confusion contorting their features. They tried to answer all at once, so that Alicia couldn’t determine whether they had understood what she said. After the hubbub died down, the togglers waited for her response.
“Um,” began Alicia. “I meant to ask if you have looked at enough of the clues to detect a pattern. In math class, we learned about rational and irrational numbers. The decimal expansions never terminate or repeat in irrational numbers. One might mistake a rational number for an irrational number if one doesn’t expand the decimal places enough.”
Eenie nodded. “That’s quite true. Lexibus! What is one divided by seven?”
Everyone crowded around Alicia’s table. Mercifully, Alicia brought the device to their eye level. The screen showed:
- 0.142857142857142857142857142857142857142857 {44}
- SEVENTH {7}
- ONE OVER SEVEN {14; Tailor?}
Eenie laughed before continuing. “Yes, the decimal expansion repeats very early, making the pattern obvious. Now, what if we try this? Lexibus! What is one divided by 49?”
The Lexibus screen instantly refreshed:
- 0.020408163265306122448979591836734693877551 {44}
- FORTY-NINTH {11; United States and Canada?}
- ONE OVER FORTY-NINE {19; Major General Leslie Groves?}
“Leslie Groves?” Eenie shrugged. “Ah, well. Anyway, do you see a pattern in there?”
Everyone agreed that none was apparent. Alicia caught the gleam in Eenie’s eye and held her tongue. With a flourish, Eenie double tapped the first answer. The screen filled with digits:
- 0.020408163265306122448979591836734693877551 020408163265306122448979591836734693877551 020408163265306122448979591836734693877551 020408163265306122448979591836734693877551 020408163265306122448979591836734693877551 {212}
“How about now?” Eenie winked at Alicia.
Chute quipped, “That is clearly obscure!” He looked up at Alicia. “So, how do we look long enough for T.T.’s patterns?”
Alicia shrugged. “I haven’t got a clue. What were you looking at before I came here?”
“Mostly the disasters in the Administration Building,” said Sizzles. “It’s where we first discovered T. T.’s transformations. If there is a pattern to her madness, we haven’t found it.”
Meenie spoke up for the first time since showing Alicia his word scrambler. “Sadly, her malfeasance has spread to every building in the Complex, except this one.” His mole quivered, making him look like an indignant mouse.
Alicia subconsciously rubbed her hands together. She remembered Harris Gate’s complaints about work order memos being shuffled. Maybe she was about to see some evidence. She looked at Papaya, the eagerness on her face obvious to them all.
“I suppose you’ve seen enough of the Lexibus for now. Would you like to look at some of T. T.’s mischief?”
Alicia nodded. “Please.”
***
Chute took the Lexibus and whispered a few commands into the embedded microphone. Once again, the overhead projection screen descended from the ceiling. An image faded in:
Chute said, “Harris Gate tried to explain his trouble with the supply room, I’m sure. The poor man can barely function without strict instructions. Consequently, he has learned to deliver supplies to the offices by following a few simple rules. T. T. LeClerc upset his orderly world by changing the room numbers into descriptions such as ‘the windowless office with no fan.’ Harris made no deliveries for three days.”
Meenie giggled.
Chute continued, “Harris complained to Sarah, who had the good sense to visit the Administration Building and make notes about the offices. Then she brought the memos and her notes to us.”
“We deciphered the descriptions and gave Sarah a sheet listing the corresponding room numbers. The very next day, Harris had another problem: his daily routine required him to begin his rounds in supply room #0. He would take light bulbs, bottles of window cleaner and feather dusters from the supply room and distribute them according to the memos. By going around the building in office number order, he would wind up at supply room #8, where he could load up supplies for the rest of the offices.”
Alicia’s eyes squinted in concentration. She wasn’t about to ask why the supplies were needed every day, as that didn’t seem germane. Apparently, the feather dusters were the problem, and she was already trying to imagine how that could be.
“The beauty of Harris’ system was that his supervisor had printers installed in both supply rooms. Each office manager sent a new memo to the printer in the appropriate room. Therefore, Harris always knew exactly how many supplies to load onto his cart.”
Alicia could no longer hold her tongue. “Why didn’t Harris just use the same sheets each day?”
“Because Harris couldn’t be trusted to replenish the inventory. His first day on the job, in the chaos surrounding our missing rulers, his supervisor tried to show him how to place orders using the computerized requisition forms. After the weekly distribution of supplies, Harris was supposed to place orders for more.”
“Apparently, that was too much for Harris; he ignored the requisitions task. Everyone was inconvenienced four weeks later, when the light bulbs and bottles of window cleaner ran out. They were in the dark for days! After that, Harris’ supervisor devised the current system and changed the weekly routine to daily, so that no office would ever run out again. As for the daily memos, Harris turned them in to his supervisor, who tossed them out. Once a month, she would restock the supply rooms.”
Alicia nodded sagely, satisfied that her original question had been answered, as well.
“So,” said Chute, “the problem came when he got to office #4. The office manager told him that, as always, their memo requested a light bulb and a feather duster. Harris showed her a memo that requested only a light bulb.”
By now, the Crypt togglers were laughing uncontrollably. Even Chute was smiling as he recounted the hapless details. Alicia, taking her cue from the levity in the room, smiled back at him and nodded for him to continue.
“Harris caved in and gave the manager a light bulb and a feather duster. When he came to office #5, the exact same thing happened. Harris suspected that the office managers were playing a practical joke. He played along, giving the office manager in #5 a feather duster in addition to his allotted light bulb.”
“Harris was convinced that the whole fiasco was a running gag when the manager in office #6 demanded to know why Harris didn’t have a feather duster for her. Harris was about to shove the memo under her nose when he realized that the memo had requested a feather duster! He was still playing along, though; he told her to get it from office #5.”
Chute wiped his eyes, chuckling. “Really, this was our fault. We should have known something was wrong when he told us that, not only was he short a duster for office #7, but he also had problems on the second half of his delivery route.”
Alicia was hyper-alert. The sleuth in her could sense that the crux of the problem was about to be revealed.
“Harris took the empty cart to supply room #8, where he grabbed that day’s memos from the printer. Now as you can see, the offices after supply room #8 are numbered as follows: 9, A, B, C, D, E and F.”
“Harris had no trouble at #9, #A and #B. When he tried to give the office manager in #C a feather duster, she looked at him like he was crazy. She asked him if saw a ceiling fan anywhere.”
The Crypt togglers were practically rolling on the floor. Alicia tried to ignore them, but she caught an infectious case of the giggles. She pictured poor Mr. Gate, looking from the memo to the manager, at a loss for words. Chute pulled himself together enough to continue. “After going through practically the same conversation with the manager in room #D, Harris was totally flustered. He completed his rounds without further incident, except for the fact that he ended up back at supply room #0 with two extra feather dusters!”
“Curious,” said Alicia.
“Curious, indeed. We know the room numbers and LeClerc’s descriptions were matched up properly. In fact, we asked the supervisor to see if the daily sheets used the same descriptions. She kept three weeks of printouts and confirmed that the same descriptions were used.” Chute shook his head.
Alicia stabbed her forefinger into the air. “Harris mixed up the memos when reading your sheet. He never bothered to write on the memos, did he?”
Chute gave Alicia a look of admiration. “No, he didn’t write them down. However, if he was mixing them up, he never managed to screw up any offices other than #4, #5, #6, #7, #C and #D. Besides, it was always feather dusters. Such consistency is highly improbable, even for Harris! No evil pattern exists in the descriptions.”
Alicia stared at the screen. Her eyes were starting to cross when something caught them. She started counting out loud. The Crypt togglers became silent.
“Oh. My. God. The printers!” Alicia squealed with the excitement that comes with solving a tough puzzle. She stood up and addressed the room.
“T. T. LeClerc must have caused the memos to be sent to the wrong printers! Harris needs six dusters from supply room #0 and only four from supply room #8. He needs three each of bulbs and bottles from both supply rooms. On top of that, look at rooms #1 and #9. They both have windows and fans! Rooms #2 and #A both have windows and fans. Rooms #3 and #B, no windows, no fan. So, as Harris travels around from each supply room, the memo descriptions match!”
Chute started jumping up and down. “Excellent, excellent! Why didn’t we see this before? It is so obvious, now! When he gets to office #4, he’s looking at the memo for #C!” He was exuberant.
Papaya squeaked, “We never saw it because we never looked closely at this slide. We were so sure that Harris was being his usual incompetent self that we never bothered to compare Sarah’s notes to our master sheet.”
Moe spoke up. “Well, so much for patterns. What else have we missed?”
Chute agreed. “We should be ashamed of ourselves, letting T. T. beat us with such a simple ruse. But these other acts of sabotage don’t look anything like this. Let’s notify the Administration Building to fix those printers.” He turned back to Alicia. “That was great, but we’re just getting started.”
Alicia was pumped. “Let’s see! Let’s see!”
Part 6: Con Trails
