Alicia and the Crypt togglers struggled through one image after another. Although they tried to look for obvious patterns of sabotage, several of the images simply remained tantalizingly unclassifiable. As the number of mysterious images grew, despair in the room mounted.
“We’ll never get through all of this,” sighed Papaya. She rubbed her eyes and cracked her knuckles against her forehead.
Chute turned off the projector. He faced the group and said, “We need to delegate this to the entire Complex so that we can focus on the ones that don’t make any sense.”
Sizzles nodded. “That’s easy enough; divide and conquer. I can set up a network in ten minutes. How about if we split up the remaining images, send them out and ask the supervisors to fix what they can and bounce the rest back to us?”
Alicia asked, “Won’t T. T. become aware of what’s going on?” She was worried that LeClerc would overwrite the repairs as she had done with the gummi graffiti.
“No,” said Sizzles. “At least I don’t think so. If you’re wondering about how she pulled off that backup override, remember, she tampered with the server. It’s not like she’s sitting with a Lexibus, snooping. Wherever she is, she’s probably just laughing it up as we try to clean up her mess.”
Alicia frowned. “You make it sound like she just wanted to make a challenging puzzle for you all to solve. Don’t you have laws or something here against sabotage?”
Sizzles laughed. “There’s only puzzle rules and craftsmanship. Nothing like this has ever happened before. Sabotage, kidnapping rulers, stealing keys—that’s your world, not ours.”
Alicia persisted. “Well, maybe she did only want to create a super puzzle! Why can’t that be the case?”
The room went silent. The Crypt togglers stared at Alicia as if she had spit on the floor. She suddenly felt foolish. She was about to apologize when Meenie cleared his throat.
Meenie walked over to Alicia and sat down. He said nothing for a moment. The mole on his nose quivered. When he began to speak, his sad face was made even more pathetic by the soft whisper in his voice:
“That can’t be the case, because we all swore an oath to never do such a thing again. Years ago, we had a harmless group of puzzlesmiths that called themselves Ordo Templi Orientis, simultaneously saluting our belief in free will and playfully alluding to Aleister Crowley, one of the greatest puzzle makers from your world.
“Our group enjoyed the serendipities surrounding the life of Crowley, who was the founder of a religious philosophy called Thelema. One of those delightful coincidences was the claim Crowley made that he had been dictated a book of law from a divine entity named Aiwass. The puzzlesmiths learned that this text had been analyzed and deemed the work of Crowley himself. Apparently, he had created a series of riddles and ciphers to obfuscate some nonsense about a lost temple.
“No one in the group cared about whatever it was that Crowley was attempting to hide. Instead, the Book of Law was dissected and used as inspiration for the group’s Monthly Mind-Boggler, what you referred to as a super puzzle.
“At first, these puzzles were simple constructions—a cryptogram whose words were the answers to a crossword puzzle; a rebus picture puzzle that was also a cryptogram. Later, the puzzlesmiths became more sophisticated, and the Monthly Mind-Boggler more grandiose. Members were spending all of their free time either designing new challenges, debating the merits of past Bogglers, or working on the current one. Families and jobs were neglected. Our industry began to suffer.
“Finally, the Rulers had to step in to moderate. Rather than abolish the group outright, they set up the ultimate Mind-Boggler and decreed that only those who solved it would remain in the group. In one stroke, the Rulers had managed to adhere to our sense of free will while also restoring the realm to normalcy.
“Most of the members simply gave up; the Mind-Boggler was too difficult. In fact, only eight primary puzzlesmiths solved it. As a reward, the Rulers had a new building constructed for the group and assigned the members to an elite puzzle-generating division.” Meenie paused and waved his hands about.
Alicia’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Get out of here! This is you?”
The Crypt togglers chuckled. Meenie smiled and nodded. “Not all of us. My brother and I came later, when two of the original members retired. The Rulers named the building The Crypt and called the new members Top Bogglers, who became known as togglers.
“During the dedication of the building, the Rulers decreed that no other group would be permitted to form, and the Top Bogglers were forbidden to refer to themselves as a group. Naturally, Ordo Templi Orientis was disbanded, and we literally swore to uphold the new decree. It’s even part of the initiation into the Crypt, which is kind of ironic.”
Alicia was still trying to deal with this revelation and almost didn’t pay attention to what Meenie was implying. After a moment, though, she asked, “Well, why did T. T. violate the decree?”
Papaya answered, “She didn’t. You were the one who brought it up.” She smiled to soften her remarks. “Think about it, she did this on her own. There is no group. As the editor, she had access to the entire complex, even the Crypt. Actually, we had to let her in, but you know what I mean. Besides, if T. T. had wanted to challenge us, why would she have tampered with the computers?”
Alicia was not satisfied. “If the acts are supposed to be sabotage, they’re not very good.”
Rocky interjected, “Um, yeah, they are. We were stuck until you came here. I hope you’re not calling us dim-witted…”
Alicia stammered, “Gosh, no! I’m sorry, I was just thinking about all of the simple substitutions we’ve solved so far.”
Chute grumbled, “You’re forgetting about this growing pile of unsolved mysteries.”
Alicia shook her head. “I think we’re just not aware of all of her patterns.” Alicia held up her fingers as she continued, “Palindromes, flipping, swapping. Things that come in pairs. What else comes in twos?”
“Acrostic puzzle clues and their position in the answer,” Minie offered.
“Coin-flipping, Othello, erm…” added Eenie.
Meenie snapped his fingers. “How about anagrams? Even though some have many solutions, puzzle clues usually only use a pair, such as in cryptic crosswords!”
A sudden knock at the door hushed the room. A thin voice on the other side muttered, “Hail, it’s only me! Sarah is on her way.”
Papaya yelled through the door, “Thanks, Nathan! Please tell her we’ll be expecting her!”
The voice responded, “Wonderful!”
In the silence, everyone could hear the creature’s retreating footsteps. Immediately, the togglers cleared off the large black table and polished it until it shone. Just as Eenie shoved the large white chairs back under the table, Sarah pounded on the door. Papaya opened it and let her in.
“Hello, Sarah. Nathan alerted us, so we have prepared your table.”
Chute hopped down from his chair and escorted Sarah to the shiny black table. He pulled out a white chair and bowed gallantly.
“Thank you,” she smiled sadly at Alicia.
Alicia smiled back. “Hi. Are you okay?”
Sarah acknowledged each of the Crypt togglers with the same sad smile before she answered, “T. T. is out of control. Somehow, she managed to swap the salt and sugar in my kitchen. My last marmalade pie was a disaster. Harris took one bite and started swearing in three different languages!”
Papaya gasped in dismay. “Oh, no! She’s going outside of the Square Knot Complex!”
Alicia snorted in disgust. “She’s like a virus, spreading her mischief. I don’t think we’ll stop her by solving her twisted puzzles.” She paused for a beat, then added, “T. T. is upset about something and is taking it out on the whole world. What could possibly be so bad that she would attack a nice lady like you?”
Chute looked at Eenie, Eenie looked at Meenie and all three turned to Alicia and began speaking at once: “That stupid exam… such a small difference… rulers messed up… big-time snafu… she was hurt… I was hurt, too! … not fair… had to choose…”
Sarah and the other Crypt togglers had confusion plastered on their faces as they tried to decipher the words of the babbling trio.
Rocky interjected, “Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Chute, what are you saying?”
Eenie and Meenie stopped talking, grateful that Chute was singled out. Chute, once again, stood before the group to explain what had just happened: “Taupe Trapue LeClerc should have been the eighth Crypt toggler.”
Part 8: The Great Wind Up
