The Potato Chip Puzzles by Eric Berlin

Winston Breen loves puzzles, all kinds of puzzles. He makes up puzzles when he is bored, he can find a puzzle out of just about anything!

One day Winston is called into the principal's office to help figure out a puzzle, which is actually an invitation to participate in a day long contest full of puzzles and a chance to win $50,000 for his school.

On the day of the competition, the team is so excited and their teacher/supervisor is all business with high expectations. The day starts off rocky...with a flat tire and delays. With a contest that is built like a scavenger hunt full of puzzles any delay is costly!

As the day goes on, several of the teams are neck and neck. But something is strange...could there be a cheater amongst the groups?

What I Thought:
This is definitely a very fun concept for a novel. It has a very fun story as the players rush all around town looking for and solving puzzles as well as a sense of mystery and detective work as Winston and his team try to find the cheater.

But the unique part of the story is the many puzzles that are included in the book for the readers to work along with the characters. Every puzzle that Winston works in the book is available for the reader to work.

This book is perfect for fans of the Blue Balliet series that include codes, Chasing Vermeer, The Wright 3 and The Calder Game. There is another book written about Winston called The Puzzling World of Winston Breen, it is actually the first book in this new series and I hope to get my hands on it soon.

One note, the puzzles are available to do right in the book. In the foreword, the author directs readers to a website where they can print out the puzzles if they don't want to write in the book. As a librarian in a public library, I'm kind of worried that someone will work these puzzles in the book and ruin the fun for future readers. I'm working on a way to prevent this from happening...maybe putting some laminate over the puzzles with a note to print the puzzles from the internet to work. (Which is a 29 page document! That's a lot of puzzles!)

Overall, a super book.

Highly Recommended.

Want to see more? Check it out on Amazon: The Potato Chip Puzzles by Eric Berlin