The doors are halfway shut when the two young punks clamber on board, distracting me from my search of the dozen or so boxes discarded in the corner. I turn when I hear them come over. Under the guise of nodding hello, I look closely at their faces, reflexively rub my stomach to calm the …
A puzzle from the Halloween #2 escape room. (unlocks a 3-digit combination lock) A simple decoder key was included in class for my students, but since this is the internet, please solve it yourself! © 2023, 2024; modification of asset found on Internet for educational use.
A puzzle from Christmas #2 escape room. (unlocks a 3-digit combination lock) © 2023, 2024; modification of assets found on Internet for educational use..
A puzzle from the Great Gatsby escape room. (unlocks a 4-digit combination lock) © 2023, 2024; modification of puzzle from Hidden Message Word-Finds #130 for educational use..
A puzzle from Halloween escape room #1. (unlocks a 6-letter cryptex) © 2023, 2024
Roger woke after two hours sleep, listening. Footsteps? Engine ticking itself cool? Anything? He let out his breath long and slow. Only a dream. Just to make sure he grabbed his shotgun and removed the black-rubber knothole plug at the front of cabin. The road leading up from Santa Cruz was quiet. Checking peepholes in windowless …
Ronald Uno leans on the desk, casual, smiling. “The uncertainty’s the problem here, Mr. S. Will they or won’t they—how and when will we find out? You can appreciate The Boss’s concern, right?” Arvy Schrödinger tilts his chair onto its back legs, tries to match Uno’s breeziness. “As I’ve been saying, Ron, the feds’ll never …
When Pamela Tedesco arrived in the emergency room, nose pulped, more teeth out than in, scalp almost clotting amid now-hairless patches, she vowed she’d never go back to Lyle. When she bought the pistol from the TriCounty Gun and Rod Show, wearing a black tam with widow’s veil like a late-show femme fatale, Pamela told …
Canting northward,catawampus compass needle,the headstone indicatesan uncertainly certain destiny,a terminal destination. Weathered by a centuryof snow, rain, wind, and sun,the marble worn faint,the markings remarkthe significance of the stone,the lines faded to illegibility,thin as a threadbare shroud: Somebody born in March,Eighteen hundred sometime,someone beloved somehow:Wife? husband? Perhaps.Daughter or son, certainly.Such is the stamp of mortality. …
for my students The poem was about death.The tyger, they said, is a monster.How, they asked, is that beautiful? First, the tyger is beautiful in its form:the symmetries of stripesand fiery balance of form with function.This monster is perfectionat thinning the herd. And, while death is anathema,the nemesis of the lyric form,the presence of the …
