The Ministry of Unladylike Activity: THE MINISTRY OF UNLADYLIKE ACTIVITY
THE BODY IN THE BLITZ
Based on an idea and characters by Siobhan Dowd: THE GUGGENHEIM MYSTERY
Robin Stevens was born in California and grew up in an Oxford college, across the road from the house where Alice in Wonderland lived. She has been making up stories all her life.
When she was twelve, her father handed her a copy of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and she realized that she wanted to be either Hercule Poirot or Agatha Christie when she grew up. She spent her teenage years at Cheltenham Ladies’ College, reading a lot of murder mysteries and hoping that she’d get the chance to do some detecting herself (she didn’t). She went to university, where she studied crime fiction, and then she worked for a children’s publisher.
Robin is now a full-time author and the creator of the internationally award-winning and bestselling Murder Most Unladylike and Ministry of Unladylike Activity series. She still hopes she might get the chance to do some detecting of her own one day. She lives in England.
PU F FI N BOOKS
UK | US A | Canada | Ireland | Australia
India | New Zealand | South Africa
Puffin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
PUFFIN BOOKS
PU F FI N BOOKS
www.penguin.co.uk
www.puffin.co.uk
www.ladybird.co.uk
UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia India | New Zealand | South Africa
UK | US A | Canada | Ireland | Australia India | New Zealand | South Africa
Puffin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com. www.penguin.co.uk www.puffin.co.uk www.ladybird.co.uk
Puffin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com www.penguin.co.uk www.puffin.co.uk www.ladybird.co.uk
The moral right of the author/illustrator has been asserted
The brands mentioned in this book are trademarks belonging to third parties
The brands mentioned in this book are trademarks belonging to third parties
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Text design by Kim Musselle
Text design by Collaborate Agency
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.
Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.
The authorized representative in the EEA is Penguin Random House Ireland,
The authorized representative in the EEA is Penguin Random House Ireland, Morrison Chambers, 32 Nassau Street, Dublin D02 YH68
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library HARDBACK TRADE PAPERBACK EXPORT PAPERBACK
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library isbn: 978–0–241–68779–6
HARDBACK
All correspondence to: Puffin Books
TRADE PAPERBACK
All correspondence to: Puffin Books
Penguin Random House Children’s
Penguin Random House Children’s One Embassy Gardens, 8 Viaduct Gardens, London SW11 7BW
EXPORT PAPERBACK
All correspondence to: Puffin Books
Penguin Random House Children’s
04/06/2024 12:49
For Anne, queen of puzzles
J uLY 1938
A uthor’s N ote
Dear
Detectives,
Do you love puzzles? Do you see patterns where no one else does? Do you come to life when you’re on a case?
If you’ve already read my books, you’ll be used to playing along with Daisy, Hazel and their friends and solving the mysteries I’ve set you in my stories. I’ve even given readers the chance to learn some of the codes my detectives use in the Cream Buns and Crime anthology. But in this book, for the first time ever, you can really put your problem-solving to the test as you work alongside my characters to learn logic skills, unravel clues and uncover the truth of some bewildering new cases. It’s a great place to start if you haven’t yet joined the Detective Society. We’re always on the lookout for new recruits! All you need to do is recite the pledge below, and you’re a Detective Society member for life!
I swear to be a good and clever member of the Detective Society, and to logically detect the crimes presented to me using all the cleverness I have, not placing reliance on grown-ups, especially the police.
Excellent! Now, to business. Each half of this book has five chapters. In the first four chapters, you’ll follow along with one of my detectives as they teach you problem-solving skills and ask you to help them work out puzzling mysteries that will be entirely new to even the most seasoned fans (so you can’t cheat that way!). And then, in the fifth chapter, you’ll have the chance to take what you’ve learned and apply it to a bigger case.
I really hope you enjoy the challenge, whether you’re a new reader or an established fan – we’ve had a wonderful time crafting these puzzles for you!
Happy puzzling, Detectives.
P.S. While I’m here, I’d like to thank my puzzle compilers, Mike, Gareth and Laura; my editors, India, Ben and Josh; my copyeditor, Jane; my designer, Faith; and all of the other members of Puffin’s Team Bunbreak who made this book happen. (It’s a bit hard to put acknowledgements at the back of a book with two fronts and no back, so they’re going here instead!)
Codebreaking
with Hazel Wong
I N troduct I o N
I’m Hazel Wong, and I’m the Co-President of the Detective Society, along with my best friend, Daisy Wells. These days we share our roles much more equally than we did when we began the Detective Society all those years ago, when I was just the Secretary – now I direct our cases just as much as Daisy does, and sometimes Daisy even writes down the accounts of them instead of me.
Since the Detective Society has been using puzzles and codes for so many years, Daisy and I have decided that we really ought to write a book explaining to our fellow detectives (that’s you) all the different ways in which they can be used. It feels especially important now that the world has more need than ever for brave, clever, noticing people who are willing to stand up for those in harm’s way and reveal the truth of the matter, even when it isn’t a particularly ladylike thing to do. Daisy and I can’t solve every case, or help everyone who needs it, but perhaps you can lend us a hand.
Daisy thinks that she should be starting things off, but I know Daisy, and I know that she tends to forget to explain the important things, like what codebreaking actually is. She says that we’ve already explained it, and, of course, we have in our other accounts, but what she doesn’t remember is that you might not have read those yet.
So I think I ought to begin with what a code is. It’s very simple, really: a code is any way of hiding or confusing the text of a message. You can mix up letters, or swap letters for numbers, or turn the letters into symbols –anything that makes it harder for someone else to read. Morse code is one example, as is Pigpen (if you don’t know what those codes are yet, we’ll get to that later). And languages are codes too!
Usually the people who are sending and receiving the coded message know the key (which is what we call the knowledge you need to crack the code and read the original text) while everyone else doesn’t. That’s why, when you’re decoding a message meant for someone else, you have to work out what the key is first.
To try to make this clearer, think about a language that I speak: Cantonese. Anyone who doesn’t speak Cantonese wouldn’t be able to understand the things I say to my little sisters, Rose and May, even though we all understand what we’re talking about perfectly. We three can speak Cantonese, so we have the key to our conversation, but Daisy (or our friend and fellow detective Beanie Martineau) doesn’t, so they both have no idea what we’re saying! It’s really very useful sometimes.
In this chapter I’m going to show you some basic codes and teach you how to crack them. If you get stuck at any point, you can take a look at the answers at the end of the chapter – but try not to do that unless you really have to. Sometimes your brain just needs a bit more time to work out the problem, so take a break and come back to it later to see if things are looking clearer then!
Detective Society Forever,
Hazel Wong, 4th July 1938
I NtroducING P IGPeN
Don’t be tricked by the name – Pigpen has no more to do with pigs than Pig Latin does. I’m not quite sure why there are so many fake pigs in the codes we detectives have been taught – it just seems to be another odd English thing. In this case, Pigpen is a code that turns letters into patterns, so you can hide the message you’re writing in something that simply looks like a pretty design to most people.
If you want to write ‘pigpen’ in Pigpen code, you’d do it like this:
Now, anyone can invent their own secret code by making up a symbol for each letter. When Daisy and I were first learning codes, we invented them all the time to help us practise our skills. But there’s something about Pigpen that makes it particularly smart and easy to remember, and it’s all to do with the way it’s set up.
You can’t see it if you write out the alphabet in Pigpen, the way I have below. It still looks like an ordinary symbol code. But there’s a very clever trick that I’m going to show you!
Start by drawing two simple criss-cross grids and two X-shaped grids. The grids should look like the ones below – you need to put dots in the second criss-cross grid and the second X-shaped one. You’ll see why in a moment.
Next, just write out the alphabet in the grids, one letter per square. It should look like this:
Now, look back at that first alphabet, where I wrote all the Pigpen symbols for A to Z. I hope you’ll suddenly see that the symbols aren’t random after all! They’re made by drawing the section of the grid where each letter sits. A is because that’s where A sits on the grid, B is , and so on. Like all the cleverest codes, it looks extremely confusing until you realize how very obvious it is!
So there you have it. That’s Pigpen – and now it’s time to practise using it.
Your first test is to try encoding the following four words into Pigpen. Check the Pigpen alphabet earlier in the chapter until you become more confident!
Excellent work. Now for something a little harder – it’s time to do some decoding. Can you turn these six words encoded in Pigpen back into English?
TUESDAY
FRIDAY
MONDAY
WEDNESDAY SUNDAY
SATURDAY
If you’ve decoded all the words on the last page properly, your detective brain should have noticed a pattern. These words are part of a set – but there’s one word still missing from it. Can you work out what it is and then write it down here in Pigpen?
This is a good test of your detective skills, as well as your codebreaking abilities – Daisy and I often have to quietly spot what’s missing from a crime scene or witness account, and let each other know secretly so as not to tip off our suspects.
The missing word is:
TurN to PAGe 34 For the soLutIoNs
2
P IGPeN P Ictures
By this point, you may have worked out what the only problem with Pigpen is: as soon as you know the trick of how to write it, you never forget it. What if you and a fellow detective were using it in a case, and one of your suspects knew how to read it too? You’d be in terrible trouble. So it’s wise to get creative when you’re sending secret messages in Pigpen. (And, of course, it’s always wise to assume that there might be someone trying to read your messages who you need to confuse!)
Let me show you what I mean. First of all, try encoding the following nonsense word into Pigpen:
FECEBI
FECEBI when written in English doesn’t make any sense as a word. But you need to be clever enough not to take things at face value. Have another look at your encoded Pigpen version. The symbols look like another English word – can you see what it is?
That’s not the only word that can be encoded in this way. Try writing out the following English letters in Pigpen symbol shapes. Then decode those symbols from Pigpen into English letters, and see what strings of nonsense you get!
CONCUR
Now, see if you can think of other words you could secretly encode in the same way! You need to start with Pigpen symbols that look like English letters and then work backwards to create words using them.
N eXt - LeVeL P IGPeN
Now you ought to be absolutely excellent at Pigpen – so I think it’s time for something a bit trickier.
Here is a list of words that have been encoded into Pigpen. But there’s one letter missing from each word, which I’ve replaced with a question mark.
Can you decode each word from Pigpen back to English, and work out what letter is missing on each line?
SHORT ? READ
WALN ? T CAKE
Read those missing question-mark letters on each line, going from top to bottom.
What very important word is revealed when you do?
4
M INd the G AP
AsDaisy and I know, often the hardest thing about being a detective is spotting things that have been hiding right in front of your eyes.
Hidden in between each of the pairs of words below is a third word, which you can find lurking at the end of one word and the beginning of another. You need to stop your eyes reading the first and second words as two different things, and try to make yourself see them as just a line of letters. For example, the two words FLAMENCO DESIGN have a word tucked away between them.
Can you spot it? If not, look again at this version, which has the important letters in bold:
FLAMEN CO DE SIGN. Or . . . CODE!
See what I mean about needing to think a little differently to solve this?
Can you find four more hidden words below – one in each word pair – and spot the connection between them?
FORMULA TINKERING
HIPPOPOTAMUS
CONGA MESSAGE
DELHI STORYTELLER
F ruItFuL s eArchING
Now I’m going to make things a little more tricky. I’m not just going to hide words in other words – I’m going to hide them in entire sentences. It’s really hard to stop your brain reading the sentence as a whole instead of the individual letters that make it up – and what’s even harder is that some of the hidden words appear across not just two words but three!
To show you what I mean, there is a word hiding in the following sentence, across three separate words. What word is it?
DO IT NOW, OR DO IT LATER.
It’s WORD, of course! Even though I told you to look for it, and I used the word itself when I asked you the question, it probably took you a moment to catch sight of it. It’s hard to see, even if you know what you’re looking for, and harder still if there’s pesky punctuation in the way! But don’t let that derail you. Just look at the letters of the sentence and don’t be distracted, and you’ll soon see.
Now it’s up to you to find all five fruits. There’s one per sentence, and each fruit crosses between either two or three words.
1. Our Scottish adventure took us to Oban, an amazing town on the west coast.
2. There was a bit of a scheduling problem on our train journey.
3. The train guard told us to ‘mind the gap, please’ when getting on the train.
4. My grandmother had made us a picnic – her rye-bread sandwiches are delicious!
5. I forgot my casebook; I wish I’d taken it with me.
Did you get them all? Well done!
Now I’ve got one more challenge for you. Have a look at the five fruits you’ve just found. The first letters of each of these fruits spell out another word when they’re all put together.
What is it, and can you think of two fruits that begin with this word?
r eAdING B etWeeN the Words (
ANd L INes)
Now for a real challenge. You’re going to put your puzzle-solving abilities to the test in a proper mystery – one that Daisy and I really solved at Deepdean a few terms ago.
An exceedingly valuable necklace had been stolen from a younger girl at Deepdean, Martha Grey. She shouldn’t have had it, of course, so she couldn’t tell any of the mistresses – instead, she asked Daisy and me to work out where it had been hidden, and who took it.
Because of the timing and circumstances of the theft, we thought that the person who stole the necklace was most likely from the same dorm as Martha. So I crept in to look through it while Daisy interviewed suspects down in the common room. I only had a few minutes to search, so I needed to move quickly. And I found something written in a notebook lying on one of the beds in the dorm, something that looked suspiciously like a coded message.
What does the message say, and what was it telling me to do?
7
c oded N uMBers PArt 1
Bravo! You solved the code, and so did I. I saw what I needed next to one of the tuck boxes. I used it to open that box, and inside I found another piece of paper – a puzzle that I brought to Daisy.
We realized that this was a crucial piece of evidence. It must have been written by the thief, and it would lead us to the place they’d hidden the necklace. The mystery was becoming more difficult by the moment! And this puzzle was tougher than the last one. To get to the bottom of this one, we needed to solve clues and crack a code at the same time.
The thief had written six single-word clues. To solve the puzzle like we did, put the solution to each of the first five clues in the boxes to the right of them. For example, if one of the clues was ‘A place you go to learn’, then you would write SCHOOL in the boxes. Always write one letter per box, without gaps.
In each of those boxes is a number – the thief really tried to cover their tracks! But Daisy and I realized that this was a clever code that would help us solve the final part of the puzzle.
Can you crack both the clues and the number code at the same time by filling in the answers to the first five clues in the numbered boxes next to them?
Someone not telling the truth
Someone who believes in the same things you do
A slang word for spilling a secret
A story a suspect gives to explain why they couldn’t have committed the crime
A room where science experiments take place 153
Once you’ve filled in all the boxes above, you can now complete this final line by using the number code:
Where did we go next?
c oded N uMBers PArt 2
We rushed to the place the puzzle had told us to go. The necklace had to be somewhere in this room! There, pinned up on the noticeboard among announcements about after-school societies and hockey matches, was another puzzle for us to solve, of the same sort that we had found before. It must be from the thief!
Fill in all the solution boxes using the same rules you learned before. Quick!
To hold on very tight, you need a good
And now you know the code, complete the final line:
The necklace is hidden in a book with this picture on it:
I whispered the answer to Daisy, and she went haring off around the library to find the right book. It didn’t take her long to spot it – the book turned out to be hollow, and tucked inside we found Martha’s necklace, absolutely unharmed.
We went back to House in triumph to hand it over, but when we walked through the front door we found someone else waiting for us: Binny Freebody. Binny is our friend Kitty’s little sister, and an absolute terror –we’ve had run-ins before and, of course, she and Martha share a dorm. She must have been the person behind the theft!
‘Binny!’ said Daisy. ‘Was this your doing?’
Binny scowled. ‘I didn’t think you’d get it so fast!’ she said. ‘I wanted Martha to spend all this week looking for it. She was a beast to me last Friday, so I took her stupid necklace as revenge and hid it in a trick book Kitty gave me for Christmas.’
Daisy shouted at her – Daisy is far better at telling people off than I am; I always begin to feel sorry for them halfway through – and I went to look for Martha to hand back the necklace.
And there you have it – you’ve just solved your first case!
A s e AsY As A, B, c
Asyou’ve already seen, sometimes codes employ numbers as well as letters and symbols. Now I’m going to test you by giving you an example of a fairly simple number code, and show you how one might be used in a real case.
Daisy and I were staying at her uncle Felix’s flat in London during the last Christmas holidays. Uncle Felix and his wife, Aunt Lucy, are extremely interesting adults. They are (and this is a secret, so you mustn’t say it to anyone) spies, and they’re always rushing away on deadly secret missions. For the last few years, we’ve worked with them on cases – Daisy has promised to tell you the story of one of them in her chapter – but we can’t always come along, and so it proved this time.
One morning we woke up to find that Uncle Felix was gone, and Aunt Lucy wouldn’t tell us where he was. Daisy was very upset, even when I pointed out that we would probably be told once he was back and out of danger. Before I could stop her, Daisy went creeping into his study and found a piece of paper with a mysterious code on it – and, when we cracked it, we worked out where Uncle Felix had gone. Can you solve it too?
The first things to decode were the six groups of numbers on the opposite page. The numbers stand for letters, of course.
Can you work out the code, and discover which words have been written here? 1 21 19 20 18 9 1 2 18 1 26 9 12 3 1 14 1 4 1
5 7 25 16 20
6 18 1 14 3 5
Once we’d decoded the words, we weren’t sure what to do next. The paper was blank, and there were no more instructions. But then Daisy had a brainwave, and held the paper against the study’s radiator to warm it up. More words appeared in Uncle Felix’s handwriting – he’d hidden them in invisible ink! So the paper had been for us to find all along!
Choose what comes next in the sequence, nosy niece!
Belgium – France – Germany – Poland
Once Daisy had stopped being outraged that Uncle Felix had set the whole thing up, we worked out the correct word, and realized where he had gone at once!
So where was it?
A s e AsY As 1, 2, 3?
To finish up this chapter, I have one more challenge for you: a code that plays with what you’ve just learned and tests you a little more.
In this puzzle, each letter of the alphabet has been assigned a number from 1 to 26 just like before – but it’s not in the same order as the last code you cracked. The numbers aren’t random, but it’s up to you to work out what system has been used to link each number with a letter.
The names of five members of our Detective Society have been encoded using the new code below.
Can you work out what method has been used to assign the numbers?
Once you’ve cracked it, write the full code in the table below. 12345678910111213 14151617181920212223242526
Now you understand the code, use the table to help you decode the names of six places. If you happen to have read my accounts of the Detective Society’s early cases, you might be able to work out what links them . . .
1. Introducing Pigpen
The first set of words can be encoded like this:
MURDER: MURDER
SUSPECT: SUSPECT
ALIBI: ALIBI
CASEBOOK: CASEBOOK
The second set of words can be decoded as follows:
TUESDAY
FRIDAY
MONDAY
WEDNESDAY
SUNDAY
SATURDAY
The listed items are the days of the week (although not in any particular order), but THURSDAY is missing. If you encoded Thursday into Pigpen, it would look like this:
THURSDAY
2. Pigpen Pictures
The word FECEBI when encoded in Pigpen looks like this:
FECEBI
The encoded and decoded words look like this:
CONCUR FEHFBI FEHFBI
JUROR
ABIEI ABIEI
LOVE CESO CESO
CLEAVE FCOZSO FCOZSO
CLUE FCBO FCBO
NOON HEEH HEEH
OCCUR EFFBI EFFBI
UNROLL BHIECC BHIECC
. . . And only you know whether the words you’ve written down are correct!
3. Next-level Pigpen
Written in English, the list reads as follows:
SHORT?READ
WALN?T CAKE
MOO? CAKE
ICED ?UN
MACA?OON
CHELS?A BUN
SQU?SHED FLY BISCUIT
BA?EWELL TART
Of course, each of these terms is a baked treat with the following missing letters:
SHORT?READ needs a B to become SHORTBREAD
WALN?T CAKE needs a U to become WALNUT CAKE
MOO? CAKE needs an N to become MOON CAKE
ICED ?UN needs a B to become ICED BUN
MACA?OON needs an R to become MACAROON
CHELS?A BUN needs an E to become CHELSEA BUN
SQU?SHED FLY BISCUIT needs an A to become SQUASHED FLY BISCUIT
BA?EWELL TART needs a K to become BAKEWELL TART
And, when you read these missing letters from top to bottom, they spell BUNBREAK!
4. Mind the Gap
Of course, the four hidden words are:
LATIN: FORMU LA TIN KERING
MUSIC: HIPPOPOTAMUS IC EBOX
GAMES: CON GA MES SAGE
HISTORY: DELHI STORY TELLER
And they are all subjects that we study at our school, Deepdean!
5. Fruitful Searching
The fruits are hiding as follows:
BANANA : Our Scottish adventure took us to O ban, an a mazing town on the west coast.
LEMON: There was a bit of a scheduling problem on our train journey.
APPLE: The train guard told us to ‘mind the g ap, please’ when getting on the train.
CHERRY: My grandmother had made us a picnic – her rye-bread sandwiches are delicious!
KIWI: I forgot my casebook; I wish I’d taken it with me.
The first letters of the hidden words are B, L, A, C and K, which, of course, spells BLACK . Blackcurrant and blackberry are both fruits that start with the word ‘black’. According to Daisy, there’s also a bush called a blackthorn that grows in the hedges around her house, Fallingford. Its fruits are either called blackthorn berries or sloes, and Chapman the butler uses them to make a sort of wine.
6. Reading Between the Words (and Lines)
Look at the end of every other pair of words and you’ll spot the message.
THE FLU! SEND FOR TH EVERY MIXTURE DOCTORS MAKE? YES!
