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The guys were staring at me like I’d grown a third eye in the middle of my forehead. With hands that were physically shaking, I pointed downward.
“Look, the answer’s embedded in the clue itself: ‘don’t let this challenge put you on your head’.”
“So?”
I turned my head down as far as it would go, bending at the hip so I could look at things from a different perspective. When I did, I got evenmoreexcited.
“The frame!” I shouted. “Turn it over!”
Devin hopped up and took hold of the puzzle’s sturdy, sheetmetal border. When he tried moving it, it resisted with a click.
“There’s a latch!”
He pulled the latch back and the whole thing spun freely, fixed to the wall by a central axis. At one-hundred eighty degrees it clicked again, as another latch locked it into place.
“Nowtry the pieces!”
With the frame turned right-side up, gravity was finally on our side. The pieces fell perfectly into the places we originally thought they should go, creating a gradual ‘V’ like the bottom of an ice-cream cone. The shapes fit, and the colors aligned with each other. But the most interesting part was that now the holes in the pieces lined up too.
“There’s still something missing…”
I saw Reese’s head whip around, his eyes scanning the room wildly.
“That bar!”
“What bar?”
“The metal one we had to remove from the frame, in order to start putting the pieces in,” he explained quickly. “It hadpinsin it!”
A quick search located the bar pushed off to one side of the cinder-block wall. Reese snatched it up and handed it to him.
“Put it in the—”
Devin nodded enthusiastically. “I know!”
He tried inserting it the first time and it didn’t fit. But then he flipped the bar over, and the pins aligned perfectly with the holes in the key-plates. With one quick push, he slammed it home.
“Now what?”
“TURN IT!” we all screamed at once.
Devin rotated the bar clockwise, and now the whole puzzle turned. When it reached the 180-degree mark there was an even louder click… and a door popped open on the other side of the room.
The four of us were through the opening before the clanging of the discarded bar had finished echoing off the walls of the cinder-block warehouse. The room was empty, except for another camera crew. That, plus a single video screen mounted over our heads that blinked instantly to life.
“Congrats, Dream Team!” Noah’s smiling face greeted us. “You’re still in it!”
We looked at each other in confusion, then back at the screen.
“Is this live?” Hayden mused. “Or is it pre-recorded, or…”
“Of course it’s live!” Noah laughed, peering back at us jovially. “Just because I can’t be in nine places at once doesn’t mean—”
“Forget all that,” Reese cut him off excitedly. “What place are we in?”
“Hmmm,” Noah teased, stroking his chin for effect. “How does sixth sound?”
“Sounds like the middle of the pack,” Devin grumbled.
