The sky was gradually darkening, and the lights in the teaching building flickered on.
Students who had finished dinner gathered on the playground for a walk.
The equipment room grew dimmer, and the students remained silent. Lin Wanxing stood up and turned on the light.
With a soft click,
the fluorescent tube flickered, illuminating the entire small storeroom.
Qin Ao snapped back to attention: "What freedom do we even have?"
Lin Wanxing: "That’s a complicated question. Are you sure you want to hear it?"
Perhaps her reply sounded dismissive, as Qin Ao averted his gaze.
"You don’t really care whether we go or not, do you? You’re only interested in this."
He tapped the puzzle on the table.
Lin Wanxing studied the student’s face, then twirled her pen and dropped the subject.
The paper still displayed those motivational quotes.
Phrases like "soar freely" or "one must strive for self-improvement" seemed awkward and forced, yet behind the contrivance lay something deliberate.
Lin Wanxing clasped her hands and looked up: "Aren’t you curious about who’s feeding you these lines?"
"I don’t care," Qin Ao said.
"Is that so..." Lin Wanxing paused. "Then maybe I shouldn’t share what I just discovered either?"
Chen Jianghe, who had been standing by the door for a while, finally turned around: "What did you find now?"
Lin Wanxing stopped teasing them and picked up her pen, drawing a straight line on the paper.
She glanced at Qin Ao: "You mentioned earlier that the word count of each sentence relates directly to the numbering symbols?"
"What, is there really a connection?"
"No, think simpler. What if we ignore the numbers and just look at the word count per sentence?"
Chen Jianghe and Qin Ao frowned, studying the paper for a moment, looking ready to give up.
Lin Wanxing: "Simplify the problem. Just say whatever comes to mind."
"Doesn’t seem to follow odd-even patterns," Qin Ao said.
"Are all the word counts under ten?" Chen Jianghe asked.
"Exactly." Lin Wanxing nodded encouragingly at Chen Jianghe. "Every sentence is very short. Not just under ten words—the longest one doesn’t exceed seven characters."
"What does that mean?"
"It means it’s strange." Lin Wanxing tapped her chin with the pen cap, narrowing her eyes.
"Here you go again," Qin Ao said, exasperated. "Why can’t you just say everything at once?"
"Ah, sorry, just borrowing your brains for a moment." Lin Wanxing spoke while thinking. "In reality, motivational quotes are usually long, right? Like this one: ‘Persistent effort forges glory’—they shortened ‘forges’ to just ‘forge’."
She circled the next line: "And this one. ‘One must strive for self-improvement’—we usually say ‘A man must strive for self-improvement’..."
"So what?"
"If this is a puzzle, the creator is deliberately controlling the word count to keep it short," Lin Wanxing explained.
Both Chen Jianghe and Qin Ao had been listening intently, but at this, Qin Ao responded coldly: "Your discovery is kind of boring."
"It is a bit boring. But whoever wrote these put in some effort, didn’t they?" Lin Wanxing smiled. "There’s a second odd thing about these quotes."She circled the character 'Heng' (persistent) in 'Persistent effort forges glory' and 'perseverance', then circled 'Zi' (self) in 'One must strive for self-improvement' and 'soar freely'."
"Each sentence has one repeated character?" Qin Ao finally grasped it.
Lin Wanxing nodded.
"Why would there be repeated characters?" Chen Jianghe asked."I haven't thought of anything yet." As Lin Wanxing spoke, she circled all the repeated characters in pairs within the sentence.
Qin Ao's previously high spirits suddenly deflated. "Forget it," he said, turning to leave.
Lin Wanxing called out to stop him. "We've made significant progress already. Why don't we think about it a bit more?"
"What else is there to think about?"
"Let me summarize. First, assuming this is a puzzle intentionally created for you and me, the other party must want us to solve it. Therefore, it should be simple, similar to these types of questions."
Lin Wanxing picked up "100 Fun Puzzles" from the table and showed it to the two boys. "I've done many fun puzzles and brain teasers today and found that the answers always lie in our blind spots. So, there must be something we've overlooked."
Chen Jianghe took the puzzle book and started flipping through it, while Qin Ao glanced at the seven or eight books on the table. "You read so many today? You're really hardworking, no wonder you could top the exams."
"The college entrance exam is relatively simple; anyone with hands could do it," Lin Wanxing said.
Qin Ao was stunned for a moment. "That's such a pretentious flex, I don't even know how to respond."
Just then, Chen Jianghe's hand, which was flipping through the book, suddenly paused. "What about this one?"
Lin Wanxing looked up.
Chen Jianghe's eyes were bright, filled with excitement.
He placed the book flat on the table, revealing a fun puzzle.
The puzzle was as follows:
Below are 100 squares arranged in a 10x10 grid. Based on the clues from the ten questions, fill in the answers, one character per square.
Black squares indicate no characters.
Hint: Start with the easy ones and gradually fill in the rest.
Horizontal:
A nursery rhyme
The monastic name of Duan Yu, the emperor of Dali Kingdom in "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" after he becomes a monk
The nickname of Ronaldo
The capital of Portugal
The strait between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean
A European country
The first half of the saying "Misfortunes never come singly"
An artifact mentioned in middle school physics textbooks
A traditional performing art
The movement led by Sun Yat-sen and others to overthrow the Qing Dynasty
A line from the ancient poem "Spring Dawn"
A crosstalk performer
Vertical:
I. A clown in a circus
II. The next line of "Ask the world, what is love?"
III. A small, extra newspaper printed by a press for special news
IV. The only U.S. president elected to four terms—Roosevelt
V. The season when everything comes back to life
VI. A song performed by Leslie Cheung
VII. A famous work by Hemingway
VIII. The closest relatives
IX. A famous prime minister from the Spring and Autumn period, whose worth was five sheepskins
X. A Taiwanese female singer
XI. A marine creature with both eyes on the same side
XII. A common phrase to congratulate businesspeople
XIII. An idiom meaning to completely reform oneself
...
Under the light, the black-and-white grid in the lower half of the puzzle stood out vividly.
Lin Wanxing stared at the intersecting points of the horizontal and vertical grids, feeling a subtle sense of wonder.
It was as if something had always been around her, like the wispy smoke from a lit candle, lingering and elusive, impossible to discern.
The moment the black-and-white grid appeared, it was as if a cover had been lifted, revealing the candle itself. Everything suddenly became clear.
Although this puzzle had more blanks to fill, it was undoubtedly similar in nature.
Just fill the corresponding words and phrases into the grid—it was that simple.So that means the 10x10 grid used for solving the puzzle had actually been handed to them long ago?
Lin Wanxing looked at Chen Jianghe, meeting the boy’s equally bright and incredulous gaze.
She stretched out her hand toward Chen Jianghe, palm open.
Understanding her intention, the boy handed her a card.
It was the Free Ball Borrowing Card for 100 Times that he had tentatively tossed to her during their first meeting.
On it were also 100 neatly arranged squares, some of which were covered with faint patterns. If viewed from another angle, treating the areas with light patterns as shaded squares, there were indeed 10 segmented horizontal and vertical sections where corresponding sentences could be filled in.
"Cr...os...sword... puzzle?" Qin Ao finally raised his voice, sounding incredulous.
Lin Wanxing didn’t speak. Her breathing was soft as she set aside the Ball Borrowing Card Chen Jianghe had handed her.
Using a ruler and pencil, she replicated the same grid and pattern positions from the card onto a draft paper.
Starting from the top-left corner, she counted the number of blank squares in each group, following a horizontal-then-vertical order, and marked the counts in the top-left corners.
Then, she matched the short motivational sentences with corresponding word counts into the grid.
It was a very simple process—so straightforward that anyone with hands could do it.
Yet, both Chen Jianghe and Qin Ao held their breath, not daring to make a sound.
One sentence, two sentences, three sentences—the fitting phrases were filled into the grid, matching both word counts and intersecting letters. There were even very few trial-and-error attempts, and the entire crossword was quickly completed.
It was appropriate, perfect, as it should be.
④—Start over.
The character "新" (new) was filled into the middle square of "⑩—口口口.""And as the phrase 'The mountain of books has paths, diligence is the way' was finally written vertically into the crossword, the entire puzzle only had one final blank left: ⑩-口New Book."
Another long silence followed.
Lin Wanxing clasped her hands, resting her chin on them, and looked up at the two students.
The room was dimly lit. Qin Ao also looked up, as if waking from a long dream.
"What ‘new book’?" he grew even more puzzled. "There’s still a blank left for us to guess?"
"Mm." Lin Wanxing stared at the grid on the paper, a strange sense of familiarity washing over her. She looked at the two students before her, hesitating to speak.
"What do you think should go there?" Chen Jianghe asked, his dark eyes bright and focused.
"Fill in one character," Lin Wanxing said.
"Damn, isn’t that obvious?"
"The constraints are as follows: this matter is related to both of you, and the answer should be somewhere you can think of." Lin Wanxing paused. "Think about the common connections between you."
"What ‘new book’?" Qin Ao hesitated. "We both hate studying—could it be ‘read new book’?"
"I have another clue here."
"What clue?"
Lin Wanxing stood up from her chair and crouched beside the desk.
Next to it, in a filing cabinet, was a stack of old newspapers.
There was a teacher who liked to visit the equipment room, sit beside her, take out a few issues, and work on the puzzles in the newspapers.
It was a very old-fashioned habit, memorable precisely because of its dated charm.
Lin Wanxing pulled out a stack of newspapers and placed them on the table.
Mimicking that teacher’s motion of flipping through the papers to find something, she began turning the pages.
For a moment, the only sound in the room was the crisp rustle of paper cutting through the air.Suddenly, Lin Wanxing stopped.
She flattened the newspaper and pointed to the "Sunset Years Section" filling the bottom of the page. In the lower corner of page 16B of the Hongjing Evening News dated July 12th was a crossword puzzle.
Every blank space had been filled in.
Though the handwriting wasn't clear, it was evident that someone had filled it in with pencil.
"Who?" Chen Jianghe asked.
"Teacher Qian," Lin Wanxing said.
"Teacher Qian!" Qin Ao's eyes widened, his voice rising sharply. "You're saying all this was Teacher Qian's doing?"
"I don't know, but he plays crossword puzzles and told me to bring you all to compete. That makes him highly suspicious."
Lin Wanxing's voice was soft, as if she were floating on clouds herself, feeling ethereal and incredulous.
As she spoke, a boy's finger suddenly pointed at the last remaining blank space they had left.
The intersection of all clues, the single character they needed to fill in.
The reasoning had reached this point, and the answer was on the verge of revelation.
⑩ — □ New Book
Qin Ao: "The character that needs to go in that blank space... could it be..."
"Fu," Chen Jianghe said.
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