Puzzle 7 Las Vegas Strip 

“Hit me,” you say, face impassive. Your demeanor screams cool, confident player, the kind of person who does this all the time.

“Boss,” Teddy whispers. “You don’t say ‘hit me’ in poker.”

Beside you, Clarissa scoffs. “Typical,” she sneers in a low voice in your direction. Then she turns to the others in the game with a triumphant smile, showing her hand approximately eight steps too soon.

“Uno,” she declares in triumph.

You’re in this high-stakes card game because a coded message lightly traced on the envelope of the last puzzle strongly suggested that the next one would be hidden in Vegas, in a card game, at this very latitude and longitude. Sure enough, when you arrived, a familiar silver envelope was sitting in the center of the table, waiting to go home with someone as a prize.

You’d thought a familiarity with the classic card game “52 Card Pick-Up” would give you an edge here, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that both you and Clarissa are, for lack of a better word, terrible at this. It’s not my fault, you want to scream. I devoted my whole life to the kinds of puzzles that win you the satisfaction of a job well done, not money.

The frustration almost has you seeing double. You’re wrapping your head around what seems to be the only remaining option—grabbing the envelope and kicking your way through the window—when Teddy sets down his cards in front of the table and a chorus of groans goes up.

“The pot is yours,” grunts the gruff, eye-patch-wearing host at your partner.

“How’d you get so good at that game?” you ask Teddy on the way out, Clarissa stalking sulkily behind you two.

Teddy almost seems to blush.

“I’m passable,” he says. “But not anything to brag about. To be honest, my whole family thinks I’m a bit of a wastrel.”

“I was impressed,” you say lightly, sliding open the silver envelope.