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ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSThe Bletchley Riddle follows siblings Jakob and Lizzie Novis in the summer of 1940, as England braces for a German invasion. Jakob, nineteen and a Cambridge mathematics student, has been secretly pulled into Britain's code breaking operation at Bletchley Park, sworn to an Official Secrets Act that keeps him from telling anyone, even his own sister, what he does all night in the huts on the grounds. Fourteen year old Lizzie refuses to board the ship taking her to safety in America, choosing instead to track down her brother and get to the bottom of what happened to their mother, Willa, an American embassy worker who disappeared in Poland the year before and was declared dead without a funeral. When Lizzie talks her way into a job as a messenger at the Park, she starts piecing together a locked diary, coded newspaper recipes, and a trail of names that convince her Willa's death was never as certain as everyone claims.
Free Battle of the Books questions for The Bletchley Riddle
SPOILERSEvery one of these has the same answer, and that is the point. In a real battle the question is read aloud with a dozen other books in play, and students have a few seconds to place it. Here is what a battle might ask about The Bletchley Riddle. Use them as a quiz, a trivia round, or BOTB practice.
Where in the book they come from
- Early in the book
In what book does a chaperone soak his blistered feet in a pan aboard a ship?
✓ Answer
The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin
Lizzie deliberately marched Mr. Fleetwood around the whole of Liverpool so he would be too worn out to watch her. His sore feet and his fondness for a drink are what let her slip off the ship before it sails for America.
- First half
In what book does a boy introduce himself to an embassy guard as being from the Mutton family?
✓ Answer
The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin
Lizzie bluffs past the armed guards by announcing herself as Miss Elizabeth Novis of the Cleveland family. Colin plays along with a grand family name of his own, which is really just the name of the inn his parents run.
- First half
In what book does a brother ask his sister whether their mother's last hug was unusually tight?
✓ Answer
The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin
Jakob keeps replaying the bear hug with his mother's chin digging into his shoulder, because she had never held him like that before. Lizzie will not answer him, since that goodbye is the one memory too painful for her to examine.
- Second half
In what book does a mathematician bury his savings in silver and map the spot in cipher?
✓ Answer
The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin
Jakob overhears Welchman teasing Alan Turing about hiding silver ingots out in the woods in case the Germans take over. Turing insists it is safer than a bank and admits he drew a map of the hiding place in code, which Welchman says will need a machine to crack.
- Second half
In what book does a girl send her best friend to America in her place?
✓ Answer
The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin
Lizzie and Marion swapped clothes in Colin's room, and Marion boarded the plane hidden behind the black mourning veil. Going to America was Marion's dream, and Lizzie hid at the inn for a week while even Jakob believed she was gone.
- Near the end
In what book is a machine described as a bookshelf with spinning rotors where books would go?
✓ Answer
The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin
Jakob steps into a new hut built where the hedge maze used to stand and finds the second bombe clacking away, its back a spiderweb of colored wires. Welchman is behind it with tweezers, racing to finish before the German invasion comes.
