BookBright
ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSIn September 1939, war breaks out in Europe, and across Britain teenage girls are quietly recruited for a job nobody will explain to them. Eighteen-year-old Patricia Owtram joins the Wrens because she likes the uniform and ends up listening to enemy radio signals through a pair of headphones at a secret coastal station. Jane Hughes gets a strange letter from an old schoolmate and trades a debutante's ball gown for a coding machine at a country estate called Bletchley Park. Mavis Lever is pulled out of nurse's training because she speaks German and ends up at that same mysterious estate, where a rumpled scholar hands her a stack of gibberish and puts her straight to work. None of the ten real teenagers this book follows know at first what they are actually doing there. They only know they have signed a paper promising never to talk about it, to anyone, for the rest of their lives. The Enigma Girls tells their story.
Free Battle of the Books questions for The Enigma Girls: How Ten Teenagers Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets, and Helped Win World War II
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 Enigma Girls: How Ten Teenagers Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets, and Helped Win World War II. 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 letter say, "I'm at Bletchley and it's perfectly frightful"?
✓ Answer
The Enigma Girls: How Ten Teenagers Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets, and Helped Win World War II by Candace Fleming
Elizabeth Blandy wrote out of the blue to a schoolmate she had not spoken to in years, begging her to come and help with work she refused to describe. That strange letter is what pulled Jane Hughes away from a life of debutante parties.
- First half
In what book does a new indexer wonder whether LW means the air force or liver sausage?
✓ Answer
The Enigma Girls: How Ten Teenagers Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets, and Helped Win World War II by Candace Fleming
Sarah Norton had to memorize a system of colors and abbreviations that was far too classified to be written down on any chart. Luftwaffe and leberwurst both begin with those letters, so her first days in the Index Room were a lot of guessing.
- First half
In what book do pranksters steer an admiral into a freshly whitewashed wall?
✓ Answer
The Enigma Girls: How Ten Teenagers Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets, and Helped Win World War II by Candace Fleming
Admiral Cunningham came to Cottage 3 to toast Mavis Lever and her colleagues for putting the Italian Navy out of action for the rest of the war. They were still teenagers, and the paint was still wet, so the hero of Matapan walked away looking a bit like a skunk from behind.
- Second half
In what book does a young recruit plan to buy underwear made from captured parachute silk?
✓ Answer
The Enigma Girls: How Ten Teenagers Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets, and Helped Win World War II by Candace Fleming
Gwen Davies had a whole free day in London before her Air Ministry interview, so she made big plans and started with a shop on Regent Street. The underclothes the WAAF issued her were itchy and bulky, and German parachute silk sounded like an enormous improvement.
- Second half
In what book do Wrens sleep in an old stable block with swallows nesting in the rafters?
✓ Answer
The Enigma Girls: How Ten Teenagers Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets, and Helped Win World War II by Candace Fleming
Diana Payne was moved to Wavendon Manor, a lovely sixteenth century mansion the Wrens were never allowed to live inside. Their stable dormitory was freezing in winter, baking in summer, full of mice, and had only a primitive outhouse.
- Near the end
In what book does a watcher spot something like an upside-down table with long spindly legs?
✓ Answer
The Enigma Girls: How Ten Teenagers Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets, and Helped Win World War II by Candace Fleming
From the Abbot's Cliff watchtower, Patricia Owtram saw destroyers, landing craft, and minesweepers streaming toward Portsmouth, plus one object she could not identify. Only later did she learn it was part of a prefabricated floating harbor that would let Allied forces unload troops and cargo on the beaches of France.
