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ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSAvery Kylie Grambs is a high school junior in New Castle, Connecticut, who waits tables at a diner, plays chess every morning in the park with a homeless man, and keeps a stack of postcards from her late mother, each one a place they planned to see together. When her half sister's boyfriend moves back in, Avery starts sleeping in her ancient Pontiac. Then a silver-eyed young man in a suit, Grayson Hawthorne, turns up in her principal's office with news she can barely take in. His grandfather, the Texas billionaire Tobias Hawthorne, has died and named her in his will, and at the reading in Texas, Avery, a girl who has never even heard of him, learns that he has left her almost all of his $46.2 billion fortune. To keep it, she has to live for a year in Hawthorne House, his enormous castle-like mansion full of secret passages, alongside the furious family he cut out, including four grandsons raised on their grandfather's riddles and puzzles. The old man's letter to Avery says only that he is sorry, and nobody can tell her why he chose her. Jameson, the reckless grandson who calls her "Mystery Girl," is convinced that Avery is his grandfather's final puzzle. As reporters swarm and the family looks for ways to undo the will, Avery wants the answer just as badly as he does.
Free Battle of the Books questions for The Inheritance Games
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 Inheritance Games. 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 billionaire's letter to a stranger hold a two-word apology signed with three initials?
✓ Answer
The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
After the will reading, Avery opens the letter Tobias Hawthorne left her and finds just "Dearest Avery, I'm sorry," signed T. T. H. As far as she knows she never met him, so she can't imagine what he is apologizing for.
- First half
In what book does a boy missing an eyebrow hand a girl a smoke-burping robotic dragon?
✓ Answer
The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
After an unsettling lunch with Thea, Avery runs into Xander, who hands her a robotic dragon because she looks like she could use one. When she asks what to do with it, he says it depends on how attached she is to her eyebrows and raises the one he has left.
- First half
In what book does red film laid over a red-ink will leave only four middle names visible?
✓ Answer
The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
On a Sunday, Avery goes to the law firm and slides the square of red acetate over the Red Will by herself. Every word disappears except the grandsons' middle names, Westbrook, Davenport, Winchester and Blackwood.
- Second half
In what book is a sugar-packet castle "only worth it if you can go five stories tall"?
✓ Answer
The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Sleeping in Libby's bed, Avery dreams she is five or six again, standing sugar packets up into triangles at a diner table. Her mom teases her about building castles out of sugar, and little Avery beams that it's only worth it if you can go five stories tall.
- Second half
In what book does a great-grandmother listen, eyes closed, as a grand piano plays itself?
✓ Answer
The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Following music through the House, Avery finds Nan on the bench of the biggest grand piano she has ever seen and thinks she is playing until she walks closer and realizes the piano is playing itself. Nan explains that you can listen to concerts on it, with a master playing somewhere else in the world.
- Near the end
In what book does a self-portrait's signature, X. X. VIII, hide the numbers ten and eighteen?
✓ Answer
The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Staring at Tobias Hawthorne's self-portrait on the stairs, Avery notices the letters beside his signature are Roman numerals and reads them as ten and eighteen. She finds a button behind the frame, the portrait swings out, and behind it is a keypad.
