Doubletalk: Codes, Signs, and Symbols

Doubletalk: Codes, Signs, and Symbols


Author	Helen Hovanec
Illustrator	Chuck Wimmer
Publication date	1993
Published by	Bantam Books
ISBN	978-0553372182
Publication Order
Preceded by Alias Diamond Jones	Followed by Rally! A Year's Supply of Fun

Doubletalk: Codes, Signs and Symbols is a title in the Ghostwriter book series featuring Jamal, Lenni, Alex, Gaby, Tina, and Rob. It is an activity book that includes various types of puzzles for the reader to solve.

Summary[]

Easy Hardware[]

The teams helps to build a new display case at the community center. Sally Lewis asks Alex and Lenni to get some supplies from the hardware store. Rob makes a wordlink puzzle about tools while the two team members are busy.

Dizzy Designs[]

Tina and Jamal made square and dot patterns on Jamal's computer, which are part of a computer game Jamal had created. The reader is to pair each design with the one that looks like it.

Signs of the Times[]

On the way home from the community center, Ghostwriter decides to play a joke with the team, by changing the spacing between the letters.

ЯOЯЯIM ˎЯOЯЯIM[]

The team wanted to test Ghostwriter's reading skills, and wrote two jokes, written backwards.

Extra Letters[]

Ghostwriter wrote a a riddle on Jamal's computer, where he wrote two columns of words- one with a word, and the second with another word created from those letters, but without one of them. The reader is to get an answer to a riddle from the extra letters.

Check it Out![]

Lenni, Gaby, and Rob are in the library. They found some funny titles and authors that correlate with each other. The reader is to figure out which ones go with which.

Puzzle of the Year[]

Lenni and Gaby create a wordlink with the months of the year, since the Fort Greene Library had stated that the year was the Year of the Puzzle.

Ann T. Nim[]

The author Ann T. Nim writes the type of book that Alex likes. The reader is to figure out which type that is by solving the puzzle, which the answer is detective books.

Supermarket Mix-Up[]

Jamal's mother had asked him to get some things from the supermarket. He goes there, to discover that a prankster had changed one letter on each sign to create another word than the original. The reader is to make the signs as they were orginally.

Extra! Extra![]

Lenni and Tina want to help Jamal with shopping, and head to get the meat and produce, but the same prankster had also hit that area. The person had this time added an extra letter instead of just changing one letter.

Sandwich Fixings[]

The members of the team that go to Hurston, Jamal, Lenni, Alex, and Rob, meet together at lunch. They had a new clue for a mystery that they were trying to solve. Ghostwriter then created a small puzzle for them, with the answer of what he thought of the new clue: baloney, or that he did not think it was correct.

Anagram Land[]

Alex and Rob want to buy a map from the bookstore so that the former would know more of where his pen pals were from. Ghostwriter creates another puzzle, by making anagrams from some names of countries.

Hidden Furniture[]

Tina needs a chair for a video she is making- but the owner of a thrift shop was also a prankster, and hid the names of the pieces of furniture inside sentences.

Track it Down[]

Gaby and Alex are going shopping, and created a puzzle for Ghostwriter, to see if he could discover which type of store they were heading to, which is a shoe store.

Menu Mess[]

Lenni's father took the team to a restaurant on Lenni's birthday. The team splits into groups, and Jamal's group saw that someone had changed one letter in some of the menu items, such as "Noodles with batter", instead of "Noodles with butter."

Dog Watching[]

Rob wants to get a dog, and so he and Alex got to a pet shop, where they create a word search puzzle that includes the names of several breeds of dogs. The leftover letters answer a riddle- "What should you do with noisy dogs when you go shopping?" The answer is to put them in a barking lot.

Bird's Eye View[]

Jamal and Lenni heard about the word search that Rob and Alex had created, and decide to create a similar one, based off of different types of birds. The leftover letters answer the riddle: "What do birds say on Halloween?" The answer is "Trick or tweet."

Animal Speak[]

Gaby and Tina create a small puzzle with one missing word from various expressions that include animals.

Bake-Off[]

Tina takes her younger sister, Linda, to the bakery to get a treat. Linda wants something sweet, and Tina created a word link puzzle with baked goods, such as bagels and doughnuts. Some boxes are shaded, and the reader is the unscramble them to get the answer to a riddle to what Linda got, which is a toothache.

Dep art ments to re[]

The team and Jamal's older sister, Danitra, went to a department store for holiday shopping. Tina and Gaby want to get a dress for Lenni, Lenni wants to get a doll for her cousin, Alex wants to have his purchase gift-wrapped, Rob wants to get a new shirt for his father, Jamal does not want to go up more than three flights of stairs, and Danitra is walking her friend's poodle.

However, someone had changed the spacing on the signs. The reader is to figure out which sign is one for each person or pair. Also, the person that could not go into the department store is Danitra, since dogs are not permitted to come inside.

Clothes Code[]

Tina goes to the clothing department, but finds that yet another person had changed the signs. Ghostwriter gives Tina the answer to the code, which is to change each letter to the one that comes before it in the alphabet.

Good Sports[]

Gaby and Jamal are getting new karate uniforms at a sporting goods store. The former changed a letter in each sign, which made one word into another word, such as "shoulder pads" into "shoulder pods."

Cut it Out[]

Lenni's father asked her get to some things from a drugstore. However, another prankster had been there before her, and had cut out a small word from larger words.

Tossed Salad[]

Gaby and Alex are in the bodega, when Ghostwriter scrambles the letters on the signs from the vegetable stand. Gaby wonders what he is doing, and Ghostwriter answers that he is making tossed salad.

Notable Note[]

Gaby discovers a torn-up note on Alex's desk, and is quite shocked when she starts to put it together, but Ghostwriter assures her that it means something else when put together the correct way.

Spaced Out[]

Rob created a word link puzzle for Gaby about Galaxy Girl, with a small story with some capitalized words that would go into the puzzle. The highlighted boxes in the word link solve a riddle, which is to figure out what Galaxy Girl's favorite TV channel is. The answer is M TVenus.

Lost in Spice[]

Gaby, Alex, and their father receive an order of new spices for the bodega. However, the labels are torn, and the reader is to figure out where the torn pieces go on the spice bottles.

Symbol Code[]

Gaby had collected ghost jokes for Ghostwriter in a picture code so that he could not read them before she told them to him. The reader is to use the code to figure out the riddle and its answer. The riddle is, "What kind of mistake does a ghost make?", and the answer is a boo-boo.

Symbol Box[]

There is another ghost riddle from Gaby, where there is another picture code to be able to answer the riddle, "What did the mother ghost say to her children when the got into the car?" The answer is to fasten your sheet belts.

Notes

Dekalb Avenue, the street that Rob’s house is on, is mentioned in a small story that he wrote for Gaby. A street sign with the road name is also seen in the picture of Brooklyn by the table of contents.
Though the cover of the book states that there are thirty puzzles, there are actually only twenty-nine numbered sections. However, there is an introductory section offering hints for solving puzzles with a few practice puzzles that could count as a thirtieth section.
The same picture icons of the team from the Ghostwriter book Rally! A Year's Supply of Fun are shown in the beginning of the book.
There is a mistake in the answer section for the twenty-third section, "Cut it Out", where the wrong part of a word is underlined (In "tissues", "ues" is underlined instead of "sue").