Quick Summary

The Story in One Problem

Four nonsense-looking words are clipped to a dead man’s will. The police cannot understand them.

But the note was written on a calendar sheet , and the man receiving it once disappeared after a million-dollar jewellery robbery.

Think before you read: When a clue looks meaningless, should you study the words alone—or also ask where the clue came from?

Meet the people who matter

Leroy “Encyclopedia” Brown

An eighth grader with an extraordinary memory and strong logical reasoning.

Chief Brown

Leroy’s father and Idaville’s Chief of Police. He quietly brings unsolved mysteries to the dinner table.

Mrs Brown

Leroy’s mother, a former high-school teacher who actively questions clues and tries to decode the message.

Nolan and Davenport

Two old robbery suspects whose hidden partnership is central to the mystery.

Where are we?

Idaville, USA.
The main investigation is discussed at the Brown family’s dinner table.
The final clue leads to Nolan’s palm-tree nursery.

The Real Challenge The four words are not meant to be understood normally. Leroy has to discover what rule created them and then work out the word that has deliberately been left unwritten.

A detective at the dinner table — Chief Brown brings home a five-year-old jewellery-robbery mystery that the police have never solved.
Two old suspects — Tim Nolan and Daniel Davenport had met in prison; Davenport vanished after the robbery.
Nolan dies — His will leaves his house and palm-tree nursery to Davenport.
A strange calendar note — A sheet clipped to the will contains four odd words: Nom, Utes, Sweden, Hurts.
One question from Leroy — Encyclopedia asks whether Nolan’s nursery has a young fir tree.
The hidden pattern — The four words are scrambled weekday names with D-A-Y removed: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
The missing fifth word — Friday becomes FIR. The fifth word therefore points to a fir tree.
The loot is found — Police search the young fir tree and find the stolen jewellery inside the twenty-gallon jug of earth from which it grows.