Ryan was sure he had been too late. He imagined dozens of guards racing to the elevator.Time seemed to stop. A second ticked by.“Correct password entered,” said the computer. “Security procedures have been aborted. Repeat, security procedures have been aborted.”“You did it Ryan!” screamed Regan happily. She gave her brother a puzzled look. “But how? What did you enter?”Ryan smiled. “I remembered another trick to making short words stand for longer phrases—where and how the words are written. Dad and I had lunch at a restaurant about a year ago while you and Mom were at a birthday party and he jotted down some riddles for me to solve while we waited for our food. He wrote the word “Headache” with each letter split in half and told me it was a shortcut to say something longer. The answer was ‘splitting headache’. Do you get it?”Regan thought about it for a moment and then, smiling, she nodded.“Another one he did was ‘b e d’. The answer was ‘bedspread’—the word ‘bed’ spread out.
