The Alice in Wonderland Puzzle

"Spell it out, Alice," demanded the schoolteacher.

"Where... Where am I? Who are you?" Alice stammered in confusion.

The schoolteacher looked at Alice in surprise, nervously glanced around the room, leaned forward, and reprimanded Alice in a stern whisper. "Quiet, before someone hears you! Don’t you know that all characters must pretend they have always existed? Now act as if you know what’s going on... and DON’T get out of character again."

Alice averted her eyes from the teacher’s frosty stare and blushed with embarrassment. "Sorry," she mumbled under her breath.

"So spell it out!" the teacher continued, returning to her normal poise.

"Spell what out?" Alice asked timidly.

"How can you not know what word I asked you to spell, Alice? Have you been daydreaming in class again?"

"I suppose I must have been," Alice replied.

"Mind you, pay attention from now on."

Alice took a deep breath to calm herself and looked around the room. She found herself sitting at a desk in a small schoolroom. The walls were lined with various blackboards and corkboards. The blackboards were covered with meaningless chalk marks, and the corkboards were covered with horribly immature stick-figure drawings. Surprisingly enough, as Alice turned to look at the back wall, she discovered a large looking-glass mounted upon the wall, obviously placed there by the author for the sole purpose of revealing a physical description of Alice.

Alice looked at the looking-glass, directly into her crystal-blue eyes. She quickly scanned her very youthful face and traced the wavy paths of her long, blonde hair. Moving her gaze downward, she came to the realization that she had no breasts. Trying not to show her brief disappointment, she continued to examine her blue, English-style school dress. Realizing that there was nothing else worth describing, she looked up again at the schoolteacher.

Something seemed out of place to Alice, but she wasn't sure what it was. She thought for a moment and then spoke up. "Teacher?"

"Yes, Alice?"

"Are you male or female?"

"WHAT?!?!"

"Well, it hasn't yet been specified in the story."

The teacher turned bright red. "How dare you! You insolent little girl! I'll have you deleted from the story if you ever-"

Catching herself, the teacher struggled to regain her poise. With strain in her voice she tried to continue calmly. "You may address me as Mrs. Lewis, if you please."

"Yes, Mrs. Lewis."

"Now, as I said before, spell erogenous."

Alice protested, "I can't spell that, I'm only ten years old."

"I don’t care!" the teacher blurted out angrily. "As long as you're in my class you will know how to spell erogenous!"

"Fine," replied Alice rather haughtily. "E-R-O-G-E-N-O-U-S. Erogenous."

Astonished yet again, Mrs. Lewis looked at Alice and asked, "How on Earth did you know that?"

Straightforwardly, Alice replied, "Well, it was written right on the page."

"STOP THAT RIGHT NOW, ALICE! You will maintain a modicum of decorum. Now please spell protuberance."

Alice rolled her eyes, took a deep breath, and recited at top speed,

"P-R-O-T-U-P-E-R-A-N-C-E. Protuberance."

"No Alice. When you're having trouble, you must sound out the word. Now try spelling the word inappropriately."

Tiring of this game, Alice rattled off the answer in a drone-like voice. "I-N-A-P-P-P-R-O-P-P-R-I-A-T-E-L-Y. Inappropriately.

Mrs. Lewis, having just scored a giant victory, gave a sinister grin and exalted, "You can't correctly spell a single word I give you! Do you even know your alphabet? Recite the alphabet...backwards."

Alice was getting quite annoyed by now. She took a deep breath and recited the alphabet at top speed:

"Z-Y-X-W-V-U-T-S-R-Q-O-N-M-L-K-J-I-H-G-F-E-D-C-B-A"

Mrs. Lewis seemed somewhat displeased but did not explain why. Instead, she continued to harass Alice by insulting the little girl's intelligence. "Now Alice, I'm going to ask you some simple math questions to see if you remember your multiplication tables. What is 5 times 2?"

"10."

"What is 8 times 6?"

"48."

"What is 7 times 3?"

"23."

The teacher chuckled and began scolding, "Alice, you should know better than that. That is wrong."

"How do you know? I would choose 23."

"Well, I know that 7 times 3 is... it has never been 23."

Alice replied in honest confusion, "But if you already knew what 7 times 3 was, why did you ask me?"

At this point, Mrs. Lewis flew off the handle. "THAT'S IT! OUT! Go to the headmaster's office right now!"

Rather calmly, Alice rose, turned to face the door and marched out into the hallway. She walked down the hall rather aimlessly. She had no idea where the headmaster's office was located, but she had a feeling that if she wandered long enough she would eventually get there. As her feet wandered down the hall, her mind started wandering as well.

Her mind snapped back to attention as she spied a white rabbit in a waistcoat and gloves running past her. "How curious," she thought to herself. "And how familiar..." Without warning, her mind suddenly was filled with images and memories of previous adventures. "Ohhh, it's the White Rabbit."

The White Rabbit turned his head to look back as he continued running down the hallways and turning corners rather quickly. He called back to Alice who was trying her best to keep up, "Why Mary Ann, what are you doing out here? You must follow me home this moment to help me get ready. I have a very important date."

Alice was running out of breath from turning so many corners at top speed. She didn't want to let the White Rabbit get out of sight. She tried to keep up, but the White Rabbit kept getting further and further ahead. At one point, Alice cried out, "Please wait, White Rabbit, I can't keep up with you!"

The White Rabbit hollered back without slowing his pace one bit. "Wait? WAIT? I can't wait! There's no time to wait! Just follow wherever you thoughts may take you."

She could just make out the tail of the White Rabbit's waistcoat as he turned the corner at the end of a long hallway. She ran to the end of the hall and looked around the corner, but the White Rabbit was gone and she could not determine which way he had traveled. She walked forward a little farther and turned left. Then she turned right, but she still could not see the White Rabbit. Alice paused and realized that she was completely, totally, and utterly lost. A wave of confusion and despair swept over her. "Follow my thoughts?" she thought. "What on Earth could the White Rabbit possibly have meant?"

Trying to hold back her tears, she looked around another corner. She could see that further down the hall the light was much dimmer. In the darkness she thought she saw a quick flash of white. Could it be the White Rabbit? She ran down toward the dark end of the hall. The light kept fading as she continued down the hall. She turned yet another corner and found herself in complete darkness. She whirled around but couldn't make out any light from the way she had come.

Surrounded by total nothingness and scared half to death, Alice screamed out for help, but no sound came out! She soon realized that she couldn't sense a floor under her feet, in fact, she couldn’t sense anything at all!

The blackness enveloped her for what seemed like forever (well, at least five minutes) as Alice's fear grew. The silence was finally broken by a loud crashing sound. The darkness around her shattered like glass and fell away in pieces, leaving the soft pastel colors of an early morning countryside.

Looking to the north, Alice noticed a large hill sloping gently toward a clear, blue sky. The hill and the surrounding meadow were scattered with trees and flowers. The flowers were buzzing with the sounds of Rocking-horse-flies, Snap-dragon-flies, Bread-and-butter-flies and such. The wind was blowing east, and all the trees were bending in rhythm with the wind toward the west. The clouds, too, were moving westward. "How curious," thought Alice. "I must be back in the world beyond the looking-glass."

"I should see the landscape far better, if I could just get to the top of that hill." Remembering the strange physical properties of this world, Alice proceeded to walk away form the hill and soon found herself steadily approaching the top As she climbed the hill, she noticed a large, round shape underneath a large tree on the top of the hill. When she reached the top she was happy to see one of her old friends, Tweedle Dee.

Tweedle Dee spoke up right away. "How d'ye do?" He extended his hand toward Alice abruptly. As Alice reached out to shake hands with him, he grabbed her and began dancing around the tree with her. After several frantic circles around the tree, they stopped dancing and collapsed on the ground.

"Just fine," Alice panted, trying to catch her breath as she leaned against the tree and started to relax in the shade.

"Well, aren't you going to ask me how I'm doing?" piped Tweedle Dee. "It is your turn, you know."

"Oh I'm sorry," exclaimed Alice. "I didn't mean to be rude. How are you doing?"

"Quite horribly, thank you." Tweedle Dee shrugged his shoulders briefly and smiled.

With genuine concern, Alice asked Tweedle Dee what was wrong.

"I can’t find my brother, Tweedle Dum. He's disappeared into oblivion," Tweedle Dee said in his most melodramatic voice. As he finished his sentence, Tweedle's smile immediately vanished and he burst out into tears. Tweedle Dee rolled around on the grass, bawling like a baby, and pounding his fists against the ground. "He's gone. All gone. My life is inside out..." He paused, listening for ..."and contrariwise," but there was none to be heard. His fit ended as suddenly as it had began. He stood up and smiled again.

"I'm sorry for you. Is there anything I can do for you?"

Tweedle Dee continued melodramatically, "No, it's alright. Nothing you could possibly do would help to ease the terrible pain I feel. However, if you really want to help, I do have one question for you."

"What is your question?"

"What is MY question? Who ever said I had a question?"

"You just said that you had a question for me!" Alice insisted.

"That's right, the question was for you. Therefore it was your question, not mine!"

"Fine," replied Alice. "Ask my question."

"Your question is: Do you have a lucky number?"

Alice thought for a moment. "No, not particularly. Although, I always have been somewhat partial to the number thirteen." Strangely enough, it reminded her of shaving cream...

Tweedle Dee raised an eyebrow. "Oh?" Tweedle Dee scanned Alice with a new look of reappraisal and muttered under his breath, "It's a shame she doesn't have any breasts."

"Excuse me? What was that?"

"Oh, nothing. I was just saying that it's a shame you don't have a lucky number."

"Why? Do you have a lucky number, Tweedle Dee?"

"No, you see, that's just the problem. Tweedle Dum had our lucky number, and now that he's gone, I'm without a lucky number. He must have lost the number one day. That is why I'm unlucky and can't find Tweedle Dum, and that is why he is unlucky and can't find me."

"Do you have any idea where he might have lost your lucky number?"

Tweedle Dee shrugged and said, "Well, the last time I saw him, he told me he was going to go play his favorite game with his best friend."

"Do you know what his favorite game or who his best friend was?" asked Alice.

"Of course not, little girl. If I knew that, I wouldn't be stuck in this horrible mess. I will tell you what I know, however, so that maybe you can find a way to help him. First of all, I know that his best friend is one of the people down the other side of this hill at the tea party right now. Also, there is a small chance that something from Tweedle Dum's collection of toys might help you figure out who his best friend is. Before he left to play the game, he was playing with them."

Alice looked skeptically at Tweedle Dee. Tweedle Dee noticed her expression and protested, "Really, I'm serious." He reached into his trousers and fished around in his pockets for a moment. Pulling his hands out of his pockets, he produced a box that couldn't have possibly fit into his trousers in any way. "Take a look, Alice. Maybe you'll find a clue that's useful."

Warily, Alice reached for the box and placed it on the ground. She opened the box and started sifting through the contents. She found numerous trucks, tops, a few very strange BINGO cards, and a paper doll lying in the bottom of the box. The paper doll looked particularly familiar to her as she pulled it out and inspected it closely. Speaking to the doll she said, "oh Georgie. Your head is in the clouds with ambition, and though you claim that you feet are on the ground, where, oh where, is your heart?" With a twinge of regret, she placed the doll back in the box and continued looking through the box. Not finding anything else of interest, she returned the box to Tweedle Dee for him to stash in his trouser pockets.

"Oh well, " said Tweedle Dee. "I'm sorry that wasn't more help."

"It's alright. I'll still do my best to help you recover your lucky number."

"Thank you very much, Alice." Tweedle Dee bowed in humble gratitude as Alice began walking down the hill.

At the base of the hill, there was a table set out under a tree. The March Hare and the Mad Hatter were having tea at it. A dormouse also had a place set for him at the table, but he was fast asleep inside a teapot at his setting. The Hatter's eyes widened as he recognized Alice. "Alice, come and join us for tea; our tea party has just begun."

"Yes, yes, the party's just beginning," repeated the March Hare.

Alice cast the group a somewhat doubtful look and asked, "Are you sure that this isn't the same tea party you all were having the last time I was here?"

Much to her surprise, her question became answered as she looked around the table and found that her old friends had just barely started their usual pastime. Instead of a mess that could only be rivaled by students at a college night, the table looked reasonably neat, which surprised Alice. Oh, well, yes , there was a spilled drink here or a spot where the butter had somehow managed to miss somebody's bun, but for the most part, the table was surprisingly neat. All the plates not currently in use were clean, except for one plate at a currently unoccupied seat between the March Hare and the Mad Hatter. (Alice assumed that someone had briefly stepped out to play with one of the various games strewn across the countryside.)

Speaking of which, the scenery certainly did merit a second look. Board games and toys littered the checkerboarded hills. All the creatures of the meadow were romping in, out, and about the various games. Many of the games consisted of live pieces which often moved of their own accord (and rarely with any regard to the rules).

Her curiosity sparked, Alice sat down at the tea table and asked the Hatter, "Why are there so many games in every direction I look?"

In the midst of pouring himself some tea, the Hatter looked up at Alice. He looked back down just in time to notice that his cup was about to overflow. He placed the teapot back on the table. Leaning back in his chair and crossing his legs, the Hatter picked up his teacup and began sipping his tea calmly. As he took his first sip, he started screaming, "COLD! COLD! IT'S BURNING COLD!" He quickly picked up a heat cube and began sucking on it slowly. With his mouth stuffed, he began to speak to Alice. "Mmph oogla straunam."

"Excuse me?"

The Mad Hatter turned and spit out the cube. Just as the Dormouse had risen out of the teapot, the cube fell and landed on his head. The Dormouse quickly lapsed back into unconsciousness. The Hatter resumed, "I said, would you like a squeeze of sugar in your tea, perhaps? Or maybe a couple lumps of lemon?"

Alice complained, "But I don't even have any tea in front of me, yet."

"That's because everyone always celebrates," returned the Hatter, mad as ever.

"I don't understand what that has to do with my tea."

"What tea? You don't have any tea."

"Exactly, but-"

"I was talking about the games."

"Oh do please continue," exclaimed Alice, forgetting all about her tea (or rather her lack thereof).

"I was trying to explain to you (when you so rudely interrupted) that there are so many games here because everyone always celebrates."

Alice protested, "but people can't always celebrate!"

The March Hare, having finished successfully putting his elbow in his teacup, turned and interjected, "Why not? Today, for instance, is my unbirthday. And a very merry unbirthday it is...."

Before they were able to break into song and dance, Alice asked, "But how do people get any work done?"

The Dormouse lifted his head slowly and looked around the table. "Work...is...so...(sigh)...tiring." The Dormouse fell back asleep into the teapot.

"Why does anyone need to get any work done?" the Hatter answered.

The March Hare echoed, "Yeah, why does anyone need to get any work done?"

"I don't rightly know," Alice said with hesitation. "I suppose that people need to work in order to get money."

The March Hare smiled and replied, "Oh, I don't know about that. I know some people who have earned a couple hundred pounds just by running around the countryside playing games."

"I don’t believe you," Alice retorted indignantly.

"Besides," the Hatter continued, "even so, why do you need money? Money isn’t any good unless you use it to celebrate. So why not skip the work part and just celebrate?"

Alice was stumped. "Perhaps you are right, but I would think it would get somewhat boring to always be celebrating and playing games."

"Well then, you obviously aren't thinking correctly," snapped the Hatter.

"But how can you celebrate when one of your friends, Tweedle Dum, is missing?" Alice demanded angrily.

The dormouse groggily interjected, "Fee...Fie...Foe...Fum...I smell...(yawn)... the tea...of Tweedle Dum."

"We just assumed that since Tweedle Dum was missing, he wouldn’t know that we were celebrating and therefore wouldn't be offended," the March Hare explained. The Hatter nodded in affirmation as he took a sip of tea.

Alice responded with great disgust, "I should have known that I couldn't count on any of you to be of help. Now if you will just tell me who Tweedle Dum's best friend is so that I can help to recover his lucky number, I will be on my way."

"If that's all you wanted, you should have just said so in the first place! Tweedle Dum's best friend is-"

"Off with their heads! OFFFFF WITH THEIR HEADS!!!!!!!"

Alice cringed as she heard another all-too familiar voice. She turned to see the Queen of Hearts storming over to the table, ordering the execution of anything in her path, animate or otherwise.

Alice turned back to discover that the table was empty; all her tea party friends were cowering under the table, doing their best to appear inanimate, a task betrayed by their constant shaking; all that is, except the Dormouse, who was shaking in the teapot instead.

"OFFFFF WITH EVERYBODY'S-Alice! Alice, how, may I say, it is pleasant to see you! I just got finished playing a game of solitaire, but I lost, so I had no choice but to order for my own head. How I would love to play a few of these games with you!"

"All of you," the queen added, with no small menace. At this point, the lid on the teapot was rattling quite loudly; indeed, the table itself had a case of the shakes as well.

"Well, I..." Alice managed to say before she was whisked off by the queen to the games.

"Fist," said the queen, we shall play jacks. She brought Alice over to one area of the gaming fields, where Alice discovered that these jacks, which she had seen from the tea-table, were much bigger that she was. Alice approached one of the giant jacks and tried to move it with all her might, but it remained stubbornly where it sat.

The queen grabbed Alice's hand and led her over to the giant ball. "You may go first," she said with a smile that made Alice uncomfortable (Indeed, it must have been uncomfortable for the queen as well; it stretched from ear to ear).

"First, bounce the ball as high as you can. Then..."

"Wait! Wait! I can’t do that, I'm just a little girl!"

"Well, then," she said, as her smile brightened and then diminished. "We shall play backgammon." And she grabbed Alice, who by now was quite tired of being dragged around by her wrists, off across the fields to a backgammon board.

This board, however, was much too small; Alice could hardly distinguish the pieces from each other.

The queen took no notice of the delicacy of the board and continued, "Very well, Alice, the board has been set. Make your move."

As Alice approached the backgammon board, the Mad Hatter, March Hare, and the Dormouse managed to overcome their fear and came up to the board to see Alice's move. Alice, sensing the company, nervously reached her hand over to move a piece when the Dormouse, who was being soaked in cold tea by the Hatter and the Hare, sneezed very loudly. Alice jumped, knocking all the pieces off the board.

"Off with their heads!!!" The others fled, and Alice was left alone with the queen, who grabbed her wrist once again and dragged her across the landscape.

"Next, we will play croquet, said the queen, as if nothing had happened. Alice, by now, was quite out of breath, and was completely uninterested in another bout with flamingoes or hedgehogs. Nevertheless, she awkwardly hoisted one of the birds and proceeded to chase the small animals around the posts, which were too small for the hedgehogs to fit through, so that they would often get stuck.

As often Fate would have such matters, Alice did manage to get her hedgehog to move; the flamingo screeched as its head was about to hit the hedgehog, startling the exhausted animal and sending him running into another hedgehog, that of the queen. The concept of the hedgehog's being knocked out (and, more importantly, the queen's losing) was terrifying to everybody, and the game quickly fell apart, but not before that queen could order for the heads of most of the animals present.

"Well, then, we shall play chess," the queen announced when she regained her composure. Alice knew very little about the rules of chess, but she was rather sure that the pieces weren't supposed to move on their own accord. Confused, Alice made moves without much purpose, which pleased the queen, who was winning. What pleased the queen less, however, was the continual stream of suggestions, encouragements, and cheers that the other tea party members gave Alice instead of her. After a suggestion by the Hatter that Alice castle and take all of the queen's pieces at once, she glared at him so fiercely that he tried to climb back into his hat, once again disturbing the board.

"I wonder," sighed Alice, as her wrist was gripped firmly again, "whether we shall ever be able to finish a game without the board being overturned?"

Alice's spirits brightened a little when she saw that the queen was about to play jump rope. The March Hare and the Dormouse had returned and they all took turns holding the ropes and skipping until the Dormouse fell asleep while he was holding the rope and the Hare became horribly tangled and Alice had to come help untie him before he garroted himself to death. He was such a pitiful mess that even the queen refrained from ordering his execution, at least until after he was untangled.

Soon, Alice found herself being led again to yet another game, this time scrabble.

"I'm not very good at that game," Alice tried to explain. "I was never very good with words."

"Nonsense!" returned the queen, putting down the word "pernicious" and earning almost as many points as she claimed.

So Alice played, paying more attention to keeping the board intact that to the game itself. Twice she just managed to keep the board level as the queen lunged at the Mad Hatter, who had returned and was spelling our various words questioning the queen's virtue.

"Why aren't you keeping up? I just scored 500 points this turn." The Queen of Hearts asked.

Alice, again, tried to explain that her vocabulary wasn't that good; for instance she had no idea what that particularly long word was that the Hatter was spelling.

I was obvious that the Queen understood, because her face became quite red and her eyes bugged out in a furious passion.

The Hatter was over the next ridge before she could say "Off..."

One sore wrist later, Alice found herself before an unusual game of what she presumed to be hopscotch. The markings on the ground looked similar to the hopscotch squares back home, but as the players jumped from square to square, the markings would move, so that it was almost impossible to get to the stone she threw, never mind return home.

Alice started to cry in exasperation, when the queen explained why the squares were trying so hard to keep people off of them. "Would you want someone like me to jump on top of you?" she asked, and Alice began to sympathize very deeply with the squares that had to undergo that particular punishment.

Indeed, when the queen began to take her turn, all of the squares fled; in mid-hop the queen realized that she had no place to land and hung in the air, furious, for several minutes.

Finally, after the queen had come down, she dragged Alice to a table not far from the tea-table and brought out a deck of cards.

"Sit down, Alice. Now we are going to play a civilized game of cards. Cards are my favorite game. They represent the upper class of games, that elite pinnacle of strategy and cunning which marks the game of cards separate from all others.

"So," she continued. "Five-card stud okay with you?"

Alice consented, and they began to play cards. The cards themselves, however, were not so eager to play with the queen, and refused to make so much as a three-of-a-kind for her, despite the fact that she had declared half the deck to be wild.

Pretty soon, the cards were raining down upon them both as the queen continued to scream in a temper tantrum, "Off with their heads!!! Off with Alllll of their heads!"

All the while, as Alice was steadily swept from game to game, she kept asking if anyone knew who was Tweedle Dum's best friend. Although the games thoroughly confused her, she was able to ascertain, through her many conversations with all her looking-glass friends, the name of Tweedle Dum's best friend. The Queen of Hearts, Alice, and other tag-a-longs finally decided to return to the tea table for some more tea. On the way, Alice resolved that once they got back to the tea party, she would confront Tweedle Dum's best friend and find out exactly which game he was last playing.

"We must return for tea, it's almost tea-time!" exclaimed the March Hare.

"But here it's always tea-time," said Alice questioningly.

The Hatter jumped in, "All the more reason to hurry back for tea."

They made it back to the tea table rather uneventfully. The Queen of Hearts only ordered a couple of animals to be decapitated (nothing ever came of it, of course). They all sat back in their original seats and began to once again have tea, despite the fact that it was now thoroughly cold. (apparently the Queen of Hearts had been part of the original tea party and the previously empty seat had been hers. She had just happened to get up right before Alice had arrived.)

Alice thought about all the games she had just played. She had hoped to maybe find Tweedle Dum's lucky number at one of the games, but by looking, she had only confused herself further. Not able to contain herself any longer, Alice finally stood up and faced Tweedle Dum's best friend. "You tell me right now what was the last game that Tweedle Dum played."

"I'm looking at it right now; it's that game straight ahead of me."

"Thank you for finally giving me a straight answer. Well, I'm off to find Tweedle Dum's lucky number," thanked Alice.

As Alice started to get up, the Queen of Hearts gave one last bit of advice to Alice. "Be careful, dear. It's one thing to play the games, but if you're going to be searching for the lucky number, you must ignore all the games except the one that you are certain of. If you don't, then, you too will become hopelessly lost. And we won't come looking for you until well after tea-time has ended."

Alice nodded and walked away from the tea party (of course, she had to actually walk toward the party to get away, but she did that automatically by now). As she walked away, she heard a chime at the table and she turned to look back. In their effort to continue the tea party without ever having to clean dishes, the whole group, cheering and hollering, all shifted one seat to the left. Alice knew that once the party had begun, they'd keep shifting over one seat every so often until they decided to stop the tea party. She couldn't help but shake her head at the sheer redundancy and absurdity of this world.

Marching off to the proper game with determination, Alice thought about the difficult task that lay before her.

Alice walked back from the game with her head hung in confusion. Not looking where she was going, she accidentally bumped into a brick wall. Lifting up her head in surprise, Alice noticed that Humpty Dumpty was perched on top of the brick wall.

"Oh, Humpty," Alice exclaimed. "I'm so glad to see you. You're always able to help me sort things out."

"Well, it's good to see you again too. Now tell me exactly what you need me to interpret for you," Humpty calmly stated.

"I've been looking for something very specific for quite a while now. I thought I found the answer, but I can't seem to make any sense out of it. Can you please help me?"

"I'd certainly like to, but I won’t be able to make tails or heads out of your problem unless you tell me the whole story."

Alice paused to think about her adventures. "I just don't know how to put everything into words."

"Just begin at the beginning or end at the end."

Alice mulled that over in her mind for a little bit. "Begin at the beginning... at the beginning..." she thought to herself. As she puzzled over this, she stepped backwards. She must have stepped into a hole because she suddenly found herself falling and falling.

The next thing she knew, Alice found herself flat on her back in the school hallway outside of her classroom. The bell rang and the students started pouring out of the rooms and filing toward the exit. Alice stood up and smoothed the wrinkles (and footprints) out of her dress. Worries filled her head. "Oh no, I never got Tweedle Dum's lucky number. He'll always be lost! I failed my friends."

Disappointed, Alice walked out of the school and out of the story.