BAGBAT : Mystery Solved!

I can’t take the credit for it - - it was my mother who finally figured it out.

My mother is a linguist and a master of the English/French/German languages. She’s so adept at language that she does cryptic crosswords FOR FUN. And when I say “does them” I mean gets every answer within a few hours without breaking a sweat and pausing only to chuckle knowingly at the creator’s literary prowess. And her skills extend beyond English and the other two languages -- despite having never taken a lesson in other languages, she can annoyingly understand and translate almost all spoken Italian, and has been known to teach AP Spanish courses to other teachers. In fact, the only difficulties that she HAD with Spanish instruction was that she would occasionally and mistakenly lapse into Italian. Go figure.

So Toby’s mystery playmate – BAGBAT was definitely more than just a cute story to my mother. It was a puzzle that NEEDED to be solved. And, as always, my mother delivered.

I could hear the victory in her voice when she called a few days ago and stated her conquest with two short words,

“BACK PACK”