Page 44 - Lulu and Bob in Verbo City

“I believe this is a rebus,” said Lulu. “Notice all the little ‘plus’
signs? That is where parts of a word have to be joined. Each
pictogram functions as a phonogram. Where Uncle couldn’t find a
representation of the sound of a syllable or word he put in some
plain text. Not a lot of that here, though. I wonder how he concocted
this so quickly.”
“I’ll bet he already had it cooked up.” Bob rolled his eyes. “When
we were searching for sesquipedalians I noticed he had a book on his
desk: A Rebus Syllabary, by Linton D. Kahler.”
“And I’ll bet it isn’t there now: he wouldn’t want us using it to
reverse-engineer this thing, would he?”
“Right.” Bob dug out a Bali tiger and ran his finger over ridges
meant to indicate stripes. “Well, we should be able to make short
work of it. Let’s find another piece of paper on which to record our
translation.”
Lulu located a lined pad behind a pile of as-yet unopened
cookbooks and a pencil in the cutlery drawer.
“This is in sections. Probably a sentence each.” Bob ran his cookie-
sensing finger down the jumble of images and symbol. “I count
sixteen. Let’s get cracking: we can’t spend a lot of time on each one!”

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