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“The Westing Game,” a Tribute to Labor That Became a Dark Comedy of American Capitalism

By Jia Tolentino

During the financial crisis of 1873, an Austrian immigrant to Wisconsin named John Michael Kohler bought the Sheboygan Union Iron & Steel Foundry from his father-in-law and created the Kohler Company. The company hit it big with bathtubs, and, in 1899, Kohler bought land west of Sheboygan, which sits an hour up the coast of Lake Michigan from Milwaukee, to situate a new factory. Kohler died in 1900, but his son, Walter J. Kohler, turned the land into Kohler, Wisconsin, a company village. By 1914, Kohler employed more than a thousand workers in its factory, many of them immigrants. The first building in Kohler was called the American Club, and it was decorated with American flags and portraits of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. According to Suellen Hoy’s “ Chasing Dirt: The American Pursuit of Cleanliness ,” Walter Kohler, at the building’s dedication, said that he hoped the name would be “ a factor in inculcating in the men of foreign antecedents, a love for their adopted country .” Kohler, like his workers, lived in Kohler, on a lavish Tudor Revival estate called Riverbend that reportedly cost him, in the early twenties, more than a million dollars to build.

Walter Kohler instituted a company policy stating that promotions would only be given to American citizens. Factory foremen helped enroll workers in nighttime Americanization classes; every April, the company celebrated “Americanization Day” by driving workers to the courthouse to fill out citizenship paperwork in flag-festooned cars. The Kohler company was wildly prosperous, and Kohler, a moderate Republican, was elected governor of Wisconsin, in 1928. Then came the crash, and the Democratic wave led by F.D.R. In 1932, Kohler lost a bid for reëlection; the Socialist Party of America held a national convention in Milwaukee and hailed Sheboygan’s Fred C. Haack, an alderman first elected in 1897, as the country’s first-ever socialist officeholder. (This was probably incorrect.) Two years later, the American Federation of Labor organized a union of Kohler workers and lobbied for raises; Walter Kohler refused to negotiate, and the workers went on strike. Violence broke out when special deputies attempted to escort a coal car across a picket line, and two strikers were killed. Dozens more were injured. In 1940, a federal grand jury indicted the Kohler Company on charges of conspiracy to fix industry prices. The month after the indictment, Kohler died of a heart attack that looked, to many, to have been caused by shock.

When Kohler died, Ellen Raskin was twelve years old and living in Milwaukee. Five years later, she went to the University of Wisconsin, intending to major in journalism. She became an illustrator and book designer instead, later creating the original cover of “ A Wrinkle in Time .” She began writing and illustrating her own books, and then, in the seventies, she turned to writing novels for young people. The first of these , published in 1971, features a woman named Caroline Fish Carillon, who, with the help of her children, Tina and Tony (both of whom she calls “Tiny”), goes looking for her missing husband, Leon, who has changed his name to Noel. In 1976, Raskin began to work on what would become her last book, a mystery called “ The Westing Game ,” which revolves around the death of a cryptically patriotic industrial tycoon.

“The sun sets in the west (just about everyone knows that), but Sunset Towers faced east. Strange!” So “The Westing Game” begins. Sunset Towers, we soon learn, is a “glittery, glassy” five-story apartment building on an empty stretch of shore on Lake Michigan, and it’s vacant, but a mysterious salesman named Barney Northrup has baited a carefully chosen set of families into moving in. (“There was no such person as Barney Northrup,” Raskin quickly clarifies, just after introducing him. This is how the book proceeds generally.) These tenants were “mothers and fathers and children,” Raskin writes. “A dressmaker, a secretary, an inventor, a doctor, a judge. And, oh yes, one was a bookie, one was a burglar, one was a bomber, and one was a mistake.”

More in this series on the power and pleasures of children’s books.

The novel’s landscape is as spare as a chessboard, all the better to frame the action: there’s Sunset Towers, the vast lake, and, in the background, a mansion owned by Samuel Westing, a reclusive man who had been a humble immigrant before becoming a union-busting paper-products magnate. Westing is found dead, and sixteen letters are quickly delivered from his estate, inviting the inhabitants and workers of Sunset Towers to a reading of the tycoon’s will. A lawyer divides the group into eight pairs and announces that they are all potential heirs to Westing’s two-hundred-million-dollar fortune. He distributes eight envelopes filled with seemingly nonsensical clues and instructs the guests that the objective of the unexplained game is to win. “ ‘Take stock in America, my heirs, and sing in praise of this generous land,’ ” he reads from the will. “ ‘You, too, may strike it rich who dares to play the Westing game.’ ”

“The Westing Game” is an enigmatic sort of bicentennial creation: a tribute, a pastiche, and a critique. The clues in the inheritance game are jumbled pieces of the song “America the Beautiful,” as if someone cut up the lyrics and tossed them in a hat. (Raskin’s characters don’t figure this out for quite some time; I’d guess that most of her first-time readers, even in the Google era, take almost as long to catch on.) At the reading of the will, at the mansion, Westing himself is present, lying in an open coffin that’s draped in bunting. His waxy corpse is dressed up as Uncle Sam.

The group of potential heirs is conspicuously multicultural—“ deliberately, flagrantly, almost allegorically ” so, as the writer and Columbia professor Nicholas Dames put it in an essay about the book, published last year. There are the Theodorakis brothers, one of whom is disabled, whose Greek parents run a coffee shop out of Sunset Towers. There’s Josie-Jo Ford, a well-heeled black judge, and a Chinese-American family that includes a star teen-age athlete, a restaurateur-turned-inventor father, and a stepmother who doesn’t speak English. There’s a Polish secretary with a fake injury, and a ghostly, devout cleaning woman called Crow, and the Wexlers, a half-Jewish family whose status-obsessed matriarch cocoons her beautiful daughter Angela in wedding preparations while neglecting her younger kid, Turtle—a smart, brave, prickly tomboy who runs around accepting dares and kicking people, trailing a “kite tail of a braid.” (Raskin kept a file cabinet of photos to use as references, and the images for Turtle and Angela are dead-on.) Turtle is a stand-in for Raskin’s younger self, a “ compulsive perfectionist ,” as Raskin put it. She’s also the character that readers naturally identify with—a creature of verve, toughness, minor deception.

“The Westing Game” was published in 1978 and won the Newbery Medal. In her acceptance speech, Raskin described the characters as “sixteen imperfect ethnics.” Each of the characters, she noted, has a physical, emotional, or moral defect that makes them easier to remember. They are conspicuously imperfect. “Aren’t we all?” she said.

As for Westing, he was inspired not only by Kohler but also by Howard Hughes, who died in April, 1976. Three weeks after his death, a handwritten will purportedly belonging to Hughes appeared on the desk of an official of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The “Mormon Will” divided Hughes’s $2.5-billion estate into sixteen pieces, one of them allocated to a Utah gas-station owner named Melvin Dummar , who claimed to have once rescued Hughes in the desert. Two years later, a Nevada court found that Dummar had forged the will. In this slow-swirling maelstrom of American kitsch and allegiance and fate and reversal, Raskin concocted her mystery, a game of capitalism and inheritance, which frames America as both a land of obscure and marvellous possibility and also a hollow farce.

Beneath the game that gives the novel its plot, Raskin built a narrative substructure that consists of the intersecting identity crises experienced by the sixteen—sixteen! For a children’s book!—protagonists. (The best children’s books, I have found, are often better than adult fiction at inculcating and rewarding patience.) With the inheritance contest as pretext, they study one another closely. They try to figure out what everyone else has been given: they want to know who got lucky, who plays dirty, who knows how to convert a roll of the dice into gold. There are wild-goose chases, setbacks, secrets, bombings. All of this slowly converts Sunset Towers into an oddly salutary hothouse environment. Samuel Westing’s game is a puzzle designed to make people treat one another as puzzles—as creations worth sustained attention and interpretation. In analyzing one another’s motivations and assets, the characters feel their own buried ones come to life. The atmosphere gets loose; desire leads to surprises. Under the light of one another’s often hapless scrutiny, all sixteen characters start to grow.

The magic of Samuel Westing’s game is, like America itself, marked by capriciousness and contradiction. Competition and coöperation seem mutually exclusive until they don’t. At the end of the game, none of the characters has inherited the two hundred million dollars, but the idea that they might have done so—the sudden consciousness that life can change wildly in an instant—has proved to be something that can pass for enough. The book seems to suggest that the real American inheritance is transformation, and that American transformation is a mercurial thing. In her Newbery speech, Raskin said, wryly, that, as she wrote the novel, her “tribute to American labor history ended up a comedy in praise of capitalism.” But, for me, the book lands a little differently. “The Westing Game” is a comedy in praise of the messes people make when they’re allowed to access a sense of possibility. Money drives that, of course, and Westing’s fortune is a racy prospect. But Westing himself, the capitalist king, is a dark, strange, even pathetic Wizard of Oz figure: an old man playing a series of tricks to multiply his presence into the illusion of something more.

The only one who figures this out about Westing—the only one who understands that seeing through the game is how you win—is stubborn, independent Turtle. The sun eventually sets on Westing’s final deception, which you could also call his final reinvention; he’s stretched this country’s possibilities as far as they can go. It rises on Turtle, who has become heir not to the tycoon’s fortune but to his secrets and his ambitions, and, seemingly, in the future, to his Westing Company-board seat. She is an adult by the end of the novel, poised and deliberate. As a kid, reading this book again and again and again, I felt a quiet flare of ambiguous promise when I considered Turtle’s trajectory. She’d been shaped by old Westing, and then she’d outlasted him. At the end of the novel, she goes back to her mansion to spend the afternoon with her niece Alice, who wears a long braid down her back. In the book’s last line, Turtle asks, “Ready for a game of chess?”

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By Graciela Mochkofsky

The Westing Game (1997)

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The Westing Game

Film details, brief synopsis, cast & crew, shone kirkpatrick, ray walston, billy morrissette, lewis arquette, technical specs.

When millionaire Sam Westing turns up dead, the tenants of the Sunset Towers apartment complex are summoned to a reading of his will. They are told one of them is the murderer and whoever discovers the killer's identity in one week will inherit Westing's $20 million fortune. The building's residents are grouped together in pairs, each of whom is given an enigmatic clue that must be used in conjunction with the other clues.

Terence H Winkless

Carlos Enriquez

Catherine corman, terence henry, sandy faison, sally kirkland, wilson davis, ashley peldon, diana nadeau, cliff de young, june christopher, amanda abel, laine abramson, vehange amirkhani, derek anderson, edgar arellano, bryan arenas, lori a baker, phil barnhart, brian baugh, itamar ben jacob, stuart blatt, laura mae bobick, marc mcgregor bosch, kurt brabbee, jonathon bradley, eric w brannon, james g brown, brent cantwell, scott cochran, joshua colover, sean cooney, ken cooper jr., julie corman, alisa cornell, nicholas curran, elizabeth dahl, dmitri djanbana, mechelle dondo, ahmed eissa, laura lynn ellinger, juan feldman, aaron ferenc, stephen fitzmaurice, giuliano fiumani, lou forestieri, richard l. fox, tommy frimmerman, parmer fuller, emily gaydos, jesse geboy, john graham, mike gregoire, faith griffin, ricky guardino, matt hawkins, monte hellman, richard e hoag jr., jody hutchins, courtney jackson, elizabeth jackson, gita jamshidi, goly jamshidi, courtney jones, sanjay kaboor, kurt a kassulke, melissa kinnicutt, christopher klonecke, michael s. kreple, richard lamphiear, gregory c landerer, aaron landman, chris lehman, cullen lockwood, james w machowski, carlos macias, joe l mcgill, matt mcguire, russell mcmillan, bernie meisinger, amos menjivar, omar menjivar, of sound mind, brien monahan, joe p moreno, wolfgang amadeus mozart, james o'malley, janie marie oliver, tony olivieri, emjay olson, dimitrios papagiannis, wendy peldon, amanda pelisek, akemi phillips, laurie ann post, raly radouloff, ellen raskin, paul ratajczak, randy raymond, david m reese, chuck regner, susan reiner, erik arne reponen, young g richard, renee sabath, ruthie sakheim, ben schneider, robert schultz, douglas a shutte, megan m sinclair, chris smernes, bernie smith, paula smith, odette springer, jeff f statz, dave stuckey, vladimir tamayo, steve thenell, cesar toledo, ronald vidor, catherine wagner, eric anthony warren, fritz weber, darcy wennes, michael whitecar, kerri wilson, chuck winston, greg yacoubian, tamar yacov, miscellaneous notes.

Aired in United States on Video September 8, 1998

Aired in United States September 14, 1997

Based on the Newbery Award-Winning children's best-seller.

rtg MPAA PG

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The westing game.

1997 Directed by Terence H. Winkless

A girl is angry about having to move to the city, but gets involved in a mystery when a rich neighbor is found dead. His will suggests that one of the people in her apartment house is his killer and doles out clues to find the culprit - as well as win $20 million.

Ray Walston Ashley Peldon Diane Ladd Sally Kirkland Cliff DeYoung Sandy Faison Lewis Arquette Diane Nadeau Billy Morrissette Jim Lau Shane West Ernest Liu June Christopher

Director Director

Terence H. Winkless

Producers Producers

Catherine Corman Julie Corman

Writer Writer

Dylan Kelsey Hadley

Original Writer Original Writer

Ellen Raskin

Editor Editor

Cinematography cinematography.

Kurt Brabbee

Composer Composer

Parmer Fuller

Showtime Hallmark Entertainment Trinity Pictures

Alternative Titles

Get a Clue, Abenteuerliche Erbschaft

Mystery Drama Family

Releases by Date

14 sep 1997, releases by country.

95 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by permutohedron ★

My 6th grade reading teacher hated this movie so much that we watched this in class and had to write about how everything was wrong and inaccurate in it as compared to the book. Probably the most perfect learning experience I've ever had in school.

Review by Dante Alexander Wilcox ★ 2

Such a good book...

such a disappointing movie.

This comes from a time when children's book adaptations were a dime a dozen, so it was evident that most would end up on the burn pile, but it's so unfortunate that this one had to be one of those. Oh well, maybe Wes Anderson will do a remake.

Review by Dan McCoy ★

Zis is, how you say? Le garbage.

Review by Sarah Jane ★

waiting for the remake where Turtle is into cryptocurrency

Review by Meghan McNeive 1

my teacher lent me this movie to watch in fifth grade cuz we had just read the book and it slapped but when i brought the movie back in the next day to return it i found out that i was supposed to bring the movie back an hour before school started so other people could watch it in her classroom but i didnt hear her tell me that and so i brought it back when i came to school at the regular time and everyone was so mad at me it was terrible

Review by Soph 1

This deserves a remake. It could be so good with the right script and cast. Even so, I really enjoyed this movie because of how much I love its source material

Review by Max 1

Just straight up terrible

Review by George Stevenson ★

Bro was literally playing 4d chess The thumbnail for this movie is not relevant at all, that is not the girl in the movie The editing and theatrics in some parts reminded me of Beatlejuice The teens I watched this with at work gave it 4/5

Review by itssaymel ★ 2

this movie was so frustrating bc like the whole time they were like almost getting it right, but they kept leaving out some pretty crucial things then having to make up stuff to make up for it. I am begging people who are going to adapt books to just stick to what is already there for them!! this book is so good it truly deserved better. this might be the 2nd worst book to movie adaptation to exist

Review by Isaac Ishkabibble ★★½

My only career planning is now to become an old millionaire who plans elaborate mystery games in the name of mischief

Review by Cinemalbeuf

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

We need to talk about being-given-$20-million-as-a-child-because-you-figured-out-your-neighbour-was-wearing-a-goofy-fake-moustache privilege.

Review by Ava ★★½

this is my favorite book ever and its a real shame I got such a trash movie adaptation

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Book Review

The westing game.

• Ellen Raskin
• Adventure , Children's Fiction , Mystery

Readability Age Range

• 8 to 12 years old
• Puffin Young Readers
• Newberry Medal Winner; Winner of the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award; an American Library Association Notable Book

Year Published

Young Turtle Wexler is one of a group of 16 strangers who are called to a deceased rich man’s house. They all live in the same apartment building. And they all just happen to be named as potential heirs to a $200 million fortune. They simply have to play a game together and discover which of them is also the dead man’s killer.

Plot Summary

You wouldn’t call Tabitha-Ruth “Turtle” Wexler a great detective. (In fact, you’d probably call her a great kicker-of-shins, if you ever made the 13-year-old a bit angry.) Nor would you—after meeting restaurant owner Shin Hoo, or sweet and gentle old Mrs. Baumbach or the former boxer, Sandy McSouthers—begin calling for a rousing game of Clue.

None of these people seem destined for mystery solving. But all of them, and 12 others—all of whom live in the newly opened apartment complex of Sunset Towers–have been called upon to do that very thing. They’re 16 people asked to solve a mystery—or, more fairly, a series of mysteries—with promise of a great reward.

The first mystery they were faced with was a community invitation to the home of the very wealthy but recently deceased Samuel W.  Westing. The second conundrum was the fact that they all were named as possible heirs to the man’s $200 million estate. And the third bit of intrigue is that they’re asked to randomly partner up, each pick up a provided envelope of seemingly random word clues and then figure out … who murdered Sam.

“It’s not what you have, it’s what you don’t have that counts,” the game-loving Westing noted in his will. That, of course, makes each person wonder what everyone else had. For that matter, what unknown secrets does each person have? Why were they chosen? And how did they all come to live in the same apartment building—a building owned by Westing himself?

As Turtle talks to others and thinks things through over the next few days, she becomes certain that the whole affair is a mind game of some sort. Think about it: There was a chess board in the rich man’s game room where they were all gathered.

It’s a board made up of 16 black squares and 16 white squares.

A game of opposing teams filled with strategy, subtle deception and power.

But, Turtle wonders, is she a knight? A queen? Or just another pawn?

Christian Beliefs

One of the people in the Sunset Towers mix is an elderly woman named Mrs. Crow. She’s a “severe”-looking woman who views the world through a very “fundamentalist” Christian lens. As such, the people around her find her a bit off-putting. We see the woman praying and humming a hymn. And with time we are shown her softer side—including finding out how her faith changed her life and the fact that she runs and serves at a local homeless shelter.

Part of a poem reads: “Forgive me, my daughter, God bless you child.”

Other Belief Systems

It’s mentioned in passing that another man is Jewish.

Some kids stage a prank on Halloween night.

Authority Roles

You could say that Sam Westing is a person of authority because of his wealth and position. And he does aim to use his death, in a way, to get the others—who we eventually find do all have loose ties to one another—to think about their own lives, choices and relationships. You could also see Westing’s game as the man’s means to make amends for some of his own past failings.

Turtle’s parents, Grace and Jake Wexler, have their own personal struggles to deal with. And that spills over to the kids. Jake is fairly distant and wrapped up in his work. And while Grace adores and praises Turtle’s beautiful sister Angela, she nearly snubs Turtle. As a result, Turtle is often on the outside and a little angry and Angela, while kind, is nearly powerless to express her true desires.

In the course of the game, however, all of the Wexlers are confronted with who they are and each becomes a better person—and they become closer and more loving as a family, too.

That same self-awareness challenge impacts nearly all the people participating in Westing’s game. Someone steals things from the Sunset Towers residents, but eventually admits her guilt and returns all the items.

Profanity & Violence

There’s no foul or crude language here.

There is, however, some alcohol flowing in one form or another. Sandy McSouthers has a flask of Scotch that he takes swigs from. Grace and Jake Wexler go on a date and drink two bottles of wine and that makes Grace quite tipsy. Mr. Hoo serves drinks in his restaurant and adults drink mixed drinks at a party. Turtle asks for some Bourbon on a cotton swab to numb an aching tooth. (And someone jokingly comments about the booze on her breath.)

In the course of the game, someone plants small explosives that cause kitchen explosions in the Sunset Towers. A woman fractures her leg. An explosion in a school science lab drives a shard of glass into someone’s shoulder. And two different fireworks explosions injure both Angela and Turtle. Angela has her face gashed and Turtle’s hair is singed badly. An entire building is set ablaze by fireworks at one point.

Sandy talks of his boxing days and mentions that “I still get some pretty bad headaches and my brain gets sort of fuzzy.” Jake Wexler is a podiatrist who cuts off a woman’s corn in one scene and she limps around painfully after that.

[ Spoiler Warning ] Turtle sees what she assumes is a dead man in bed. And we see a man supposedly choke on something poisonous and die. (Both incidences turn out to be staged.) We do hear of someone who tragically committed suicide, and about the horrible impact that choice had on everyone around this individual. A very elderly man dies of natural causes.

Sexual Content

When Grace and Jake draw closer once again as husband and wife, it’s implied that they become more physically intimate (though nothing is ever seen or heard).

Discussion Topics

What did you think of the Westing game? Did you figure the mystery out? What do you think Sam Westing had in mind when he created and set up the game?

Each of the participants shifted their lives because of the game. Why do you think that was? What about our lives? Are there times when we should stop and reevaluate our choices?

Proverbs 3:5-6 says “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight.” What or who do you think the characters in The Westing Game were leaning on? How would shifting focus to God have helped them? How does it help you?

There was a lot of early emphasis put on the Westing money in the beginning of this story. But how important was it to everyone by the end? Were there more valuable things they discovered? What do you think Turtle found most valuable? What was your favorite part of this book?

Get free discussion question for books at focusonthefamily.com/magazine/thriving-family-book-discussion-questions .

Additional Comments

The Westing Game was published over 40 years ago, and it’s a solid choice for young readers looking for a classic kids’ mystery. The award-winning book raises some interesting questions about the things we value in life.

You can request a review of a title you can’t find at [email protected] .

Book reviews cover the content, themes and worldviews of fiction books, not necessarily their literary merit, and equip parents to decide whether a book is appropriate for their children. The inclusion of a book’s review does not constitute an endorsement by Focus on the Family.

Review by Bob Hoose

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Summer Reader Poll 2019: Funny Books

Smart and snarky, 'the westing game' provides lasting laughs.

Alethea Kontis

The Westing Game

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Humor is incredibly subjective. It's unique to each person. So much so that my very first fiction writing teacher instructed us to never even attempt it. Instead of accepting the challenge this was probably meant to be, I took the lesson to heart. I already knew I had a strange sense of humor.

Crassness and slapstick didn't move me. I assumed I was missing the genetic code that found joy in the Three Stooges. I did not appreciate (or even understand) Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner until I was a much older adult. To me, Cole Porter is a genius. Give me Shakespeare or Ogden Nash, and I am hooked by the first line. From Lewis Carroll to Carol Burnett — if it is smart, dark, subversive, and multi-layered, I am all in. The more complicated, the better.

So when I tell you all that I think Ellen Raskin's The Westing Game is one of the most perfect books ever written, you'll understand where I'm coming from.

The first line is one of those famous ones: "The sun sets in the west (just about everyone knows that), but Sunset Towers faced east." Not only does this prepare you for the topsy-turvy quirkiness you're about to experience, it also introduces the fabulous omniscient voice in which the story is written. This voice seamlessly pops in and out of the heads of Raskin's eccentric cast of characters, revealing to the reader their deepest, darkest secrets, while also totally talking about them behind their backs. The wit (and ubiquitous parenthetical snark) of the book's voice is, in my opinion, matched only by William Goldman's The Princess Bride (my other favorite book), published a mere five years before The Westing Game .

The first line is also a clue. (Even the title itself is a clue!) Six households are invited to move into the exclusive Sunset Towers apartment building. The members of these families (plus a few employees) are then named in the will of the illustrious departed millionaire Sam Westing. But this is no ordinary will: Sam Westing has invented a game for his heirs, and only the one who solves it gets the money.

And these characters! A diverse assortment of misfits, each with their own mysterious connection to Sam Westing, each with their own skeletons in the closet, each so wonderful that it's almost impossible to pick a favorite (it's Turtle). My favorite lines in the book are the ones that sum up this cast in a nutshell: "Who were these people, these specially selected tenants? They were mothers and fathers and children. A dressmaker, a secretary, an inventor, a doctor, a judge. And, oh yes, one was a bookie, one was a burglar, one was a bomber, and one was a mistake. Barney Northrup had rented one of the apartments to the wrong person."

Despite the seemingly illogical jumble of disastrous events that unfold as the game goes on, everything that happens in this book happens for a reason. It's one of those tales you finish with awe and then start again at the beginning, in an attempt to find all the Easter eggs you missed the first time around. You'll laugh and laugh — you may even cry — and if you're anything like me, you will reread it every Fourth of July, just to keep the magic alive.

Which is a perfect line with which to end this essay, but I must add one final thing: If you are a fan of The Westing Game , you must also read Ellen Raskin's The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues . It's not as completely perfectly put together as The Westing Game , but it has a similar wit, a cleverly humorous sensibility, an enormous heart, and way fewer characters. For a very long time, The Tattooed Potato was my favorite Raskin title. It was also very hard to come by. But it was reprinted in 2011 and is now available in paperback and e-book formats. Hooray for modern publishing!

Alethea Kontis is a voice actress and award-winning author of over 20 books for children and teens.

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The Westing Game

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Terence H. Winkless

Ray Walston

Sandy McSouthers

Berthe Erica Crow

Sally Kirkland

Sydelle Pulaski

Ashley Peldon

Tabitha Ruth Wexler

Chris Theodorakis

The Westing Game

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A girl is angry about having to move to the city, but gets involved in a mystery when a rich neighbor is found dead. His will suggests that one of the people in her apartment house is his killer and doles out clues to find the culprit - as well as win $20 million.

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THE WESTING GAME

by Ellen Raskin ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1978

A supersharp mystery, more a puzzle than a novel, but endowed with a vivid and extensive cast. In the Christie tradition, Raskin isolates a divers group of strangers—the mysteriously hand-picked tenants of a new apartment building within sight of the old Westing mansion—and presents them with the information that one of them is the murderer. Actually, it turns out that there is no corpse, but no one is aware of that when they are all assembled for a reading of old Westing's fiendish will, which pairs them all off and allots each pair four one-word clues to the murderer's identity. As the winning pair is to inherit Westing's fortune, there is much secret conferring, private investigating, far-out scheming, and snitching and scrambling of the teasing, enigmatic clues. (For example, those of black judge Josie Jo Ford, which she takes for a racial insult, read SKIES AM SHINING BROTHER.) As a result of the pairings, alliances are made and suspended, and though there is no murderer there is a secret winner—the pigtailed youngest of the "heirs"—plus extravagant happy endings for all. As Westing had warned, all are not what they seem, and you the reader end up liking them better than you expected to. If Raskin's crazy ingenuity has threatened to run away with her on previous occasions, here the complicated game is always perfectly meshed with character and story. Confoundingly clever, and very funny.

Pub Date: May 1, 1978

ISBN: 978-0-525-47137-0

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1978

CHILDREN'S MYSTERY & THRILLER

Share your opinion of this book

More by Ellen Raskin

BOOK REVIEW

by Ellen Raskin

illustrated by Ellen Raskin

by Louis Sachar ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1998

Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...

Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar ( Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger , 1995, etc.).

Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998

ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5

Page Count: 233

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S MYSTERY & THRILLER

More by Louis Sachar

by Louis Sachar ; illustrated by Tim Heitz

by Louis Sachar

HIDE AND GEEK

From the hide and geek series , vol. 1.

by T.P. Jagger ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 4, 2022

A snappy mystery that’s full of heart.

A group of bright friends tackles the puzzle of their lives.

Elmwood, New Hampshire, 11-year-old Gina Sparks is small in stature but big on reporting ongoing dramas for the local newspaper with support from her journalist mom. When an unbelievable scoop comes her way, Gina must rely on her tightknit crew of sixth grade best friends whose initials happen to spell GEEK, a label they choose to proudly reclaim. She and science-minded prankster Elena Hernández, theater kid Edgar Feingarten, and driven math genius Kevin Robinson decide to get to the bottom of things when they learn that the Van Houten Toy & Game Company heir made elaborate plans to leave everything to the town of Elmwood before her death—but only if a member of the community could solve an intricate multistep puzzle. Gina hopes that deciphering the clues and finding the missing fortune will be just the thing to revitalize the down-on-its-luck town and bring the Elmwood Tribune  back into the black, saving her mom’s job and Gina’s passion project. The GEEKs work together, using their individual talents and deductive reasoning skills to unravel the mystery. Infused with media literacy pointers, such as the difference between fact and opinion and reminders to avoid bias when reporting, the story encourages readers to think critically. Gina and Edgar read as White; Elena is cued as Latinx, and Kevin is implied Black.

Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-593-37793-2

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021

CHILDREN'S ACTION & ADVENTURE FICTION | CHILDREN'S MYSTERY & THRILLER

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by T.P. Jagger

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The Westing Game

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Product Description

Product details.

• Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
• MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ NR (Not Rated)
• Package Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.1 x 5.42 x 0.58 inches; 2.88 ounces
• Director ‏ : ‎ Terence H. Winkless
• Media Format ‏ : ‎ Color, NTSC, Full Screen
• Run time ‏ : ‎ 95 minutes
• Actors ‏ : ‎ Ray Walston, Ashley Peldon, Sally Kirkland, Cliff Deyoung, Diane Ladd
• Subtitles: ‏ : ‎ English
• Producers ‏ : ‎ Julie Corman
• Studio ‏ : ‎ Feature Films For Families
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000941CYU

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Duke TIP Navigator

The official magazine for TIPsters in 4th–6th grade

Review: The Westing Game

August 12, 2019

The Westing Game

Ellen raskin, $7.99.

This review was submitted by Abby Williams, a sixth grader from South Carolina.

Do you like mystery? Suspense? Action and excitement? If you answered yes to all of those, then this book is for you.

The Westing Game is a great read about a man (Samuel W. Westing) who’s life was taken from him by one of his heirs. In his will it is announced that sixteen heirs to him will report to his house, and they will compete to find which of the heirs took his life.

The book is one of my favorite books. In the book you will find clues that lead you to the answer, only to turn you into a different direction. You will meet fascinating characters like Flora Baumbach, Turtle Wexler, and Theo Theodorakis. It is a great read, and I think many TIPsters would like it.

Ellen Raskin is a great author and illustrator and designed the original A Wrinkle in Time cover. She also did the illustrations for The Westing Game cover.

Have you played a good board game or video game, read a good book, or seen a good movie? Submit a review to Navigator by the time the next issue comes out, and you’ll be entered to win a copy of Dominion. Find details on the submission page .

About Duke TIP

The Duke University Talent Identification Program (Duke TIP) is a nonprofit organization that has served over three million academically talented students in grades 4–12 since it was founded in 1980. Collaborating with educators and parents, TIP helps gifted students assess the extent of their academic abilities with above-grade-level testing, recognizes them for their achievements, and provides them with a variety of enrichment benefits as well as accelerated face-to-face and online educational programs.

• Back to Focus on the Family Podcast Network

Book Review: The Westing Game

16 strangers are called together to play a game designed to discover who in their number is a murderer. Read the Plugged In review: https://www.pluggedin.com/book-reviews/westing-game/ If you've listened to any of our podcasts, please give us your feedback: https://focusonthefamily.com/podcastsurvey/

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Screen Rant

The game ending explained: what's real in david fincher's thriller.

David Fincher's twist-filled 1997 thriller The Game makes for a dizzying viewing experience, but the ending may call for some explaining.

• The Game 's ending leaves audiences disoriented, questioning what's real and what's a lie until the dramatic conclusion reveals the truth.
• Michael Douglas shines as lead in David Fincher's twisty thriller, depicting a cynical character's journey through elaborate schemes and deceptions.
• The Game offers a glimpse into the power of second chances, drawing inspiration from classic tales of empathy and transformation like A Christmas Carol.

With so many twists and elaborate lies in David Fincher’s 1997 thriller, The Game ending leaves the audience with a lot of questions. Michael Douglas stars as Nicholas Van Orton, a jaded, lonely businessman who has shut himself off from human connection. When Nicholas’s brother gifts him a mysterious experience with the enigmatic Consumer Recreation Services (CRS), he finds himself disorientated by a labyrinthine network of deceptions and schemes, all executed in service of the sinister “game." The audience shares in this disorientation, unsure of what’s real and what’s a lie until the The Game reaches its dramatic, layered conclusion.

The Game received a lukewarm critical and commercial reception upon its release, but its rewarding, endlessly rewatchable plot has withstood the test of time, and it's now considered one of David Fincher’s best movies . The able cast finds a powerful lead in Douglas, whose cynical edge justifies CRS’s extreme measures and succeeds in binding The Game closer to the classic tale that lies at the heart of this twisty thriller. With Douglas’s brooding everyman, and in Fincher’s deft hands, the truth behind The Game , its many lies, and the characters caught within slowly begin to emerge by the movie's ending.

The Game Cast & Character Guide

What happened in the game’s ending, nicholas reaches the end of the game.

Toward the end of The Game , when Nicholas is left for dead in Mexico, the assumption is that he has finally broken free of CRS’s script. However, they are still in control. Everything up until Nicholas throws himself from the roof, landing in the party, is still in the game.

Christine must pretend that the game has gone wrong in order for Nicholas to believe he has actually shot his brother Conrad

The panic expressed by Christine (Deborah Kara Unger) at the sight of Nicholas’s “real” gun and her revelation that they’re still in the game is part of the game. Christine must pretend that the game has gone wrong in order for Nicholas to believe he has actually shot his brother Conrad (Sean Penn). In order for the “death” to be in Nicholas’s hands, she must admit that Conrad is outside, betting that he won’t believe her.

CRS’s game is more than an elaborate prank. Their goal is to bring Nicholas to his lowest point spiritually, where he is willing to throw himself off a roof so that they can show him he has a second chance at life . The plan goes smoothly for CRS, but they can’t possibly predict Nicholas’s every move.

It’s safe to assume they have multiple contingency plans prepared for whatever choices Nicholas makes.

It’s safe to assume they have multiple contingency plans prepared for whatever choices Nicholas makes. At the end of the movie, The Game offers a glimpse at the breadth of preparations CRS has taken when one of their employees admits that if Nicholas didn’t jump, he was tasked with throwing him off the roof.

The Game TV Remake: Confirmation & Everything We Know

Why did nicholas need the game, the experience gives nicholas a second chance.

When The Game begins, Nicholas is isolated, cynical, and stagnant. He lives alone in a vast mansion and estranges himself from those who truly care for him, including his brother and his ex-wife (Anna Katarina). To top things off, Nicholas has just turned 48, the same age at which his father died by suicide, jumping from the roof of the very house in which Nicholas now lives. The Game depicts Nicholas as haunted by his father’s death and living out a cycle that may even end the same way.

Nicholas doesn’t believe in second chances.

At one point in The Game , Nicholas meets with Anson Baer (Armin Mueller-Stahl), a publishing head whom Nicholas fires for not meeting shareholder expectations. Baer begs for a second chance, but Nicholas doesn’t believe in second chances. Nicholas is not interested in attempting another relationship since his failed marriage, nor in attempting to live life differently from his father.

The purpose of the game is to shake Nicholas from his cynical complacency, forcing him to take action, to recognize all that he has and all that he could have . To quote Conrad at The Game ’s ending, “ I had to do something; you were becoming such an a**hole .”

10 Thrillers To Watch If You Love David Fincher’s The Game

Was the game a scam, nicholas was told crs was robbing him.

As the movie progresses, Nicholas comes to believe that the game is not actually an entertainment experience, but an elaborate means of robbing people. Conrad tells Nicholas that CRS has been harassing him for money, and Christine admits that CRS is only interested in draining Nicholas’s bank accounts .

The game may not be a scam, but it certainly isn’t cheap.

However, this all turns out to be part of the game. Getting Nicholas to believe he’s at the mercy of a sinister organization is all part of pushing him into action. Still, Nicholas’s reaction to CRS’s bill at The Game ’s ending implies that the cost is exorbitant. The game may not be a scam, but it certainly isn’t cheap.

10 Best Movies About Deadly Reality Competitions

Why did nicholas’ lawyer tell him his bank balance was untouched, sutherland was unaware of the game's elaborate lie.

When Nicholas believes his bank accounts have been completely drained, a contradictory call from his lawyer, Sutherland (Peter Donat), states that his accounts are completely intact. This is because, unlike most of the characters in The Game , Sutherland is not in on the game . Nicholas’s calls to his bank were actually rerouted to CRS, but they don’t expect him to call his attorney.

When Sutherland calls Nick back and tells him the truth, Christine is caught off-guard for the first time. Forced to come up with a lie on the fly, Christine tells Nicholas that Sutherland is part of the conspiracy. When Sutherland shows up at the party, he confirms he has “ no clue ” what the game is.

David Fincher: The First & Last Lines From All His Movies

Was christine & nicholas’ connection real, the game's ending suggests they have a future.

Christine is Nicholas’s tentative ally for a significant portion of The Game ​​​​​​, and the two have obvious chemistry. At their first meeting’s ending, Christine admits that she finds Nicholas attractive. When they see each other again, the connection is again clear, but no romantic moves are made, and Christine betrays Nicholas. When all is revealed, it’s apparent that Christine was never real, and Nicholas knows nothing about the woman who played her, Clare.

Still, the connection between Nicholas and “Christine" wasn’t based on common interests, but an underlying chemistry. Their mutual attraction to one another is confirmed at The Game ’s ending, as Clare agrees to go out with Nicholas .

David Fincher: His 5 Best (& 5 Worst) Films According To IMDb

The real meaning of the game’s ending, fincher draws inspiration from a christmas carol.

Beneath the shocking twists and thrills of The Game ’s ending, the movie attempts to connect audiences with the values of an older, more fantastical story. The Game , while not strictly another adaptation of A Christmas Carol , can be interpreted as a reimagining of the classic Charles Dickens story . David Fincher even likens Nicholas to the novel’s protagonist, calling him a “ fashionable, good-looking Scrooge ."

The Game thus modernizes the hundred-year-old text while reaffirming the timeless power of Dickens’s tale of empathy and second chances.

Both characters are rich, isolated men who have chosen money and the world of business over human connection. Nicholas’s brother shows up like Jacob Marley’s ghost at the film’s beginning, reminding Nicholas of a death from his past and preparing him for the journey ahead. The most striking comparison comes when Nicholas is buried alive. His emergence from a tomb in a Mexican graveyard calls to mind the scene in A Christmas Carol where Scrooge is shown his own grave.

When The Game is considered in this light, the ending takes on an even greater resonance. CRS, like the Ghost of Christmas Future, also shows Nicholas his own potential death by having him throw himself off the roof. When Nicholas hits the airbag, he, like Ebenezer Scrooge, is given a second chance at life. The Game thus modernizes the hundred-year-old text while reaffirming the timeless power of Dickens’s tale of empathy and second chances.

David Fincher's 11-Movie Trend Suggests His Next Movie Will Be Amazing

How the game ending compares to other fincher endings, fincher has delivered triumphant and dark movie endings that compare to the game.

David Fincher is a director known for his impactful conclusions, with several of his movies delivering some of the most iconic endings of all time. However, he also has a reputation for unhappy endings which makes it interesting to compare how The Game compares to those other Fincher movies. While The Game is darker and leaves some questions, it is a relatively triumphant ending as Nicholas is given a new lease on life and seems to have a better future ahead of him.

One of Fincher's movies actually draws some close parallels to how Nicholas's story ends despite being a very different movie.

One of Fincher's movies actually draws some close parallels to how Nicholas's story ends despite being a very different movie. Fight Club 's ending is a beloved one as it finds The Narrator (Edward Norton) overcoming his alter ego Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) to take back control of his life. The Narrator and Nicholas were both lost souls who found some purpose with an underground and dangerous organization only to come out the other side with a better lease on life . As The Narrator watches the builds being demolished as part of Project Mayhem, there is some question as to whether he made the right choice.

In contrast, the ending of Se7en is seen as one of the grimmest movie endings of all time as Det. Mills discovers that John Doe has killed his pregnant wife to manipulate Mills into embracing his rage and executing Doe. While it leaves the audience on a much darker note, it shares similarities in the way The Game comes together with pieces falling into place and the clues becoming more obvious. It is a testament to Fincher as a filmmaker that he is able to deliver such impactful endings in some very different ways.

Directed by David Fincher, The Game is a mystery thriller released in 1997. Michael Douglas stars as Nicholas Van Orton, an investment banker brought into a mysterious game by his brother hosted by the wealthy. As the game continues to integrate into his life, he begins to see the cracks in the facade of the group's game, ultimately revealing a dark conspiracy at the center.

'The Long Game' Review: Dennis Quaid & Jay Hernandez Miss the Mark in an Unsurprising Sports Story

There are no no ifs, ands, or putts about it, this take on the true story of a golf team falls flat.

This review was originally part of our coverage for the 2023 SXSW Film & TV Festival.

The Big Picture

• The Long Game is a standard underdog sports story based on Mexican-American teens winning a golf competition in the 1950s.
• The film struggles to give its multiple themes, like assimilation, racism, and marginalized men taking back respect, their full due.
• While the performances are decent, the movie lacks depth, has a heavy-handed narrative, and doesn't fulfill its potential.

When it comes to inspiring stories, nothing really tops an underdog sports narrative . The plucky team with aspirations for greatness. The odds are always stacked against them, but with one determined coach and a pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps mentality, the team is able to overcome all that they are up against and get the victory and respect they deserve. In many ways, The Long Game from director Julio Quintana , who also penned the script alongside Jennifer C. Statson and Paco Farias , is a standard issue underdog story.

The Long Game (2024)

In 1955, five young Mexican-American caddies, out of the love for the game, were determined to learn how to play, so they created their own golf course in the middle of the South Texas desert.

Based on the real life story about a group of Mexican-American teenagers who win a golf competition during the 1950s , the set-up is clean cut. JB Peña ( Jay Hernandez ) moves to a small town in Texas where he becomes a superintendent of a Mexican-American high school. JB is a big golf fanatic and has dreams of joining the Del Rio Country Club, an exclusive club that serves an all-white clientele. Even though he has the help of his fellow veteran Frank Mitchell ( Dennis Quaid ), the locals aren't ready or willing to accept a Mexican member into their club.

Upset at the rejection, JB then gathers a group of teenagers from his school, who all work as caddies at the country club, to form their own golf team. With Frank's help, a golf aficionado himself, JB gets the kids in shape for competition where they predictably must face off against prejudice and open racism. And while the book this film is based on, Mustang Miracle by Humberto G. Garcia , certainly documents an impressive story of an underdog overcoming odds, the film doesn't quite reach the heights it's trying to.

'The Long Game' Is an Unfocused Sports Drama

The Long Game lacks a central thesis . Is the story about JB overcoming his desire to assimilate into white culture and embracing his community? Is it about the young Joe Trevino ( Julian Works ) finding a place in the world where he can both indulge in a white-dominated sport like golf but also stay true to his heritage? Or is it about this group of marginalized men taking back the respect they deserve in a town where people treat them as second-class citizens? The problem is it is all of that and more. It juggles too many things and ends up dropping the ball.

The way the movie tackles race and the complicated dynamics between Mexican-Americans and white Americans is often heavy-handed. The film is clearly intent on making the story an identity story as well, but it struggles to find balance and nuance along the way. Slights and threats are taken seriously one moment and then forgotten the next. Insults and slurs are hurled around with no real consequences. Clunky tropes create an almost painfully predictable finale , which is disappointing because the film is not without its talent.

While Quaid feels like he's phoning it in sometimes, Hernandez shines as a vet struggling with PTSD and a man who is determined to earn respect in a world that sometimes won't even acknowledge him. Works' Joe is easily the most complex character of the five players, though his story suffers when a romantic plot is written in with neither enough material to be interesting nor enough screen time to feel earned. His relationship with his father ( Jimmy Gonzalez ) is an interesting foil to his growing bond with JB, though that is never explored.

Side Characters Are Too Shallow in 'The Long Game'

Cheech Marin comes in as Pollo, the groundskeeper at the club, and though he is always a joy to watch on screen, his character is about as hammy as they come . As is Brett Cullen 's villain, a character so cookie cutter that it's hard to even recall his name. He's simply there to be the bad, racist white man. Oscar Nuñez plays the school principal, and though his role is small, he's enjoyable to watch. Again there are unexplored pockets of his relationship with the newly hired JB that could have been intriguing to explore.

The problem is, when you have a story with this many layers, not only tackling socioeconomic barriers, but racial barriers, and the complexities of a post-war America, it's far too easy to get lost in whatever catches your eye . There's even a moment when the boys cross the border to Mexico and they must face the difficult reality that even in a place they dub "the motherland" they are viewed as outsiders, not Mexican but American. The Long Game isn't awful, it's perfectly serviceable as a sports flick about an inspiring all-American team, but that's all that it is: it's fine. There's little to write home about and it feels like a case of unfulfilled potential.

• Jay Hernandez gives a standout performance, bringing more nuance to his role of a man struggling with PTSD.
• The story on which the film is based in an impressive and engaging one that, at times, is perfectly serviceable.
• The film tries to take on too many different themes and isn't able to do any of them the full justice they deserve.
• Many of the side characters are simply too shallow to leave an impact and stand out in all the wrong ways.
• The overall telling is fine at best, falling far short of its potential.

The Long Game is now available to stream on VOD in the U.S.

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