My eldest daughter loves the charming, if somewhat eccentric Inspector Hercule Poirot from the Agatha Christie series. His famous words when working through a problem were “The little grey cells are working well today.” Well, my little grey cells certainly were active this week. I had to invent a coding system to reveal the location of something of extreme importance to three district groups in the third instalment of the Chronicles of Nadine. The code protected something precious, when the dragons faced possible extermination. The location of the hidden items could only be worked out by someone who had an intimate knowledge of the workings of their inner society. Coming up with the system was one thing. But creating the clues was an entirely unfamiliar process that challenged me far beyond what I expected. It rather reminded me of the Disney movie starring Nicolas Cage called National Treasure. The character Benjamin Gates thinks through a series of clues that lead to various l...