The combination lock

In something of a minor miracle Morgan's managed to keep a job for an entire week.

She announced on Saturday that she needed a lock for her locker, that others might not pinch her stuff while she was out on the sales floor. Yep, she's working at a local department store though which department I couldn't say.

Andrew thought a moment and announced that he had a spare combination lock. Sounded reasonable given that his most precious asset at the moment is protected by his World of Warcraft password! So up the stairs he went and down came a padlock of the sort that has four little wheels, each numbered 0 to 9.

Of course he'd forgotten the combination! So Morgan played with it for 30 seconds or so and gave up. There are, after all, only 10,000 possible combinations. She handed it to Mom and she, Mom, handed it straight on to me. Uh huh, that'd be right.

I immediately turned the wheels to 0000 and 'click' it was open! Amazed looks! 'How did you do that?' they chorused.

'Well', I replied, 'it was easy.' Dad (their dad not mine) bought it and gave it to Andrew. And they're both so lazy they wouldn't have read the instructions on how to set the combination. Therefore it had to be still set at the factory default!

Perhaps I ought to have played the role of Houdini rather than that of Sherlock Holmes; now they know how it was done they're not half as impressed. But I bet you are!