"A dirty trick to swindle quick?" Carr asked out loud. No one answered her. "So, a... a cheat. A fraud... A con?"

At this, the letters 'con' appeared in front of her, lighting up in slightly luminescent smoke. "A con!" she exclaimed, grinning to herself. "Okay, um... Why the hippo hates the giraffe. Well, the obvious answer is the giraffe's neck," she said, not really expecting the letters 'nec' to light up next to 'con.' She punched the air excitedly. "And ending's ending is a 'g'," she said slowly, then shook her head. "Or, 'ing', actually, isn't it?"

More letters lit up. 'con nec _ ing' "Connecting!" she said, filling in the blank. "The start of things is easily a 't'."

She frowned a little when she found that she was still trapped by the four walls. Then, she remembered the last line of the riddle and became calm again. "The number two," she said out loud. "Connection is represented by the number two in the pythagorean number system!"

In the next instant, one of the walls disappeared and Carr continued on, running far from the dead end corner of the maze.