"Anton," she said, tapping his notebook. "This is perfect. Too perfect. Even Trostentsova herself might have tripped over this particular participle."

The year is 2017. In a quiet, dust-moted classroom in Omsk, 11-year-old Anton sat staring at the dreaded "Control Questions and Tasks" at the end of a chapter in his Russian textbook.

Anton’s heart hammered. But then, she smiled. "However, since you 'worked so hard' on this, why don't you explain the rule for the alternating vowels in the roots –ros– and –rast– to the class?"

The clock was a rhythmic executioner: tick, tick, tick. If he didn't solve the exercise on complex sentences, his weekend of video games was forfeit.

The next morning, his teacher, Maria Ivanovna—a woman whose glasses seemed to magnify her ability to smell a lie—called him to the front.

He spent that weekend not playing games, but actually reading the Baranov commentary. By Monday, he didn't need the phone under the desk. He had discovered that the "Control Questions" weren't a trap—they were the boss level of the game he was finally learning how to play.