Sherlock Holmes Case-Book of Curious Puzzles: A Collection of Enigmas to Puzzle Even the Greatest Detective
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My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere.
-Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of the Four.
Pit your wits against the greatest detective of them all with this collection of fiendish and hugely entertaining puzzles and enigmas. Some involve riddles, some plays on words, and some rely on mathematical principles. Use your powers of logical deduction, and see if you can match the towering intellect of Sherlock Holmes.
Not only does this collection include brilliant puzzles to ponder over, but it presents these quandaries within exchanges between Holmes and Watson. In this way, this puzzle book retains the same cosy Victorian charm that Holmes' tales are so loved for.
Featuring the original pen and ink illustrations by Sidney Paget and George Wylie Hutchinson, this gorgeously designed puzzle book will immerse you in Holmes's mysteries and keep you entertained for hours.
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Sherlock Holmes Case-Book of Curious Puzzles - Sidney Paget
CONTENTS
Introduction
Puzzles
The First Deduction
The Reigate Squires
A Special Number
The Fast Train
The Case of the Red Widow
The Impossible Breakfast
Four By Four
The Present-Packing Poser
A Mysterious Place
Great Nieces and Great Nephews
The Barrel Quarrel
Brothers and Sisters
Reading Room
The Three Feet Feat
A First Keyboard Conundrum
Keeping Up With The Hudsons
The Cuboid Calendar
A Carefully Constructed Number
The Secret Message
The Bamboozling Bacon
The Second Deduction
The Primary Sequence
A Card Conundrum
Red and Green Apples
Even More Apples
The Long Walk
Clipped Wings
The First Rebus
The Impatient Pocket Watch
Celebrity Conundrum
The Third Deduction
Lost and Found
The Second Keyboard Conundrum
Crossing The Bridge
Juggling Juices
Cake Conundrum
A Coded Message
The Mixed-Up Label
Another Card Conundrum
The Two Dentists
The Circular Puzzle
The Secondary Sequence
The Fourth Deduction
The Same Tea
The Nut Case
A Strange Garden
Common Property
The Four Coins
High Time
A Sibling Sum
A One-Way Oddity
The Second Rebus
The Shifting Box
The Door Dilemma
The Cake Trios
The Scone Problem
Wet Clothes
The Slow Workmen
A Second Coded Message
An Odd Order
The Fifth Deduction
Sleeping It Off
Getting the Chop
The Case of the Secret Sailors
Irregular Twins
A Puddle Puzzle
The Tertiary Sequence
The Strange Shipwreck
A Palindromic Puzzle
Racing Results
Carnival Cakes
Matching Socks
Holmes, Scrambled
The Musgrave Ritual
Common Property Two
An Illuminating Problem
A Strangely Shaped Riddle
Truth-tellers and Liars
The Poisoned Party
A Third Coded Message
Summation Sorcery
The Island in the Lake
Use Your Head
A Fourth Coded Message
The Lesser of Three Evils
The Domino Deceit
A Likely Story
The Party Problem
Bridge, Interrupted
Atop the Shipping Container
Newspaper Pages
Truth-tellers and Liars Two
A Fair Race
A Banana Bargain
Target Practice
The Broken Five
The Tricky Testimony
Tying the Knot
A Table Tennis Trick
The Cube Quandary
Bacterial Growth
A Textile Teaser
A Fifth Coded Message
A Psychic Paradox
The Crossroads
The Third Rebus
A Close Shave
Shrinking Vocabulary
Taking the Fall
The Missing Penny
Seeing Double
The Mansion Murder
Mrs. Barker’s Case
Pint-sized Fun
An Odd Biography
Walking the Dogs
The Quaternary Sequence
Bottled Up
Don’t Put the Cart Before the Horse
A Sixth Coded Message
An Entertaining Enigma
Crossing the Thames
Crumbled Up
A Long Year
The One Rule
Keeping Clean
The Three Children
The Family Name
The Fourth Rebus
An Uncrackable Sequence
A Priestly Poser
The Long Throw
A Seventh Coded Message
Running in Circles
The Fifth Rebus
The Long Corridor
Dearly Beloved
The Treacherous Trap
Solutions
INTRODUCTION
Dear Reader,
Welcome to this most portentous volume. It is the very first of its kind, for within the pages of this book I have collected together the most unique puzzle vignettes. All have been gathered during the past few years of my life, during which I have had the rare privilege to accompany that most singular of detectives, Sherlock Holmes, on many of his most renowned cases.
Should you somehow fail to have heard of the detective tour de force that is Mr Sherlock Holmes, let me take a moment to introduce you to him, peccadillos and all.
His signature feature is his towering intellect. His cranial cogitations are majestic in their profundity, often reducing mere mortals such as you, no doubt—and certainly I—to mere observers, no matter how much we might wish to offer some additional insight into his investigatory activities. Having already solved a mystery, he enjoys playing with others in the way that a cat will tease its prey, ensuring that you are never in any doubt as to how superior his own intelligence is to yours. He will frequently challenge you to reach some conclusion or the other, but it is invariably one that he has long ago passed at the wayside in his own insatiable quest for knowledge.
This book collects together more than 130 such challenges that Holmes has set me over recent years, and which I present here in written form for your edification and entertainment.
These challenges are of several different types. Some rely on principles of the mathematical kind, while many need one or more logical deductions to be made from the presented writings. A few make reference to contemporary technology or other new inventions of our Victorian era, and others require abstract thinking to explain some apparently impossible situation. Let me assure you, however, that none require any special knowledge or experience, beyond the wit that God himself gave you as you entered this mortal world.
Holmes is rather fond of riddles, so I should also take this opportunity to give you fair warning that at least a few of the challenges require cleverness of the language variety, with a few plays on words and the like. If a puzzle seems unsolvable, it is always worth considering that some cleverness is at play and all is not as it seems. I have also seen fit to put a small hint into some of the puzzle titles, so if you should ever find yourself stuck it is always worth considering the true meaning of the title. It might perchance be of some small assistance in your hunt for even the most elusive of answers.
Should any of the conundrums herein happen to challenge and perplex you beyond your ken, I have (much against Holmes’s recommendation, I might add) included full solutions at the back of this volume. Here I have stated the answer as it was originally given to me. This section might, I suggest, be given to a friend or detective colleague to read, so that they can concoct a hint that is slightly less fiendish than those already given to you on the puzzle pages.
Each challenge may be tackled on its own, and you may dip in and out of the book at your leisure. The material tells no grand overall story, beyond documenting the genius of the man I am lucky to call my friend: Mr Sherlock Holmes.
Doctor John Watson,
221B Baker Street, London, 1897
PUZZLES
THE FIRST DEDUCTION
Holmes and I met with some of the Baker Street Irregulars to discuss a case. Before we arrived at the meeting place, he remarked that we were meeting with three boys who had worked with us before: Tom, Mickey, and Joe. The names rang bells, but I could not immediately remember which was which.
Which cases did they help us with again, Holmes?
I asked, hoping that this would jog my memory.
Oh, let me see, Watson. It was—if I remember your case names correctly—The Crimson Consideration, The Mark of Three, and The Case of the Vanishing Glass.
This helped me a little, and I recalled a connection between The Mark of Three and the name Joe. But I still could not picture him, and as for the remaining two boys, I had no idea which cases they had assisted us with.
When we arrived at our meeting, I realized that I did indeed recognize all three boys. One had a mole on his chin, another a scar beneath his eye, and the third had wild, bushy hair that sprang out from his head at all angles. I was confident that the one with the scar was Mickey, as I remembered a story about his brother giving him the scar in a fight. It was then that I remembered his impressive bushy hair had featured heavily in my account of The Case of the Vanishing Glass.
From these somewhat paltry recollections, I am pleased to say I was able to greet each boy by the correct name, and make some polite remark about the case he had helped us with.
Can you deduce which name belonged to which boy, and on which case he worked?
ANSWER
THE REIGATE SQUIRES
An original short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
It was some time before the health of my friend Mr Sherlock Holmes recovered from the strain caused by his immense exertions in the spring of 1887. The whole question of the Netherland-Sumatra Company and of the colossal schemes of Baron Maupertuis are too recent in the minds of the public, and are too intimately concerned with politics and finance to be fitting subjects for this series of sketches. They led, however, in an indirect fashion to a singular and complex problem which gave my friend an opportunity of demonstrating the value of a fresh weapon among the many with which he waged his life-long battle against crime.
On referring to my notes I see that it was upon the 14th of April that I received a telegram from Lyons which informed me that Holmes was lying ill in the Hotel Dulong. Within twenty-four hours I was in his sick-room, and was relieved to find that there was nothing formidable in his symptoms. Even his iron constitution, however, had broken down under the strain of an investigation which had extended over two months, during which period he had never worked less than fifteen hours a day, and had more than once, as he assured me, kept to his task for five days at a stretch. Even the triumphant issue of his labours could not save him from reaction after so terrible an exertion, and at a time when Europe was ringing with his name and when his room was literally ankle-deep with congratulatory telegrams I found him a prey to the blackest depression. Even the knowledge that he had succeeded where the police of three countries had failed, and that he had outmanoeuvred at every point the most accomplished swindler in Europe, was insufficient to rouse him from his nervous prostration.
Three days later we were back in Baker Street together; but it was evident that my friend would be much the better for a change, and the thought of a week of spring time in the country was full of attractions to me also. My old friend, Colonel Hayter, who had come under my professional care in Afghanistan, had now taken a house near Reigate in Surrey, and had frequently asked me to come down to him upon a visit. On the last occasion he had remarked that if my friend would only come with me he would be glad to extend his hospitality to him also. A little diplomacy was needed, but when Holmes understood that the establishment was a bachelor one, and that he would be allowed the fullest freedom, he fell in with my plans and a week after our return from Lyons we were under the colonel’s roof. Hayter was a fine old soldier who had seen much of the world, and he soon found, as I had expected, that Holmes and he had much in common.
On the evening of our arrival we were sitting in the colonel’s gun-room after dinner, Holmes stretched upon the sofa, while Hayter and I looked over his little armoury of Eastern weapons.
By the way,
said he suddenly, I think I’ll take one of these pistols upstairs with me in case we have an alarm.
An alarm!
said I.
Yes, we’ve had a scare in this part lately. Old Acton, who is one of our county magnates, had his house broken into last Monday. No great damage done, but the fellows are still at large.
No clue?
asked Holmes, cocking his eye at the colonel.
None as yet. But the affair is a petty one, one of our little country crimes, which must seem too small for your attention, Mr Holmes, after this great international affair.
Holmes waved away the compliment, though his smile showed that it had pleased him.
Was there any feature of interest?
"I fancy not. The thieves ransacked the library and got very little for their pains. The whole place was turned upside down, drawers burst open, and presses ransacked, with the result that an odd volume of Pope’s Homer, two plated candlesticks, an ivory letter-weight, a small oak barometer, and a ball of twine are all that have vanished."
What an extraordinary assortment!
I exclaimed.
Oh, the fellows evidently grabbed hold of everything they could get.
Holmes grunted from the sofa.
The county police ought to make something of that,
said he; why, it is surely obvious that—
But I held up a warning finger.
the story continues on page 22
A SPECIAL NUMBER
Holmes once asked me, Watson, do you have a preferred number?
I thought about it for a