Sherlock Holmes Compendium of Mysterious Puzzles

By Gareth Moore, Sidney Paget and George Wylie Hutchinson

Makes a unique gift for any Sherlock fan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcturus Publishing
• Release date: May 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398821682

Gareth Moore

Dr. Gareth Moore (BSc [Hons], MPhil, PhD) is the internationally best-selling author of a wide range of brain-training and puzzle books for both children and adults, including Anti-Stress Puzzles, Ultimate Dot to Dot, Brain Games for Clever Kids®, Lateral Logic, Extreme Mazes, and The Ordnance Survey Puzzle Book. His books have sold over a million copies in the UK alone and have sold in 35 different languages. He is also the creator of online brain-training site BrainedUp.com and runs the daily puzzle site PuzzleMix.com.

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Sherlock Holmes Compendium of Mysterious Puzzles, by Dr Gareth Moore

CONTENTS

Introduction

Puzzles

THE WARRIOR WOMEN

A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA

AN ORDERED SEQUENCE

A HAT-TRICK

THE STRAND PYRAMID ONE

SOCIETY RIDDLES

THE GAP YEAR

A STRANGECASE

A FAIR AFFAIR

LOOKING APART

THE SEWER RIDDLE

THE HOSPITAL BALL

AN EMOTIVE MOTIVE

A SECOND SEQUENCE

THE MARRYING KIND

LINED UP

THE WET COUNTRY

THE CRYPTIC PAINTING

SISTERLY LOVE

THE BEAR NECESSITIES

CHILDISH NAMES

TWO LORDS AND TWO LADIES

A TRAY GLASS

THE IMPOSSIBLE LINE

GONE TO THE DOGS

THE LINKS IN THE STRAND

THE RIDDLE THEORY

SOCIAL SHAKES

LONDON ZOO ONE

THE LINKS IN THE STRAND TWO

A RUNNING HYPOTHESIS

SHAKESPEARE’S WORK

A REMARKABLE CALCULATION

THE RIDDLE SESSION ONE

THE LETTER JUMBLES ONE

A MUDDY MAN

THE TERRACE SPECTRUM

A HAIRY PROBLEM

THE KEY PLACE

THE HAPPY SEPARATION

CUBIST ARCHITECTURE

LONDON ZOO TWO

LOST PROPERTY

THE CONSULTANT’S DILEMMA

LONDON ZOO THREE

A THIRD SEQUENCE

OLD AND NEW

LETTER LOGIC

THE STRAND PYRAMID TWO

THE STRANGE SQUARE

THE LETTER JUMBLES TWO

THE CHEMICAL MIX-UP

THE CLOCK RIDDLE ONE

THE LINKS IN THE STRAND THREE

TIMING TROUBLE

THE RIDDLE SESSION TWO

THE FRENCH MATHEMATICIAN

THE CLOCK RIDDLE TWO

THE WATER PUZZLE

THE LATE TRAIN

RUNNING LOGIC

THE STRAND PYRAMID THREE

THE MUSIC MAN

THE BARRACKS BURGLARY

THE COIN CONUNDRUM

A MATHEMATICAL MESSAGE

A RETURN FROM ROME

THE WORD GAME

THE ROYAL DIVISION

THE RAIN GAME

LEFT BEHIND

THE CALENDAR CLUB

THE FOREST PARK

THE LETTER JUMBLES THREE

THE URBAN CLIFF

A HIDDEN MESSAGE

OFF TO THE RACES

THE CODED COMMUNICATION

A FOURTH SEQUENCE

AN INEXACT SCIENCE

THE GREEK INTERPRETER

GOING UNDERGROUND

A CONCEALED CODE

A GHOSTLY ENCOUNTER

THE SINGING DETECTIVE

THE FINAL SEQUENCE

A SECOND CONDITIONAL WILL

RUNNING AROUND

THE CODED LETTER

THE FINAL RIDDLE SESSION

THE CLUB CODE

A STATION FULL OF LIARS

THE STRAND PYRAMID FOUR

THE STAMP COLLECTION

AN OPEN FIELD

TENNIS TRICKERY

THE BORROWED BINOCULARS

THE HORSE FARM

A RUBBISH TASK

A FERRY TRIP

THE LETTER JUMBLES FOUR

THE GREEK PATH

THE LINKS IN THE STRAND FOUR

MRS. HUDSON’S AGE

THE TRANSATLANTIC TRIP

A FRAGILE SITUATION

THE CIRCUS PINOCCHIO

A LUGGAGE COMPLICATION

AT THE OPERA

ANOTHER CIRCUS

TAVERN TRICKS

THE STRAND PYRAMID FIVE

MOUSE MATHEMATICS

COUNTRY CLUB

A MYSTERY WEAPON

THE WORLD’S FAIR

THE GEARED DOOR

THE GREENWICH CHART

BEHIND THE GEARED DOOR

THE LINKS IN THE STRAND FIVE

THE PALACE GARDENS

THE ALCHEMIST’S LAMENT

THE TOMB AIDERS

THE REVERSIBLE WORDS

VOLTAIRE’S TEASER

A STUDY IN PINK

THE ISLAND ESCAPE

THE CASINO JOB

THE LETTER JUMBLES FIVE

THE CASINO RIDDLE

THE MAIL

THE FLOWERY LANGUAGE

THE STRAND PYRAMID SIX

THE IDENTICAL TAGS

THE LINKS IN THE STRAND SIX

ALL MIXED UP

THE LETTER JUMBLES SIX

FURTHER REVERSIBLE WORDS

THE HOUNDS OF THE BASKERVILLES

THE TITLE DEED

Solutions

INTRODUCTION

Dear Reader,

I am delighted to welcome you back to this second volume of our puzzle adventures. I hope that you will find it as intriguing and edifying as my first such compilation, and indeed it is the success of that precursor volume which has led me to put pen to paper once again. It would have been rather churlish of me to keep the knowledge of our many experiences to myself, for society at large has much to learn from the methods and observations of that most singular gentleman, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

In this book, I relay to you more than 100 situations in which Holmes and I have found ourselves during the pursuit of our manifold cases. I have presented them in such a way that you can challenge yourself to answer the very same conundrums that caused momentary pause to either myself or Holmes, and I hope that some small enjoyment will be found in your attempts to keep up with the great detective’s mind.

Should you not, however, have read our first volume, or have somehow failed 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 and I, to simple observers. I frequently find myself unable to offer any additional insight into his investigatory activities. Having already solved a mystery, however, 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 also 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.

The challenges in this book 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 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 the mighty Lord himself gave you as you passed the boundary into 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 occasionally seen fit to put a small hint into some of the puzzle titles, so if you should ever find yourself stuck then it is always worth considering the true meaning of the title. Perhaps it might be of some small assistance in your hunt for even the most elusive of answers.

Should any of the herein conundrums happen to challenge and perplex you beyond your ken, I have (once again 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, and explained any solving mechanism where it was appropriate to do so. 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 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 further documenting the genius of the man I am lucky to call my friend: Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

Dr. John Watson,

221B Baker Street, London, 1899

PUZZLES

THE WARRIOR WOMEN

One day I enjoyed a lunchtime stroll around the streets close to 221B Baker Street. As I meandered through the familiar environs, I began to wonder if I could best Holmes by inventing a riddle of my own. It may have been foolish, but I felt the need to try.

After working on it for a full hour, I returned and presented him with the following challenge:

Thirty men and two women, dressed in uniforms of black or white, are locked in combat for many hours. The women may be few, but they hold the most power of all those on the battlefield. Who are these warriors?

Holmes didn’t even grant me the satisfaction of a dramatic pause before immediately giving me the answer I had intended.

What did he say?

ANSWER

A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA

An original short story by Arthur Conan Doyle

I

To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men’s motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.

I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us away from each other. My own complete happiness, and the home-centred interests which rise up around the man who first finds himself master of his own establishment, were sufficient to absorb all my attention, while Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature. He was still, as ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime, and occupied his immense faculties and extraordinary powers of observation in following out those clues, and clearing up those mysteries which had been abandoned as hopeless by the official police. From time to time I heard some vague account of his doings: of his summons to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder, of his clearing up of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee, and finally of the mission which he had accomplished so delicately and successfully for the reigning family of Holland. Beyond these signs of his activity, however, which I merely shared with all the readers of the daily press, I knew little of my former friend and companion.

One night—it was on the twentieth of March, 1888—I was returning from a journey to a patient (for I had now returned to civil practice), when my way led me through Baker Street. As I passed the well-remembered door, which must always be associated in my mind with my wooing, and with the dark incidents of the Study in Scarlet, I was seized with a keen desire to see Holmes again, and to know how he was employing his extraordinary powers. His rooms were brilliantly lit, and, even as I looked up, I saw his tall, spare figure pass twice in a dark silhouette against the blind. He was pacing the room swiftly, eagerly, with his head sunk upon his chest and his hands clasped behind him. To me, who knew his every mood and habit, his attitude and manner told their own story. He was at work again. He had risen out of drug-created dreams and was hot upon the scent of some new problem. I rang the bell and was shown up to the chamber which had formerly been in part my own.

His manner was not effusive. It seldom was; but he was glad, I think, to see me. With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindly eye, he waved me to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars, and indicated a spirit case and a gasogene in the corner. Then he stood before the fire and looked me over in his singular introspective fashion.

Wedlock suits you, he remarked. I think, Watson, that you have put on seven and a half pounds since I saw you.

Seven! I answered.

Indeed, I should have thought a little more. Just a trifle more, I fancy, Watson. And in practice again, I observe. You did not tell me that you intended to go into harness.

Then, how do you know?

I see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you have been getting yourself very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and careless servant girl?

My dear Holmes, said I, this is too much. You would certainly have been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago. It is true that I had a country walk on Thursday and came home in a dreadful mess, but as I have changed my clothes I can’t imagine how you deduce it. As to Mary Jane, she is incorrigible, and my wife has given her notice; but there, again, I fail to see how you work it out.

He chuckled to himself and rubbed his long, nervous hands together.

It is simplicity itself, said he; "my eyes tell me that on the inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by