Hachette India

Cain's Jawbone

Torquemada

The solve-it-yourself classic that has stumped readers for a century.

After an error at the printer’s caused the 100-page murder mystery Cain’s Jawbone to be printed in an entirely haphazard and incorrect order, it’s up to the reader to reorder the pages – the number of possible combinations is a figure with 158 digits – and solve the murders within. There is, however, a strictly logical sequence of pages, that if followed by a process of deduction will allow readers to arrive at this sequence, and also name the murderers and the murdered persons.

In 1934, Edward Powys Mathers released The Torquemada Puzzle Book, which included crosswords, spooneristic problems, acrostics, anagrams, verbal pastimes and problems. The last hundred pages formed the fiendishly difficult literary puzzle you hold now, which till date almost a hundred years down the line has been solved only by a handful of people.

Torquemada

Torquemada Edward Powys Mathers, born in Forest Hill, London, was an English translator and poet. He translated J.C. Mardrus’s French version of One Thousand Nights and One Night, also known as The Arabian Nights. He also created advanced cryptic crosswords for The Observer under the pseudonym ‘Torquemada’ from 1926 until his death in 1939. As Torquemada, he also authored Crosswords in Rhyme for Those of Riper Years (1925) and The Torquemada Puzzle Book (1934), which included the murder mystery puzzle Cain’s Jawbone.