Sherlock Holmes' Cunning Puzzles: Riddles, Enigmas and Challenges Inspired by the World's Greatest Crime-Solver

by Tim Dedopulos

Use your powers of deduction to solve more than more than 75 ingenious enigmas and riddles. In order to solve these challenging conundrums, which are all written in the style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's great stories, solvers will have to access their inner Sherlock and his powers of deduction. Tips and tricks for working the Holmes way are included, as well as answers and explanations.

144 pages, Hardcover

Published September 19, 2017

About the author

Tim Dedopulos, a British writer, editor, publisher and game designer with nearly 100 works to his name in areas ranging from horror and sff, through music and art, to games, puzzles and jokes.

Tim lives in Spain with his wife and the ghost of his murdered bromeliad, grimly acclimatising to his new-found and unwelcome mid-40s. A shameless INFJ, he usually tries to avoid thinking in the third person.

Reviews

[Diah · Rating 5 out of 5]

LMAO this book taught me humility because I couldn't solve 80% of the problems (50% laziness, 50% stupidity). It wasn't what I expected per se, and yes, I wanted more of a logic mystery in it, but I didn't mind.

[Zoltan Zanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this as a gift. On first seeing the cover, I expected a book of logic puzzles based on deductive reasoning or at the very least, the kind of cunning, puzzles and riddles which require general knowledge, or a knowledge of strange / little known facts. Essentially I was expecting it to be a book that requires the sort of knowledge that Holmes himself exhibits in the stories: puzzles that even if I’d been unable to solve them, would educate or entertain me in some small way. At the very least I expected to be inspired to do some further reading once I’d been forced to give in and look up the answer.

What I found was, sadly, a rather mundane collection of exam style maths questions, you know the kind of thing: a train setS off at 20mph from a station at 2pm while 60 miles away a man is travelling at 10mph On his bike... exchange the “a train” for “Holmes” and “a man” for Watson and you’ve pretty much got the extent of the connection these puzzles have with Sherlock Holmes.

My main problems with this style of question:

(a) They can’t (usually) be solved merely by thinking and a pen and paper are nearly always required, which isn’t in the spirit of Mr Holmes’ methods.

(b) While I’m not terrible as maths, I certainly don’t LOVE doing it so much that I’d buy a book of maths based puzzles. I can’t say I know anyone who would honestly, perhaps giving a clue as to why it was marketed as a Sherlock Holmes book.

(c) Maths puzzles really don’t lend themselves to being retold easily. They invariably lead to rolling eyes, groans of distress or looks of boredom when you do tell them to people at social gatherings, unless you have a very specific audience, so you really can’t repeat them at dinner parties, in the pub or at work, and even if you do have a willing victim they will need a pen and paper!

To be fair, not ALL of the puzzles are maths based, and I did find the odd few question that was a genuine Holmes style riddle, and when I did it was genuinely enjoyable. It’s just a real shame the author took the easier option of creating a maths based puzzle book over a genuine head-scratching Holmes style puzzler, especially when it’s been titled as such.

I think my main problem with this book is that it’s nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes and has more in common with a “know your own I.Q” or “An introduction to computer programming” book. If that’s your thing however, you’ll love it.

[Joe Farrell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty boring puzzles, most of which aren't in the Sherlock Holmes vibe. It's very mathematical which I don't mind but I was expecting, like anyone who would buy a Sherlock book, it to contain more deductions and mysteries.

4/10

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'll admit to being a bit miffed with this book. I thought it would be more based off of actual Holmes cases or something. In reality, it was about 90% math word problems. All well and good, but not what I was expecting. The wordknot puzzels I enjoyed, and the puzzles that involved figuring out a murderer or something using logic were what I was looking for when I picked this up. But, again, mostly math problems. I'm not in school anymore and have no desire to do any math problems that don't pertain to my life.

[Sebastian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bring pen and paper. Some puzzles are great and have a Holmes air to them, many are word games, more than half are math. The one that frustrated me the most had a half-baked answer that was also wrong.

I don't mind math problems so I enjoyed most of it but don't expect more than a few detective puzzles.