4 Bonkers Puzzle Contests That Baffled The World

4  Cain’s Jawbone — The Murder Mystery Only a Handful of People Have Solved in Nearly 100 Years

Ah, 1934, the year Judi Dench was born, Donald Duck made his screen debut, and cryptic crossword writer Edward Mathers (who used the pseudonym “Torquemada”) released a book of puzzles, presumably to kill time until World War II finally rolled around. The last 100 pages of the book formed a complete mystery novella entitled Cain’s Jawbone — but the pages, not unlike a McDonald’s ice cream machine, were out of order. 

To solve the puzzle, readers had to rearrange the pages into the correct sequence and also solve the six murders contained in the story. This was no small feat; not only is the prose composed of coded wordplay forming “largely incomprehensible … meandering sentences,” but there are more than 32 million possible combinations of pages. The prize for this near-insurmountable task was 25 pounds (which went much further in ’34 than today), and it was claimed by just two people.

The Observer

After falling out of print for the better part of a century, just last year, a new edition of Cain’s Jawbone was released thanks to a crowdfunding campaign. While Torquemada is obviously quite dead, the long-lost solution was pieced together by Shandy Hall curator Patrick Wildgust, and the publisher offered a £1000 prize to any reader who could decipher it.

4 Bonkers Puzzle Contests That Baffled The World
Source: Pinoy Daily News