Seventy-eight years after his death, an old Torquemada puzzle returns, with a hefty prize for the first to solve it. Could you identify both the killers and the victims?
The Observer’s first crossword setter, Torquemada, published a collection of puzzles in 1934. Its title read:
The Torquemada Puzzle Book. A miscellany of original crosswords, acrostics … etc., & Cain’s Jawbone. A Torquemada mystery novel. Compiled by “Torquemada.”
Cain’s Jawbone, the bald narrative of a series of tragic happenings during a period of less than six months in a recent year, has met with an accident which seems to be unique in the history of the novelette. The pages have been printed in an entirely haphazard and incorrect order, a fact which reflects little credit on somebody. The author assures his readers, however, that while it is now too late for him to remedy the ordering of the pages, it is quite possible for them, should they care to take the trouble, to reorder them correctly for themselves. Before they attempt to do this, they may care to be assured that there is an inevitable order, the one in which the pages were written, and that, while the narrator’s mind may flit occasionally backwards and forwards in the modern manner, the narrative marches on, relentlessly and unequivocally, from the first page to the last.
A space for notes is provided at the bottom of each page.
Continue reading...