British comedian solves world's 'most difficult literary puzzle' becoming third winner in 100 years
Since the Daily Telegraph hides the JF story behind a paywall, ….
Rearranging the pages of a short novel that has been printed out of order doesn’t initially seem like something that might be described as the world’s ‘most difficult literary puzzle’.
But it’s easy to understand how it has only been solved twice when you find out it was written by a famous cryptic crossword setter and that there are 32 million combinations.
Cain’s Jawbone, a 100-page-long murder mystery puzzle, was last cracked in 1935 when two puzzlers claimed £15 in winnings, just a year after it was originally published.
Now a British comedian has solved the literary puzzle for the first time in 85 years, after submitting the correct solution shortly before the closing of a new year-long competition.
John Finnermore who writes his own crosswords for The Times, under the name Emu, said his comedy writing – he has created and performed in countless Radio 4 shows – was a helpful skill, as was the benefit of lockdown.
“The first time I had a look at it I quickly thought 'Oh this is just way beyond me.’ The only way I’d even have a shot at it was if I were for some bizarre reason trapped in my own home for months on end, with nowhere to go and no-one to see. Unfortunately, the universe heard me,” he said.
Mr Finnemore set to work spreading the puzzle, which is printed on 100 separate cards out over the spare bed.
“Every so often I’d potter in, stare at it till my forehead bled, spend an hour online researching the history of Shrewsbury prison or something, swap three cards, move one back, and potter off again.”
The puzzle was written by the Observer’s crossword compiler Edward Powys Mathers under the pen name of Torquemada and consists of a murder mystery book published and bound with the pages out of order.
To make the mystery harder, the book is filled with surreal, meandering sentences and references to lesser known Robert Louis Stevenson novels and specific eighteenth-century French murder trials.
Published in The Torquemada Puzzle Book in 1934, readers were invited to reorder the pages, solve the mysteries and reveal the murderers.
The book was republished last year by Unbound, the crowdfunded publisher known for its experimental works, with a new competition launched in collaboration with Shandy Hall, home to the Laurence Sterne Trust.
The closing date for the competition was 19th September, this time with a prize money of £1000 - approximately how much £15 was worth in 1934.
It took Mr Finnemore six months to complete what the book itself calls an “extremely difficult and not for the faint hearted” puzzle.
But the 43-year-old has admitted that had an easier time than his predecessors as he used Google to help him out.
“I googled constantly,” he told the Telegraph. “I cannot imagine how the two people who did it in 1935 managed.
“If you were sitting in the British library and you were extremely well read and it was the same year it was written then maybe you could do it but unless you know off the top of your head the licensing laws of the 1930s then you should absolutely allow yourself to just google everything.”
“It’s not cheating,” he added.
Getting the final combination was, Mr Finnemore said, a cathartic exercise throughout a particularly turbulent year.
“The process of taking something that looks like chaos and gradually turning it into something that looks ordered and designed, and indeed is ordered and designed, that’s a very satisfying thing to do.
“It gives you a little rush of ‘Oh, the world should make sense’, if only I could spend enough time checking these cards or putting the pieces in this order. Maybe then it would all make sense.”
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