If I was to say the words ‘puzzle book’ to you, I am fairly confident what that would bring to mind – thick tomes of sudokus, wordsearches or crosswords, bound in one of the thickest publications you have seen outside of a textbook and found mostly inhabiting the shelves of WHSmith or the Boots you find in airports. But alas, my dear friend, that is not the type of book that comes into my mind, at least not any longer. For I too once dreamed of the reams of empty boxes and the endless delays that made finishing such a book possible…until it was superseded, dethroned, replaced by a puzzle book that makes all other puzzle books cower in fear. A puzzle book, where the puzzle is the book itself.
Now, you may be thinking: “Bloody hell, Sophie’s finally lost it. All that writing endless articles has finally caught up with her, and she’s cracked”. Don’t be fooled, friend. Whilst that is certainly a distinct possibility, I have enough straight thinking left to finish this piece at least and tell you about the literary puzzle that’s sure to make anyone who attempts it go a little bit crazy. What is this mysterious puzzle, you might ask? Two words. Time to replace ‘puzzle book’ with ‘Cain’s Jawbone’.
Those lucky enough to not yet be aware of this book, let me set the scene. Imagine you are greeted with a small, unassuming book, cover art sweet and pastel, a nice size to hold in a hand, and a mere 100 pages long. “This book will be a nice little read”, you may think to yourself, as you take a quick flick through the pages. But my dear, oh how wrong you are, for as you settle down to begin your latest tale, a single page intrigues you, before striking fear into your eyes.
Cain’s Jawbone is a book unlike any other, one in which the 100 pages of the story have been ripped out, mixed up and placed back in a random order, with the page numbers removed also, replaced with an arbitrary digit indicating its starting place within the book. The game set out for all who dare is a simple one – work out which 6 people were murdered, who murdered each one of them, and the correct order the 100 pages should be placed in to tell a complete and cohesive story. “A challenge, to be sure, but a welcome one”, I told myself, paraphrasing Senator Sheev Palpatine of Naboo, an indication as to why someone like me may find such a book intriguing.
I enjoyed puzzle games as a child, even taking my chosen surname from my favourite puzzle-solving professor, so hearing about this book, I was determined to have a crack at it. The book even explains how few people have ever successfully solved it. So with my latest obsession firmly decided, I ordered a copy of Cain’s Jawbone, and sat down one morning determined to give it my best shot. So friend, are you ready to read about my heroic and intelligent quest that led me to successfully solve one of the greatest literary puzzles in existence, with nothing but “one child [sort of], one teacher [myself], one book and one pen to change the world”?
Well…you came to the wrong place. To avoid any claims of false advertising, clickbait or any of the other internet crimes, the story ends in the tragic admission that…I could NOT solve Cain’s Jawbone! Oh the horrors! I can hear the disappointment echoing around campus, yelled from the Arts Tower over the rooftops of the city that I love that I so brutally let down! No one will ever let me live this moment down…but for those of you who haven’t clicked off immediately and shut your laptops in disgrace, let me present my defence before I am hauled off to the literary gallows, and why it is that this challenge proved too great for little old me!
Cain’s Jawbone is undoubtedly the most difficult and complex puzzle I have ever attempted to tackle, and the thing that got me most was how many steps ahead those who put this book together were. Before even opening the book, several strategies had popped into my head to help me get a head start on the mystery. Firstly, every sentence begins with a capital letter and ends in a full stop, and naturally, not every page will end at the end of a sentence, meaning I could reasonably begin by finding every instance where one sentence runs across two pages, and begin my quest by matching these up. Also, some words in the English syntax are altered based on words immediately next to them or following them, such as ‘a’ vs ‘an’, or ‘there’, ‘their’ and ‘they’re’. Small strategies yes, but an important start that would help me begin to figure out the structure of the story.
But to my disappointment, author Edward Powys Mathers (a.k.a. Torquemada) and his publishers had already thought of that one. Each page meticulously began at the start of a sentence, and finished at the end of one, even when more could have been fit on with half a sentence here or there, no such oversight had been made. They had also been keen to avoid syntax clues where possible as well, with almost no clues given that would allow me to firmly place two pages as neighbours. In the rare cases that either of these did occur, maybe 10-12 pages at maximum, each was sufficiently cryptic to avoid any solid associations being formed. My strategies had been stymied!
The only option I had left was to pick out every unique detail a page had to offer and organise them based on this. I went through page after page, noting every character, interaction, item, location, nickname and anything that may be a clue, hoping that once every page had been sifted through, a clear theme or plot would emerge for every character, which could be tied into locations and items to begin to assemble the story at large. But this was not only time-consuming and incredibly dull to do, but I quickly realised I was basically rewriting the entire book, one ambiguous phrase at a time…
To cut a (very) long story short, I finished all of the pages and pored over the reams of notes for hours trying to sniff out the clues I knew were hiding somewhere, but alas, to no avail. Having abandoned the quest for the sake of my studies, this summer I decided to give it a new crack and hopefully, achieve the success so many had longed for but could never reach…but again my plan was thwarted. Try as I might, I struggled to make any tangible progress at all, with pages decorating every available surface I had, and entire days’ worth of progress scuppered in a single second at the discovery of a previously overlooked detail. With the new semester approaching fast, I had no choice left but to hang up my detective’s hat, bring the pages back together, and admit a bitter and difficult defeat.
Cain’s Jawbone is a challenge unlike any other. There are millions of possible combinations, and deciphering the walls of text to reach it should not be underestimated for a second. It is the most difficult puzzle I have ever attempted. But it is an incredibly entertaining and exciting challenge to embark on, working to assemble a story you have never seen before, in a strange reflection of the art of writing a book in the first place. Whilst I could not work my way to the conclusions, it’s a challenge that everyone should consider giving a go. So next time you and your housemates can’t decide on what to do, or Reading Week beckons, consider giving Cain’s Jawbone a go, and see if you can fare any better than I did!
Cain’s Jawbone (ISBN: 978-1-80018-079-6) was published in 1934
