''Cain's Jawbone'' is a

murder mystery Crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, mystery novel, and police novel are terms used to describe narratives that centre on criminal acts and especially on the investigation, either by an amateur or a professional detective, of a crime, ...

puzzle A puzzle is a game, Problem solving, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, the solver is expected to put pieces together (Disentanglement puzzle, or take them apart) in a logical way, in order to arrive at th ...

written by

Edward Powys Mathers Edward Powys Mathers (28 August 1892 – 3 February 1939) was an English translator and poet, and also a pioneer of compiling advanced cryptic crosswords. Powys Mathers was born in Forest Hill, London, the son of Edward Peter Mathers, newsp ...

under the pseudonym " Torquemada". The puzzle was first published in 1934 as part of ''The Torquemada Puzzle Book''. Crowdfunding publisher Unbound published a new stand-alone edition of the puzzle in 2019 in collaboration with the charity The

Laurence Sterne Laurence Sterne (24 November 1713 – 18 March 1768), was an Anglo-Irish novelist and Anglican cleric who wrote the novels ''The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'' and ''A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy'', published ...

Trust. Both editions, when published, were accompanied by a competition which offered a cash prize to the first reader to solve the puzzle. ''Cain's Jawbone'' has been described as "one of the hardest and most beguiling word puzzles ever published."

Title

The phrase ''Cain's Jawbone'' refers to the Biblical stories of

Cain and Abel In the biblical Book of Genesis, Cain ''Qayīn'', in pausa ''Qāyīn''; gr, Κάϊν ''Káïn''; ar, قابيل/قايين, Qābīl / Qāyīn and Abel ''Heḇel'', in pausa ''Hāḇel''; gr, Ἅβελ ''Hábel''; ar, هابيل, Hāb� ...

and

Samson Samson (; , '' he, Šīmšōn, label= none'', "man of the sun") was the last of the judges of the ancient Israelites mentioned in the Book of Judges (chapters 13 to 16) and one of the last leaders who "judged" Israel before the institution o ...

Puzzle

The puzzle consists of a 100-page prose narrative with its pages arranged in the wrong order. The first edition is part of a hardback book. The second edition is a boxed set of page-cards. To solve the puzzle, the reader must determine the correct order of the pages and also the names of the murderers and victims within the story. The story's text includes a large number of quotations, references, puns,

Spoonerisms A spoonerism is an occurrence in speech in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched (see metathesis) between two words in a phrase. These are named after the Oxford don and ordained minister William Archibald Spooner, w ...

and other word games. The pages can be arranged in (

factorial In mathematics, the factorial of a non-negative denoted is the product of all positive integers less than or equal The factorial also equals the product of n with the next smaller factorial: \begin n! &= n \times (n-1) \times (n-2) \t ...

of 100) possible combinations, but there is only one correct order. The solution to the puzzle has never been made public.

Competitions

When the puzzle was first published in 1934, a prize of £15 was offered "to the first reader who could re-order the pages and provide an account of the 6 persons murdered in ''Cain's Jawbone'' and the full names of their murderers." Two people, Mr S. Sydney-Turner and Mr W. S. Kennedy, solved the puzzle in 1935 and won £25 each. The publishers of the 2019 edition ran the competition a second time, saying "The prize of £1,000 (roughly how much £15 was worth in 1934) will be given to the first reader to provide the names of the murderers and the murdered, the correct order of the pages and a short explanation of how the solution was obtained. The competition will run for one year from the date of publication." In November 2020 it was announced that comedian and crossword compiler

John Finnemore John David Finnemore (born 28 September 1977) is a British comedy writer and actor. He wrote and performed in the radio series ''Cabin Pressure'', ''John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme'', and '' John Finnemore's Double Acts'', and frequently ...

had correctly solved the puzzle, doing so over a period of six months during the

COVID-19 lockdown Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of non-pharmaceutical interventions colloquially known as lockdowns (encompassing stay-at-home orders, curfews, quarantines, and similar societal restrictions) have been implemented in numerous countrie ...

. Finnemore said "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".

References

{{Reflist British books Puzzle books 1934 books Victor Gollancz Ltd books