Cain's Jawbone

''Cain's Jawbone'' is a murder mystery puzzle written by Edward Powys Mathers under the pseudonym " Torquemada". The puzzle was first published in 1934 as part of ''The Torquemada Puzzle Book''. In 2019, crowdfunding publisher Unbound published a new stand-alone edition of the puzzle in collaboration with the charity The Laurence Sterne 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 and Samson.

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 hardcover 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 and other word games. The pages can be arranged in (factorial 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 six 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. A third person also solved the puzzle in 1935 and received a note of congratulations from Mathers, but did not win a prize. This solver contacted the Historical Library of Shandy Hall in 2016, after the library sent out a public request for the puzzle's solution.

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 had correctly solved the puzzle, doing so over a period of six months during the COVID-19 lockdown. 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".

Popular reception

In 1934, Victor Gollancz Ltd printed 4,000 copies of ''Cain's Jawbone'' but there is no record of actual sales. Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick Library, Coventry CV4 7AL In the Gollancz publication, ''Cain's Jawbone'' was only one among other puzzles. Since that time, the book, and interest in it, lay dormant until 2019.

According to ''The Washington Post'', "In its first year on the market in 2019, ''Cain's Jawbone'' sold roughly 4,000 copies." Interest was lukewarm, but the same article credits subsequent sky-rocketing sales to Sarah Scannell following her publication of videos documenting her progress toward solving ''Cain's Jawbone'' on TikTok, as well as the near-simultaneous announcement that UK celebrity John Finnemore had solved the puzzle.

According to ''The Guardian'', sales have topped 500,000 as of the beginning of 2023.

Critical reception

The Laurence Sterne Trust has used the increased popularity of ''Cain's Jawbone'' in the early 2020s to promote experimental forms in the novel.

References

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Further reading

* Kenna Hughes-Castleberry, "A Murder Mystery Puzzle: The literary puzzle ''Cain's Jawbone'', which has stumped humans for decades, reveals the limitations of natural-language-processing algorithms", ''Scientific American'', vol. 329, no. 4 (November 2023), pp. 81–82. "This murder mystery competition has revealed that although NLP ( natural-language processing) models are capable of incredible feats, their abilities are very much limited by the amount of context they receive. This ..could cause ifficultiesfor researchers who hope to use them to do things such as analyze ancient languages. In some cases, there are few historical records on long-gone civilizations to serve as training data for such a purpose." (p. 82.)

External links

Cain's Jawbone: Solution checker

British books
Puzzle books
1934 books
Victor Gollancz Ltd books