“Elementary, my dear Watson” quoth the world’s most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes. But is solving crime through observation, logic, and deductive reasoning really that simple? Readers can answer that question in the pages of this unique and intriguing puzzle book.
This is a book “where enigmatic stories of the world’s greatest detective await your sleuthing skills.” The collections of “logic puzzles” are inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic character and his “legendary deductive prowess.” Its pages offer readers the opportunity to hone their detective skills and test their powers of observation, logic, and deduction as they immerse themselves in the world of Sherlock Holmes.
“Shurdle” is a fictional “puzzler.” Each puzzle starts with a clue from the junior detective to get you thinking. It’s called a “Shurdle clue.” Then you read the story and go through lists of suspects, motives, and deductions. This is followed by connections, crime scene analysis, interviews, stake-outs, interrogation, case review, telegram code, elimination, axis, and Shurdoku. It's systematic and quite methodical.
Puzzles include a variety of crimes and contexts. These include the Puzzle of the Winthrope Ruby, the Puzzle of the Purloined old Master, The Puzzle at Willowbrook Cricket Pitch, the Puzzle at Suffragette College, and the Puzzle of the Piccadilly Murder. And more. Chapters include How to Solve (12 steps to follow), The Puzzles, The Vault, Now Score Yourself, and so on.
The Connections section gives readers a place to enter items such as suspect, motive, and deductions into their “detective notebook.” Also location, witnesses, evidence, and so on. It’s an efficient tool to keep track of all facets of every crime within each story.
Kindly note that Shurdle isn’t a book in the traditional sense. It’s a collection of puzzles. It involves playing with language, words, and logic in ways that stretch the reader. It requires you to use logical thinking patterns to find a solution to each “logic puzzle.” Readers who love mysteries or crime and walking through same with Holmes and Watson as they try to solve each crime will enjoy this book.
Dyed-in-the-wool Sherlockians will no doubt enjoy sharpening their deductive abilities and matching wits with the puzzle meisters in these pages. So fans of Puzzle Baron’s Logic Puzzles and the like will enjoy this book. Others may find the content tedious. So it’s not going to be everyone’s cuppa.
Overall, however, this is a worthwhile read and a pleasant way to challenge and stretch your logical thinking and deductive abilities.
