The Sherlock Holmes Puzzle Collection: The Lost Cases

by Tim Dedopulos

Intriguing puzzles based on Holmes cases

Genres: Puzzles, Nonfiction, Mystery

224 pages, Hardcover

Published August 1, 2016

About the author

Tim Dedopulos, a British writer, editor, publisher and game designer with nearly 100 works to his name in areas ranging from horror and sff, through music and art, to games, puzzles and jokes.

Tim lives in Spain with his wife and the ghost of his murdered bromeliad, grimly acclimatising to his new-found and unwelcome mid-40s. A shameless INFJ, he usually tries to avoid thinking in the third person.

Reviews

[Liawèn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Erstmal nur die Rätsel für Einsteiger beendet. Der Rest folgt nächstes Jahr, aber ich bin schon jetzt etwas enttäuscht. Einige Rätsel sind viel zu einfach und andere setzen Wissen voraus. ich dachte, bei Sherlock Holmes kommt es darauf an, dass man gut nachdenkt und nicht auf Vorwissen zurückgreift?!

[Melina Márquez · Rating 4 out of 5]

My head hurts

[Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Written in the general style of Dr. Watson, this is still just an assortment of mostly boring basic logic puzzles that are themed by Sherlock Holmes to appeal to Fans.

70% uninspired content. May be interesting for young fans.

[Elizabeth]

When my dad first got this for me for my birthday, along with another Sherlock Holmes-themed case book, I was uber excited. I really like mysteries, reading them and watching them, and what I like about them is looking at the evidence and solving the mystery along with the characters. So when I started reading this thing, I thought it was like the case book, which was where you really were solving murders in each chapter. But when I started this sucker, boy oh BOY was I disappointed. Why was I disappointed? Well, it was probably due to the fact that the title is EXTREMELY misleading. This is NOT a book full of "lost cases." In fact, its true title should be "Math Problems and a Few Word Puzzles: Sherlock Holmes Victorian Era Edition." I kid you not: out of the 140 puzzles in here, the number of ones that were actual mystery cases to solve I could count on one hand. There were a few word puzzles where you had to tease out words with a common theme (most of which were fun), but about 98-99% of the puzzles were math problems. And by math problems I mean MATH PROBLEMS. Calculating the circumference of a Victorian baseball. Volume of liquids in a glass brandy jar. How many pigs did an antagonist buy if three different livestock cost three different amounts of shillings. The dreaded Word Problem, as in "If so-and-so is walking x miles per hour...how far apart are these two Victorian hamlets?", "If two trains are leaving the station at Liverpool and one is going at this speed and the other is going at that speed...how far apart will they be in two hours?" Remember those from all those math tests, the ones that made you feel so stressed, turned around, and stupid? Those take up the main body of this book; I have to say I spent more time reading the answers in the back than I did actually teasing them out. And then there are the ones that have either trick questions or don't give you the answer at all. There's this one in there, where they ask you how many posts these fence builders want to build around a farm; when you look in the back for the answer, they don't tell you, they just calculate out the acreage instead. I started this book at least nine months ago: it took me seven of those just to work through the first thirty-something pages. After I decided I wasn't going to attempt math anymore and, I don't know, just READ instead, I found myself pretty much just breezing through the book and mostly checking my word and mystery answers in the back. How disappointing, and such a migraine in the end. 😓

[Kate Bedard · Rating 1 out of 5]

Seriously? What a hot mess. There are so many mistakes in here it isn't funny. Most blatant so far (though there have been several): the question called "Two Sums" on page 96. It clearly asks you to use the numbers 1-9 (excluding the number 6) and make two pairs of four numbers that equal each other. Then in the answer it USES THE NUMBER 6 and EXCLUDES THE NUMBER 9 INSTEAD. If I could give this book zero stars I totally would. My husband and I bought this to do some fun and challenging puzzles together but instead keep finding errors - not only in the solutions but in the grammar as well. The publisher clearly didn't use a copyeditor. If I could get my money back for this I would.