“I sit down alone at the appointed table and take up my pen to give all whom it may concern an exact account of what may happen.” So reads the opening line of “Cain’s Jawbone,” a murder mystery published in 1934. Or rather, it appears to be the opening line; I don’t know the novel’s actual first sentence. Only a handful of people have ever discovered it. That’s because “Cain’s Jawbone” isn’t only a novel, but one of the most diabolically challenging puzzles ever conceived. Its author is “Torquemada,” a.k.a. Edward Powys Mathers, an influential crossword constructor who devised cryptic puzzles for The Observer of Britain in the 1930s. “Cain’s Jawbone” is a story in 100 pages, all of them out of order. The solver’s task: Put the pages in the correct order, in the process identifying the mystery’s six murder victims and their killers. For folks at home doing the math, that’s — hold on, let me get my TI-84 — a calculator-breaking quantity of possible page combinations (the actual number is 158 digits long). As if the staggering scope wasn’t intimidating enough, “Cain’s Jawbone” is a minefield of esoteric literary references, historical trivia and devious red herrings, all rendered in a flowery, near-impregnable prose that’s been compared to James Joyce. (Even the novel’s title is a reference; it comes from a line in “Hamlet,” where Cain’s jawbone is referred to as the first murder weapon.) Readers brave enough to navigate the literary labyrinth report that a deep knowledge of British culture in the early 20th century is necessary. One reference guide on Reddit suggests that the solver keep a list of highways in Surrey, Hampshire and Sussex handy, in case they aren’t already memorized. The puzzle’s mind-melting difficulty has only inflated its legend and enticed more solvers to tackle it, but the prize money hasn’t hurt either. When “Cain’s Jawbone” was first published in 1934, The Observer offered a £25 reward to anyone who could crack it. By 1935, only three people had solved it. The next victor wouldn’t arrive for another 85 years, when in November 2020, John Finnemore, a comedy writer and crossword constructor, found the correct solution. He was awarded £1,000 from Unbound, the publisher that reissued the book in 2019. I haven’t attempted “Cain’s Jawbone,” partially because of its absurd difficulty, but also because I believe it would consume me. One sniff of a clue, one seed of an idea, and I know I’ll be papering my walls with pages and fruitlessly studying Welsh atlases while my personal relationships disintegrate (this is the same reason I’ve actively avoided learning the game Magic: The Gathering). I’m satisfied enough by knowing “Cain’s Jawbone” exists, delighted by the idea of a puzzle solver’s Mount Everest that’s waiting for braver, and possibly more British, souls to conquer it. Solve Today’s Capture
Puzzle of the WeekThis week, check out the Thursday, Sept. 17 puzzle by Enrique Henestroza Anguiano. In his constructor notes, he wrote: “I’m honored to be back in The Times again, this time with my first Thursday. This theme had been simmering on the back burner since I first started making crosswords six years ago, but it took me a long time to figure out how to execute it, short of trying to write custom construction software.” Read more in the Wordplay column.
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