Sherlock Holmes Puzzle Collection

If there is one detective in the whole city of London who needs no introduction, it is my very dear friend Mr Sherlock Holmes. There can be no doubt amongst serious students of criminology that he possesses the finest mind in the whole field. His powers of observation are beyond measure, and his ability to know almost every pertinent detail of a person’s life at a single glance is a source of unending awe to any person who has been lucky enough to meet him. But you know all this, of course, since his name is so prominent in both newspapers and more serious analytical literature. Sadly, I am far less blessed. I have attempted in my way to be of some help to the sick and needy, but my…

There was a shriek from Room 304, and then a woman’s voice shouting “No, Hugo! Don’t shoot! No!” This was followed by a loud gunshot. We immediately made a dash for 304. The door was unlocked, and we burst in. I’m not ashamed to say that I had my revolver in my hand. Inside, we found a grim scene. The highwayman’s daughter lay dead on the floor. At the far end of the room clustered three people, all white-faced, in clear shock. The gun lay at their feet, where it had clearly been dropped by nerveless hands. Holmes took one look at the group, and said, “Obviously a teacher, a tailor and a lawyer,” indicating each in turn. “Watson, restrain the…” “Lawyer,” I said, seizing the unique chance to stick…

Eventually, he turned to me. “Her father was quite old, you know,” he said. It seemed an odd point for Holmes to make. “Oh?” I replied. He nodded. “Older than her grandfather, in fact.” “What?” He arched an eyebrow at my reaction. Whatever did he mean? SOLUTIONS As Holmes has often said, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” The highwayman married late in life, and the grandfather in question was her mother’s father, not her father’s father.…

I had sunk into a bath when Holmes’s voice floated in to me. “Imagine a ball.” “Very well,” I called back, confident that my quiet sigh had gone unheard. “Make it a perfect sphere. Your betterment is the most worthy of causes.” “Indeed,” I replied. “So, I have this sphere. What now?” “Tell me, if you can, what is the probability that any three points chosen at random will fall into a single hemisphere on its surface? You may assume that the dividing line between hemispheres is vanishingly small.” “I shall,” I said, and setting relaxation aside, began thinking. Can you find the solution? SOLUTIONS Three points on a sphere will always be able to be encompassed by one hemisphere. If you visualise two points on the boundary of one…

The fellow came to about ten feet away, and stopped. “Yalreet, boi?” said Holmes conversationally. “Yalreet,” replied the farmer. “Ow’s yur mools?” Holmes scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Li’l buggers is ’ow.” The pair of them continued in this fashion for some time, before the fellow lolloped off again, apparently satisfied as to our bona fides. Once he’d gone, Holmes explained that they’d been talking about moles. “Our visitor claimed to have caught an entire nest of moles this morning,” Holmes told me. “He furthermore suggested that five of them were completely blind in the right eye, four blind in the left, three sighted in the left eye, two sighted in the right, and one sighted in both. I told him the least number of moles that could be, which is…

The men took it in turns to make their round, and the route that they took was always the same, but sometimes they progressed in a clockwise manner, heading left from the hut, and sometimes anticlockwise, heading right. This choice appeared to be settled, as far as we could tell, by the toss of a coin. “If I were going to assault this place,” Holmes said, after some hours of observation, “I know when I’d choose. The guard is in the same spot at a specific time every hour. That’s when I’d strike.” “How can you possibly know that?” I protested. “You don’t know which way the fellow is going to head.” “It’s obvious,” Holmes said. How? SOLUTIONS As it turned out, it was rather obvious, yes. Picture the route…