The Real Life Sherlock | Solving Cain's Jawbone Ep 5 | Just Like Everyone

Many a true word is spoken in jest and only some of them from Sherlock. Except on page eighteen of Cain's Jawbone, where it isn't. One word has been swapped, and I read straight past it three times.

This is episode five of my live attempt to solve Cain's Jawbone, the 1934 literary murder puzzle by Torquemada. A hundred pages printed out of order, six murders, six killers, and a solution only a handful of people have ever cracked.

Last episode was three ways to hide a body in a sentence. This one opens the second drawer.

His toolkit. The anti-proverb, the namesake and the mock-heroic. Three techniques Torquemada uses on pages 11 to 20, and every one of them works by looking completely ordinary. I am not sure that Sherlock would have taken this long to solve it but I am doing the best I can haha

My toolkit. The concordance, the anachronism test and stylometry. Three methods built to catch exactly that, borrowed from 13th century friars, a Renaissance forgery hunter, and the statisticians who unmasked J.K. Rowling's pen name.

Along the way you'll get the Moses illusion, a garden cricket in full medieval armour, a nickname for Alexander that made me very excited for all of ten minutes, and the line on page eighteen that tells you what the six killers will look like.

Then I'll tell you where the solve actually stands.

No spoilers. Not now, not when I finish, not ever. If you're solving it yourself, everything here is technique, not answers.

Sources mentioned
Wolfgang Mieder on the anti-proverb (1982)
Thomas Erickson and Mark Mattson, the Moses illusion (1981)
Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock
Hugh of Saint-Cher's Bible concordance (c. 1230)
Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of Constantine (1440)
Frederick Mosteller and David Wallace, Inference and Disputed Authorship (1964)
Patrick Juola and Peter Millican, the Robert Galbraith analysis (2013)

If you've spotted something I've missed, tell me in the comments. Spoiler-free, please. I'll check it against the ledger.

#cainsjawbone #reallifesherlock #truecrime #puzzle #torquemada #sherlock