The Baffle Book Format: Hardback

The "brilliant" and baffling puzzle book that launched the "solve-it-yourself" mystery craze of the 1920s and '30s (New York Times).

Calling all mystery puzzle fans! This is the book that launched the “solve-it-yourself” detective book craze of the 1920s and ’30s, spawning numerous imitators and a four-book series of its own. These thirty short crime problems incorporate all of the clues needed to find their solutions, including maps, charts, cryptograms, and additional illustrations—but it’s up to the reader to put all of this together and find out whodunit. (Correct answers included at the end of the book.)

Challenging and entertaining, The Baffle Book promises hours of armchair sleuthing delights, either on your own or at a “Baffle Party” as the book’s opening recommends. The authors award credits for each of the questions posed, depending on their difficulty, with a chart onto which scores can be added and a grade given for how well the amateur sleuth performed.

Lassiter Wren (pseudonym of John T. Colter), with co-author Randle McKay, launched the concept of the “puzzle book”—in which the reader becomes the detective—into a Golden Age phenomenon with The Baffle Book in 1928. The Baffle Book became instantly popular and it was soon followed by The Second Baffle Book (1929) and The Third Baffle Book (1930). Little else is known about John T. Colter.

Randle McKay (pseudonym of Richard Rowan), with co-author Lassiter Wren, launched the concept of the “puzzle book”—in which the reader becomes the detective—into a Golden Age phenomenon with The Baffle Book in 1928. The Baffle Book became instantly popular and it was soon followed by The Second Baffle Book (1929) and The Third Baffle Book (1930). Richard Rowan was educated at Brown and Columbia and served in the US Army Chemical Warfare Service during World War I. Apart from the Baffle books, he also published a number of nonfiction books about the history of espionage under his own name.

G. T. Karber grew up in a small town in Arkansas, the son of a judge and a civil rights attorney. Now, he is a mystery writer, computer programmer, and the creator of Murdle, the USA Today and #1 Sunday Times bestselling murder-mystery puzzle book series.