Mysterious Musings from The Voynich Times...

The upcoming Nancy Drew Game from Hunt a Killer now has a name:  Mystery at Magnolia Gardens! This does not look to be based off the popular WB show, but be based more in line with the books, with no WB branding or images.  That is a shame, but should still be a solid product! It appears to be based off the Nancy Drew book: Mystery at Magnolia Mansion .

  In the 1920s, a new style of book was emerging...one that mixed books and games. (5)  This included Ask-Me-Another books (think Trivial Pursuit in book format--with the answers in the back), and Crosswords Puzzle books.  It is in this environment that The Crime Club (an imprint of Doubleday, Doran & Company) combined the idea of a puzzle book with detective fiction and created The Baffle Book!  It sold for $1.90.  It consisted of 280 pages and contained 30 mysteries.  The Baffle Book was written by Lassiter Wren and Randle McKay (pseudonym of Richard Rowan) who also illustrated the diagrams and charts in the book. (1)   F. Tennyson Jesse (16) , the editor, was uncredited.   She was a great-niece of the famous poet Aldred, Lord Tennyson and would write true crime novels and several mysteries, plays, and short stories herself.  With the Baffle Book, Wren and McKay proclaimed themselves (or, at least their ad-copy) as origina...

The 1930s--The Golden Age of Detective Fiction!    Detective stories, pulps, and crime stories were very popular in the 1930s.  Agatha Christie was the preeminent  mystery writer of the time and Sherlock Holmes was still a major influence. It was in this era that Photocrimes was created.  Photocrimes was a feature in a newspaper consisting of photographs and text.  They starred Inspector Holt, who would solve the crime that was laid out in the paper.  The reader was tasked with coming up with the solution, then comparing it to the actual solution provided by Holt, which was printed elsewhere in the paper.  Solving the crime across the panels requires paying attention to the details of the case as written and the pictures themselves, as there are clues all throughout.  The reader cannot always solve everything about the crime, since the detective puts the clues and other evidence together in the story (including certain motives the reader does...

Mystery Puzzle Games, as discussed in the post,  What is a Mystery Puzzle Game? , contain three primary components:  Mystery, Puzzles, and a Game element.   In the early 1900s, detective and crime fiction were extremely popular (as it has been in much of history), so the combination of the detective and puzzles for someone to solve were a natural progression. One example in the newspapers in the early 1900s, "The Amateur Detective Puzzle," was a step towards this hobby with a visual puzzle for kids to solve with prompts explaining the setup and clews (as they were called).  These are fairly simple and straightforward for adults, but provide a fun example of detective-themed puzzles for kids to start them down the puzzle path!  Plus, they offered bonus incentive prizes to keep the kids engaged and to send in their answers!  Below is the earliest example we have uncovered and another early example.  It is unknown how many of these were created, but ...

Could the first Mystery Puzzle Game be  The Gold Bug by Edgar Allan Poe? When we think of Mystery Puzzle Games, we tend to think of subscription games like Hunt a Killer, Murder Mystery in a Box, The Society of Curiosities; box games like Exit, Unlock, or Box One; and books like Prisoner 7, Montague Island, or The Paper Labyrinth. So where do these great games of this mysterious hobby come from? This series of articles will investigate the origins of this hobby! In 1843, The Gold Bug was first published, and within it, something new for a novel… a secret code! Edgar Allan Poe, lover of cryptograms hinged his story around one, and with it you can tell not only his love of ciphers, but his seemingly strong desire to share it with his audience! To a modern audience, this section of the story may feel like a text-book, but it is also a great way to learn about ciphers and see a detailed example of one! Now, what does this have to do with the Mystery Puzzle Game (MPG) hobby? It is a ...

 Mystery Puzzle Games (MPG) is a term used by The Voynich Times to describe an explosively growing hobby of armchair detectives, ghost hunters, treasure seekers, and solvers of puzzles and mysteries...although we doubt we are the first to have put those words together to describe this or similar hobbies...but we need to define the hobby of which we are reporting on. Defining this hobby can be as simple as knowing it when you see it, and as difficult as slicing through multiple overlapping Venn diagrams.  There is also disagreement as to where the lines are, and what belongs and doesn't belong, so we will be exploring this through our site over time.   Many hobbies are defined by those within it, whereas this hobby has been created through multiple means, times, and methods without even the forethought of being a part of this hobby.  For example, some just wanted to create a more immersive murder mystery story, others wanted to add storylines or themes to puzzle...