Mystery Puzzle History: The Progenitor Age: The Baffle Books!

 

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 originators of the "Detective Problem Form,"  or, "Detective Puzzle Form."

The Baffle was created by the authors "to amuse studio gatherings in New York last winter, the game is sometimes called 'Clues' or 'Baffling Mysteries.'" (24) It was the popularity of these mysteries that gave them the idea to put them into a book. (24)

The Baffles in question are short mysteries that provide all the clues you need to solve them.  They are 3-5 short pages long, in general, and some have maps or drawings to accompany them as evidence. The book does not cheat...it provides you with all the needed clues and you can trust what is written (the example provided is that if the police establish a fact...it is a fact.)  Once you think you have the answer, you turn the book upside down and look at the answer in the back! (Or, if reading in the newspaper or magazine articles, find the page with the answer provided.)  

The authors of this book really seemed to intend this to be a party game, even a two-team game  For two teams it was recommended to get two copies of the book (good marketing!) and rules are provided.  If you are doing this as a party game and only have one book, the Baffles are read aloud to the group and people write their answers down, then you can call out the solutions and each scores their sheet.  

The book has you focus on deduction...using your observation to deduce, from the evidence provided, the solution to the mystery.  Each mystery provides a scoring system so that you can compete against others at a party (see above), against a friend, or just to keep track.  At the end of each mystery, several questions are presented for you to solve and points are given for correct answers.  

Timeline of Events

1927 Oct 27: Publishers Weekly announces that Doubleday, Doran has published, for the Crime Club, "The Baffle Book of Crimes to Solve." (9)   The Baffle Book was "[t]he 2nd book in a month devoted to crimes of which the reader is to guess the solutions or look in the back of the book for them." (4).  The unnamed other book is probably "Cipher Stories" which will be the subject of another article. 

1928 Oct 12: WGN Radio inaugurated a series of "Baffle Contests" starting at 8:30pm.  A mystery would be read on air with clues for the listener to solve.  The first 5 to send in the correct solution would get a copy of "The Baffle Book!"  (1)  

1928 Nov 3: The Morning Post Camden, New Jersey.  While this ad sounds like a personal review, it appeared in several newspapers with the same language across the county.  This would make it seem much more likely to be ad-copy from Doubleday.

1928 Nov 5th: The Brooklyn Citizen has an ad for a "Baffle Contest" on the radio! (3)

23 Nov 1928: The Montclair Times. (5)

"Is this a craze?" (4). 

1928 Nov 24: The popularity of this new type of puzzle game based on mysteries caught on fast!  Several newspapers began to syndicate a column of Baffles and it appeared in England and was to be translated into six languages (10).  Doubleday-Doran Syndicate boasted this in the industry trades hoping to get even more traction and sales.

And by this time, the book is being marketed in the trades as a "Detective Story Game."  (11)  This makes Baffle the first known instance of this marketing and is very similar to the Mystery Puzzle Game identifier of this hobby.  In fact, the Voynich Times regards Detective Story Games as a subset of Mystery Puzzle games.  In the future "Detective" is a part of any mystery, and a story in this format is a type of puzzle to be solved, and the act of solving and answer-checking is the game portion.  Baffle Books even include a scoring system!

25 Nov 1928: The Evening Son printed an amazing teaser ad for "The Baffle Book of Crimes to Solve." They were to be published serially in the paper starting the next day! (7)

26 Nov 1928: first Baffle published in The Evening Son (Baltimore, Maryland).  "Who Murdered Ellington Bresse" (excerpt from the Baffle Book). The  back page of the paper also had an ad for it:

27 Nov 1928:  The Baltimore Sun places an ad for the Baffle Book feature in the newspaper:  (8)

Here is an example of another ad showing that bookstores were using it in their own ads (6): This ad is for Dorothy Tuttle's Bookshop and featured several interesting books, including this one:

1929 Sep: "Baffles" is printed in the 15 cent pulp magazine Clues Detective Stories v14 #4.  This was a regular feature for some time through early 1930.  One book description considers The Baffle Book "a collection of their best from that era. Now you can take their challenge to 'Observe, Deduce, and Reason Out.'" -- Amazon

The Second Baffle Book

1929 saw the game book craze continue, alongside the popular detective fiction, with new types of puzzle books, alongside new versions of those the recently came into being.  The Publisher's Weekly in July mentions the new game books based on anagrams, bridge, crosswords, and the 2nd Baffle Book! (14)

1929 March:  The popularity of a product can sometimes be in the reaction to it.  The March 1929 issue of the Pennsylvanian Haverford College magazine, The Haverfordian, did an issue on The Grand Guinol. In that start they reference The Baffle Book claiming that they did something similar in 1926 so they didn't want to be accused of stealing the format. (13) This leads us to John Dickson Carr (also the writer of The Grand Guinol). Carr would become the writer of many detective and locked-room books that are tangential to this hobby, but these two stories are a much closer tie where they ask the reader to guess the answer before providing the solution. In this story, The Grand Guinol, Carr presents the first 7 chapters with the  clues therein, whereupon the reader is supposed to guess the answer.  The last 3 chapters wrap up the case/story.   This falls under the type of detective game in its simplest form, a sequential book-like story where the reader has the same clues as the detective and has a chance to solve it before the answer is read.

1929 May.  The popularity of this new form of game also shows in an article in Photoplay about Hollywood's royalty, Douglas Fairbanks (one of the biggest stars in the 1910s and 1920s) and Mary Pickford (famous actress--in 1919 Fairbanks and Pickford joined Charlie Chapman and D.W. Griffith to form United Artists.)  The article is a detailed description of their home, called Pickfair, and lists several books on their bookshelf, with one being The Baffle Book! (12)

1929 Sep: The 2nd Baffle Book is advertised in The Publishers Weekly (15) 

1929 Oct 18: The copyright for "The Second Baffle Book" is listed, also written by Wren and McKay for the Crime Club, Inc. by Doubleday, Doran & company. 

1929 Oct 19: a review for the 2nd Baffle Book appeared in the New Jersey Courier-Post. (20)

1929 Oct 26: The Cincinnati Enquirer posted a review and the first hint of a third volume! (21)

on the same day, an ad in the Philadelphia Enquirer entreated the reader to solve these mysteries. (22)

1930 Feb 9: Another article showcased the popularity of these books in an article on author and playwright Marjorie Bartholomew Paradis, which has her stating, "I'm crazy about the Baffle Book." (23)

1930 Sep 20: The Third Baffle Book is announced in The Publishers Weekly and notes it will be out in time for Christmas. (17) List price is $1.00. (18)

1930 Nov 20: The copyright for "The Third Baffle Book" is listed and also written by Wren and McKay for the Crime Club, Inc. by Doubleday, Doran & company. 

No further Baffle Books were created.  There may have been more printings, but eventually this craze died away as much of the Golden Age of Detective fiction passed after the World Wars. 

According to one anonymous source, Wren & McKay wrote three more of these baffles for the Mystery League imprint as part of a giveaway/promotional contest. But the solution to the third puzzle never appeared because the imprint went bankrupt and the final two books were never published.  We have not independently verified this information at this time and any information on this subject would be appreciated!

Starting in 2007, two Baffle Books were (re)printed:  The Baffle Book and The Baffle Books Strike Again: Fifteen Devilishly Difficult Detective Puzzles.  Each of these seems to have had only 15 puzzles versus the original 30.  We are not sure if they are the first book split into two, or picks from all three books, and/or edited versions.  We have not had the resources to purchase these books at this time and will revisit them in a future update and/or post.  If you would like to donate a copy for our research, please contact us.

To search for copies of the Baffle Books, you can sometimes find used copies at the following links:

• The Baffle Book 
• The 2nd Baffle Book
• The 3rd Baffle Book.

Following these links helps support our site through the Amazon.com affiliate program--As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases to help support our mission.

As an added bonus, Richard Rowan's "about the author" published   (19)

Works Cited: 

1. The Evening News. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 12 Oct 1928, Fri  •  Page 30
2. Morning Post.  Camden, New Jersey.  03 Nov 1928, Sat  •  Page 24
3. The Brooklyn Citizen.  Brooklyn, New York.  05 Nov 1928, Mon  •  Page 4
4. The Times.  Shreveport, Louisiana.  11 Nov 1928, Sun  •  Page 4
5. The Montclair Times.  Montclair, New Jersey.  23 Nov 1928, Fri  •  Page 10
6. The Des Moines Register.  Des Moines, Iowa.  25 Nov 1928, Sun  •  Page 8
7. The Baltimore Sun.  Baltimore, Maryland.  5 Nov 1928, Sun  •  Page 16
8. The Baltimore Sun.  Baltimore, Maryland.  27 Nov 1928, Tue  •  Page 14
9. The Publishers Weekly the American Book Trade Journal  1928-10-27: Vol 114 Iss 17. page 1793
10. Editor and Publisher 1928-11-24: Vol 61 Iss 27. Page 24
11. The Publishers Weekly the American Book Trade Journal  1928-11-24: Vol 114 Iss 21. Page 2236
12. Photoplay. May 1929: Vol 35 Iss 6. Page 36
13. The Haverfordian.  Mar 1929 Vol. 48, No. 6. Page 203
14. The Publishers Weekly the American Book Trade Journal 1929-07-06: Volume 116, Issue 1. page 48
15. The Publishers Weekly the American Book Trade Journal 1929-09-21: Volume 116, Issue 12. page 1159
16. The Bookman 1930-07: Vol 78 Iss 466. p44
17. The Publishers Weekly  1930-09-20: Vol 118 Iss 12. Page 1127
18. The Publishers Weekly  1930-11-22: Vol 118 Iss 21. Page 2370
19. Rowan, Richard Wilmer. Family of Outlaws. Public Library of Fort Wayne and Allen County, 1955. 
20. Courier-Post.  Camden, New Jersey.  19 Oct 1929, Sat  •  Page 10
21. The Cincinnati Enquirer.  Cincinnati, Ohio.  26 Oct 1929, Sat  •  Page 5
22. The Philadelphia Inquirer.  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  26 Oct 1929, Sat  •  Page 15
23. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle.  Brooklyn, New York.  09 Feb 1930, Sun  •  Page 85
24. The Baffle Book. Garden City, New York, 1928.  Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.