Mysterious Musings from The Voynich Times...

  Mystery Puzzle Games and their Origin From….Poe?  (Or, what was the first Mystery Puzzle Game?) Note: This article was originally published on ESCAPETHEROOMers and is a combination and expansion of some of the article originally posted at Voynich. Please visit for many amazing articles and reviews! https://www.escapetheroomers.com/articles-perspectives Mystery Puzzle Games (MPG) is one of several terms used to describe an explosively growing hobby full of armchair detectives, ghost hunters, treasure seekers, and solvers of puzzles and mysteries…a hobby the traces its origins back to Edgar Allan Poe with roots leading back further into ancient cryptography, Detective Fiction, and the history of puzzles.  There are other viable terms and names, but for consistency, Mystery Puzzle Game is the terminology these articles will use. Defining this hobby can be as simple as knowing it when you see it, and as difficult as slicing through multiple overlapping Venn diagrams....

Cipher Stories Puzzle Book is a collection of 25 unrelated short story puzzles that all use a similar mechanism to solve.  It was first printed on February 28, 1928, published by Lewis Copeland Co. (1)  It was written by Kenneth S. Cooper and Illustrated by Olin Wakefield.  We cannot find any other works by either man at this point, so must think this was their first and only book, or that they were pseudonyms of others at this time that may not have wanted to be associated with this genre.    The short story puzzles are also called Cipher Stories and are actual stories that reach a point where a Transposition Cipher must be solved in order to progress.  To solve the bigger puzzles, the reader must first learn the key in a mini puzzle which is based on a hint in the story itself.  Most stories have two puzzles and have clues to assist you in solving them.   The primary cipher to solve is generally set up to look like a crossword puzzle in lay...

  Funny Pages by Enigma Emporium Funny Pages -- Comically Perplexing! (Spoiler free review) This Mystery Puzzle Game is mind-bogglingly, laughably, mind-twistingly difficult, fun, and amazing! Now, this isn’t difficult in the way that hand decoding a 17-page hand-written Vigenere cipher is (we all need hobbies), although at times you may wish to do that instead...it is difficult in a brilliantly constructed, downright fun, and oft-times comically twisted sort of way! Now, while this is one of the toughest games I’ve ever played, it was always* fair.  I felt really smart at first, breezing through several puzzles, thinking that this will take no time at all and that I was, of course, a puzzle-genius of the utmost levels….until...until...well, over half the puzzles slapped me in the face and shoved their puzzleyness down my gullet until I choked on my own hubris…(laughing at the jokes during said process) and it was amazing! I had to spend time on these puzzles...not just take 1...

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...