The Second Baffle Book

Thirty more puzzling mysteries from the pioneers of the Golden Age participatory mystery craze.

Attention all armchair detectives! This clever and curious followup to The Baffle Book boasts thirty new short crime problems that emphasize the process of carefully sifting through evidence and arriving at logical conclusions. It includes all of the physical clues, diagrams, testimonies, and additional illustrations you’ll need to solve the crimes yourself. The cases vary in difficulty, ranging from simple thefts to cold-blooded murders, all meticulously crafted to test the wits and observational skill of the reader. (Correct answers included at the end of the book.)

Part interactive game and part intriguing mystery story, The Second Baffle Book is sure to provide hours upon hours of engaging entertainment both for solo sleuths and investigators with company. The authors award points, scaled by difficulty, for each correctly solved crime, resulting in a final grade at the end of the book.

Reissued for the first time in over fifty years, this new edition features an introduction by Will Shortz, editor of the New York Times crossword puzzle.

Better than a direct-by-mail course in detective work . . . It is fun; and might prove amusing to a crowd that wanted for an evening, to get away from bridge.”
— Omaha World-Herald

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.

See more titles by Lassiter Wren and Randle McKay.

Introduction by Will Shortz.