There are millions upon millions of possible combinations, but only one arrangement of pages is correct. The conceit of Cain’s Jawbone is both simple and intimidating: According to an epigraph at the front of the book, the slim volume’s pages have been accidentally printed out of order, and it’s up to the reader to the find the correct pagination.
In an industry where selling 5000 copies in one week can land a book on The New York Times bestseller list, it’s an astonishing turn of events for an 87-year-old brainteaser with ties to the birth of cryptic crosswords and the evolution of experimental fiction-and that has so far been solved by only four people that we know of. Now, thanks to Scannell’s fascinating and funny TikTok videos documenting her progress, some 80,000 freshly minted copies are making their way to bookstores and mailboxes around the world. Written by legendary crossword innovator Edward Powys Mathers and first published in 1934, the puzzle was virtually forgotten for decades, until a chance meeting at a UK literary museum led to a 2019 reissue. And unlike most investigators, Scannell is starting with a daunting handicap: She doesn’t even know who the victims are.įor weeks now, Scannell has been attempting to solve an excruciatingly difficult literary puzzle called Cain’s Jawbone. She’s searching for not one murderer, but as many as six. Maybe you’ve even watched it evolve-at first the pages were connected with white string, but Scannell has since adopted a more user-friendly color-coding scheme involving sticky index tabs. It takes up nearly an entire wall of her San Francisco apartment: 100 pages with torn edges, painstakingly taped up with blue painter’s tape in a pattern that only makes sense to Scannell.
If you’re a regular haunter of the halls of #BookTok, there’s a good chance you’ve seen Sarah Scannell’s murder board.
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