The Puzzle Master’s Casebook: Volume One

An Elimination Mystery Puzzle Book for Adults — 816 Clues Hidden in 145 Chained Sudoku, Crossword & Word Search Puzzles. 48 Witnesses. One Case.

Eleanor Hartley left her office on an ordinary Tuesday and never came home.

Forty-eight people crossed her path that day. Not one of them knew they were a witness. Each of those forty-eight people is one puzzle in this book.

This is not a puzzle book with a mystery bolted on. The puzzles are the investigation.

Start with the Missing Person Report. Its last line sends you to Puzzle 33, not Puzzle 1. Every witness you interview tells you who to interview next, and the chain runs all the way to the answer.

How Each Witness Works:

Solve the Sudoku to fill eight lettered cells, then read the Decoder Table to get eight clue numbers.

Use those numbers to unlock the real clues in a sixteen-clue crossword. Half the clues are decoys.

Read the Case Notes to see what that witness claims.

Find the eight words in the word search. The leftover letters spell the witness’s statement and name the next puzzle to open.

Inside the Casebook:

145 puzzles: 48 Sudoku, 48 crosswords, 48 word searches, and one final Elimination Grid

816 clues to work out across the case

48 witnesses, 23 sightings, and seven accounts that do not survive scrutiny

A four-page worked example so you can practice the loop before the case begins

A full answer key, one page per witness, so every step can be checked

The witnesses are not lying. They are remembering imperfectly. A coat is wool to one person and silk to another. A jacket is red to one and tan to another. They cannot all be right, and the contradictions are the point.

Only the Elimination Grid can tell you where she was. Nothing else in the book will.

This Book Is For You If:

You want a puzzle book you can solve to a single provable answer, not a bag of unrelated grids

You enjoy Sudoku, crosswords and word searches, and want all three to matter

You like deduction, logic grids and escape-room style challenges

You want a clean solution with no guesswork and no luck

Forty-eight witnesses. One case. Solve them in the right order and you will find her.