I read a lot of magazines, and I've always got my eye out for mentions of Sherlock Holmes. I was browsing through GAMES magazine, reading about computer shareware games, and spotted the word "Sherlock" in an illustration. Of course I sent away for a copy of the game, without worrying about whether it would be much fun or not. To my great surprise, the game was so addictive that I played it at least 400 times in the space of three months.
The game is an electronic version of a puzzle I first saw many years ago in LIFE magazine, called then "Who Owns the Zebra?" A little village comprises six houses, each of a unique color, each with a distinct inhabitant, who has a favorite dessert, and so on. The puzzle is to figure out the exact arrangement from a series of clues about who lives next to what. The printed version, of course, had only a single arrangement to solve. The computer version has more than 65,000 different versions of the puzzle.
When a puzzle begins, only a few facts are stated outright. Perhaps the old man lives in the first house, and the third house is red. Aside from these facts, the investigator is presented with a set of clues, from which it is possible to figure out the entire arrangement. This information is presented graphically, rather than being spelled out.
Naturally, the puzzle must be solved one step at a time. Here, the computer is very helpful. Instead of having to draw little tables of all the relationships, the solver can easily record a newly deduced fact by clicking the appropriate place on the screen. The game has a very natural and visual way of slowly eliminating the impossible situations. Thus, the puzzler need never let go of the computer mouse, and can dreamily contemplate the puzzle, looking for hidden connections.
My first games took as much as half an hour to solve, but after getting hooked, I was soon able to finish most games in 6 to 8 minutes, and occasionally do as well as 3 minutes. I took the game to school with me, and got a number of my friends hooked as well. We often played together, and enjoyed coming up with new ways of eliminating the impossible.
The Sherlockian associations of the game begin, of course, with the name. Moreover, when you begin to play, the computer displays a deerstalker, a pipe, and the very apposite quotation
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.Finally, the game itself is a prime example of logical deduction.
The little cartoon figures used to represent the people and objects have nothing to do with the Canon. However, the program allows an artistic user to replace the original images, and perhaps a devoted Sherlockian will supply a suitable set of characters, animals, objects, and so on.
If you are interested in getting a copy of the game, you may send the $15 registration fee to the author:
Everett KaserHe may also be phoned at 503-928-5259 (VISA and MASTERCARD accepted), or reached electronically at the CompuServe address 70673,1547, or at the Internet address 70673.1547@compuserve.com, or at his web site.
PO Box 403
Albany, Oregon, 97321-0117
If you want to play SHERLOCK, you'll need an IBM compatible PC, running DOS or WINDOWS, with an EGA or VGA monitor, and a Microsoft-compatible mouse.
Everett Kaser also produces many other games for the PC, including "Descarte's Enigma", a sort of Minesweeper game in which you fill in a grid to draw a picture, and "Dinner with Moriarty", which is similar to "Sherlock", but involves a dinner party at which you have to determine what each person was served based on visual clues.