I played Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective yesterday and had great fun with it. The case wasn’t obvious — after an hour of reading clues I still had no decisive ideas who did the case. Re-reading some of the first entries finally produced the small detail I had missed which solved the case. Ok, now let’s count the score: of the four quiz questions, I had three right. Of the bonus questions, also three (and the one I didn’t know was rather obscure). That gives me 95 points. Which is nice. Then comes the minus points for taking more time than Sherlock Holmes. Ok, it took me 43 moves to figure it out (and that doesn’t have some re-reading old clues), Sherlock took … WHAT?! … FOUR bloody moves! Ok, so that’s -39 — times five! So, my final score was -100 against Sherlock’s 100. Well, I guess that goes to show who of us is the master detective and who isn’t…

Still, it was rather brilliant way to spend some time. Hunting for clues in the newspapers was fun, as was moving around London in search of the murderer. One thing I learnt was to make even better notes. Write everything down! That’s the only way to find out the essential, case-solving clues amongs all the rubble. Anyway, it’s a wonderful game. Unfortunately it has rather limited replay value. Well, I’ll just have to hunt down the expansions when I’m finished with these cases…