The Pilot Who Wore a Dress: And Other Dastardly Lateral Thinking Mysteries

The Pilot Who Wore a Dress: And Other Dastardly Lateral Thinking Mysteries
Tom Cutler

Devised by devious genius Tom Cutler, The Pilot Who Wore a Dress is a fiendish collection of riddles, mysteries and puzzles to test and tease your brain.Here’s a simple one to get you started: four bodybuilders are huddling together in the street, under a small ladies’ umbrella, yet after 20 minutes not one of them has got wet. How is this possible?Separated into original brainteasers and timeless conundrums, plus locked-room head-scratchers and unsolvable crimes borrowed from the very best of detective fiction, this cunning collection will give your lateral thinking muscle a proper workout. See if you can crack the problems by tracing the clues tucked away in each mystery, without sneaking a peak at the answers at the back of the book.These puzzles are perfect for the squashed commute and after-dinner whoopla alike. They are guaranteed to entertain and delight, whether you’re a wannabe Sherlock Holmes or a budding Jonathan Creek. Side effects may include bafflement, laughter, smugness, and exclamations along the lines of, ‘It’s so obvious once you know the answer.’Oh, and about those bone-dry bodybuilders – who said it was raining? So obvious!

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Copyright (#ucefa55a4-8356-5892-adbe-849a11948a6d)

HARPER

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

FIRST EDITION

© Tom Cutler 2015

Illustrations © Bart Aalbers

Match diagrams © Alexei Penfold

Cover layout design Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

Tom Cutler asserts the moral right to be

identified as the author of this work

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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Source ISBN: 9780008157210

Ebook Edition © November 2015 ISBN: 9780008157203

Version: 2016-02-25

Dedication (#ucefa55a4-8356-5892-adbe-849a11948a6d)

This book is dedicated to Dr John H. Watson,

‘the one fixed point in a changing age’.

Epigraph (#ucefa55a4-8356-5892-adbe-849a11948a6d)

‘How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?’

Sherlock Holmes, in The Sign of the Four (1890),

by Arthur Conan Doyle

About the Author (#ucefa55a4-8356-5892-adbe-849a11948a6d)

Tom Cutler began his career with numerous false starts, as a teacher, set designer, speechwriter, printer, wine waiter, City drone and radio reporter, before settling down in book and magazine publishing. After building up extensive scar tissue he finally threw caution to the wind and launched himself as a humorous writer upon a reading public that had done nothing to hurt him.

Tom’s books cover a variety of subjects, including language, sex and music. Among his several international bestsellers are, A Gentleman’s Bedside Book and the Amazon number-one blockbuster, 211 Things A Bright Boy Can Do. His work has been translated into more languages than you can shake a stick at. Tom has written for the Guardian, the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, the Huffington Post and BBC radio, and he has a regular column in The Chap magazine.

He is a practising magician and member of the Magic Circle, as well as a detective story fan and longstanding Sherlock Holmes aficionado. A lifetime’s experience as a very devious bugger has helped him in the writing of this book.

Tom lives at the seaside, where he enjoys kicking pebbles.

Contents

Cover (#u5de17d72-e3d1-5f2d-8e0d-c7952f306549)

Title Page (#ulink_4b65ec67-34fd-52c4-9a1e-187623fc56d0)

Copyright (#ulink_57a42a23-27f4-5fdb-aba5-37fb5e334ae8)

Dedication (#ulink_dcb70914-ce0f-5889-b59b-0ce4de86ad1d)

Epigraph (#ulink_1c319b86-e6cb-5ddd-8296-65d4e246f6b0)

About the Author (#ulink_16c2e025-a785-5c69-a941-00df215b417d)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#ulink_82a2ab70-eb30-57f4-8c47-78483a42716d)

FOREWORD (#ulink_4962cc9d-aa42-54b3-b5f4-e40039a3af31)

INTRODUCTION (#ulink_0525a3fd-1c6b-547b-991e-d028275cd6d0)

LATERAL THINKING CLASSICS (#ulink_beb6729a-344b-5794-93ff-93cda4321128)

The sailor who ate the cream tea (#ulink_6955e1a0-e64a-5265-9176-cfa363a0a60d)

The Wishing Cup of Keriput (#ulink_8ebf56c4-2cd9-5d9e-bba4-b7d748d75bf3)

Murder in the snow (#ulink_1c6294c4-956f-58fd-9613-1c35ba61586e)

The Yorkshire factory (#ulink_d9d0b7c9-f99b-5e1f-8dad-5dc007b2878b)