#deduce this

[idunnit]

ravishing every sip of my earl grey tea, while listening to the sherlock bbc official soundtrack feeling so intensely cerebral, slightly dramatic and ready to deduce

[amateur-deductions]

DEDUCE THIS? - ANSWERS

Thank you all for playing, it was very enjoyable to see so many people enter. Altogether, you deduced:

The person is male

They are around 15-17 years old

They live in the U.K.

The person is right-handed

The damages on the side of the phone were caused by other objects in the same pocket, scratching and hitting it.

As you found out that the model is ~2 years old, we can deduce it’s second-hand and the age of the owner, what adult would want a phone that colour?

The person is not content with the device

The plain wallpaper shows the person prefers tidy things, but the phone is the opposite of this, also, who likes bubbles in screen protectors?

And something that not many people got: this was my phone.

The three “best” deductionists from this were: @youngtrainingdetective, @chitarra10 and @dr-greg-house-md, purely from the amount of things they got correct, and their logic behind some of the things they got wrong.

If you didn’t get many correct, or did and aren’t on here, try again next time! There’s no consequence for getting everything wrong, and if anything, it helps you. Another one of these should come out soon, I’m just debating which object to use, and our schedule is very busy right now.

Thank you for playing,

XW

[drhanniballecter]

Deduce This.

Okay Sherlockians (and mathematicians), this one is for you: A mother is presently 21 years older than her child. Six years from now she will be 5 times as old as the child.... Where is the father?

[swordwhale]

The Incident of the Mustang with the Swollen head

(or: the not-so-speckled band)

My friends Mona and Joe were readying themselves for a pleasant, sunny, Sunday morning church.

“Something's wrong with Golly.” Joe observed.

Golly, aka, Goliath, is a 15.2 hand mustang gelding, once a herd stallion in the far reaches of the American West, rounded up by the Bureau of Land Management and adopted to some folks who wrangled greenhorns into the woods on trail rides, then acquired by Mona and Joe. He is a badass boy horse, archy of neck, large of head and narrow of butt, like a skinny kid in baggy jeans. He is, like my half-mustang mare, Svaha (his “herd”), a bay; brown in the middle and black on the edges. He knows Stuff, like; How to Survive. Why You Should Herd the Mares Into the Open Field in Thunderstorms. Predator Stomping 101.

His large, roman-nosed head was now larger, swollen all the way down his neck. Mona put in an emergency call to the vet. Steroids and antihistamines were administered, it looked like he'd got into a nest of hornets or ground bees. Those are common around the fencelines (where we are constantly beating back the jungle), and in the windbreaks of trees and shrubs that string across the fields to catch runoff and quell erosion.

The horses had been out in grazing muzzles. Golly's mustang heritage is highly fuel efficient, mustangs survive in the west in places no other livestock would. Svaha's mustang/Arabian heritage is doubly efficient, both sides coming from desert stock. Without the muzzles, she would blimp, colic, founder and succumb from Cushing's all at once. Hence, the muzzles.

With Golly out of danger, Mona and Joe set off the find the nest and eradicate it, lest more devastation occur. And bigger vet bills. They found no bees.

What else could it BEE???

One of my favorite (and best remembered) Sherlock Holmes stories is The Adventure of the Speckled Band. A murder is committed, there is a bed fastened to the floor, a bell-pull with no bell attached, and a whistle in the night. The culprit is revealed to be a venomous snake (Conan Doyle apparently didn't realize that snakes can't hear whistles, and don't come when called).

Pennsylvania has two venomous snakes, both integral parts of a healthy ecosystem: the Northern Copperhead, and the rattlesnake (both the common Timber Rattler, and the endangered Massasauga found only in a pocket of western PA, far from here). The Copperhead can be found in York County, active from mid-April to late October, the timber rattler can be found farther west and north.

Mona and Joe searched the fencelines and found, (looking rather like the cartoon Beetle Bailey after a bout with Sarge) a black snake well over six feet long and “as big as my arm!” Neither of our venomous snakes is black, they are lovely camouflage colors. Black rat snakes (Elaphe obsolete obsolete ) to quote Penn State University; “Individuals of this species may reach lengths of 7 to 8 feet and is, thus, the longest snake naturally occurring over its broad, geographic range of the eastern United States (west to Wisconsin and parts of Texas) and southern Ontario.”They are not venomous at all, they are fine creatures to have in your barn. To quote Jethro Tull; “the mouse police never sleep...”

This snake had clearly encountered its arch-nemesis in the form of one very large, peeved equine. Having put on deerstalker hats and blue scarves, the deduction was made that Golly had blundered into the weeds in his grazing muzzle, disturbed the aforementioned Black Rat Snake of Unusual Size, and got walloped in the neck. (the farrier, trimming hooves the next day, found the bite site).

The snake was battered, but still alive. Mona and Joe scooped it into a large, deep, five gallon bucket, mounted the ATV with the snake riding in the bow basket, and headed for the edge of the woods where it would be released to its fate (perhaps as lunch for some other predator).

There was some discussion as to who would ride nearest the snake bucket.

Joe lost. Joe is a tallish, largish guy who can sit stealthily in a tree stand with a bow waiting for Bambi to wander by. If you need something big heaved, he is the guy to call. He is soft spoken, practical, and remembers to get his wife poetic cards for anniversaries. He is not easy to ruffle.

Halfway down the field, the snake leaped straight up, three feet out of the bucket.

Joe shrieked like a five year old watching Friday the 13th.

They corralled the snake once more and released it along the woods. It wrinkled off, grumbling to itself.

Golly's face went back to its usual dimensions by the next day, though penicillin was suggested by the vet.

Why did a non-venomous snake create such a reaction?

Dragons.

Yes.

Komodo Dragons. Black snakes don't have fangs, they have many small teeth. They don't have venom, but what they do have is lots of biomass in their mouths. Komodo Dragons aren't venomous either. They eat some carrion, and ambush live prey, knocking down large animals with their strong tails. If a prey item escapes, it will die days later of a bacterial infection. Wiki says: Auffenberg described the Komodo dragon as having septic pathogens in its saliva (he described the saliva as "reddish and copious"), specifically the bacteria E. Coli, Staphylococcus sp., Providencia sp., Proteus morgani and P. mirabilis.Black snakes don't hunt the same way as Komodo Dragons, (nor do they look for prey larger than mice, rats or rabbits, squirrels or birds) they lurk, they strike, they squeeze, they swallow. But they still have mouths full of bacteria. And they defend themselves when cornered. That was what caused Golly's face to swell, looking like he'd been in a bee's nest.

Sherlock would have been proud.

[deviledlawvocados]

Batman versus Sherlock

[imaginativecrime]

Sherlock Holmes sat moodily at one side of the fireplace cross-indexing his records of crime, while I at the other was deep in one of Clark Russell's fine sea-stories until the howl of the gale from without seemed to blend with the text, and the splash of the rain to lengthen out into the long swash of sea waves. My wife was on a visit to her mother's, and for a few days I was dweller once more in my old quarters at Baker Street. "Why," said I, glancing up at my companion, "that was surely the bell. Who would come to-night? Some friend of yours, perhaps?" "Except for yourself, I have none," he answered. "I do not encourage visitors."

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The Five Orange Pips

[consultingdeductions]

Deduce me.

You're a student with a bit of a sweet tooth and has some cultural inclination towards France. An anglophile from across the pond, State-side, but you're a bit further off from our shores. California most likely, southern region.Artistic nature. You're a writer and something of an artist, I'd take it you most likely enjoy music as well. Being a writer though, it would be easy to assume you are a bit put off by grammatical errors. To which I can completely and wholeheartedly understand like you wouldn't believe. It's insufferable.You wear glasses, have dark hair, you're a smaller structured girl, perhaps Asian. You used to have fish, but now you own a turtle.Feel free to make corrections as you see fit.Provided... if you find any, of course.-SH

[bramblerose4]

Answer to The Barrel

"What you need to do is to tip it on its side just far enough that the water touches the lip of the barrel," Holmes told me. "Then look inside. If any of the bottom of the barrel is visible, then the it is more than empty empty. If any of the side wall is obscured, it is more than half full. IF the water is exactly at the joint, then it is in the precise half-way state."

"And would that be half-empty or half full?" I asked.

Holmes did not deign to reply.

Thank you sherlocksscarfandjohnsjumper for playing along!