Conundrum , my book of codes, ciphers and challenges, has been given a shiny new cover ready for the Christmas season. The ultimate trial of knowledge and cunning, Conundrum features 200 cryptic puzzles and ciphers. The solutions link throughout the book – so you need to solve them all to get to the final round. With a focus on ciphers and codebreaking, Conundrum contains twenty sections, each built around a specific subject from music to literature, physics to politics. To take on Conundrum you need good general knowledge and the ability to think laterally. But if you need help, there are plenty of hints to point you in the right direction. We've all got difficult-to-buy-for people this time of year. This is a chance to give them the chance to join the 18 people worldwide who have so far succeeded in this ultimate challenge. Note that the version with the new cover is not on sale in the US, but the content of the US version is identical. You can buy  Conundrum  from ...

Every now and then I feel the need to remind people that whenever you see a graph you should take a look at the axes (I'm thinking of the plural of axis here, not of axe - though it probably is wise to keep an eye on axes too). If you want to make some data look far more dramatic than it really is, it is possible to do this very easily by only using a small part of the available vertical axis. Today, I noticed a graph published by the Spectator magazine. I have nothing against the Spectator - I don't always agree with its politics, but it is a good read. However, this particular graph was egregious in its axis mangling. The intent was to demonstrate the impact that the speech given by Rachel Reeves (UK chancellor at the time of writing) on 4 November had on the pound/dollar exchange rate. It looked like this: Wow. That's a dramatic fall. But look at that horizontal axis. For a comparison I plotted roughly the same data (roughly as it's just read off the graph by eye) ...

If P. G. Wodehouse had set out to write a murder mystery, it would have been a lot better than this one... but there is no doubt that Faith Martin intends to give a Wodehouse-lite feel to this 1920s village-set murder mystery. Arbuthnot (Arbie) Swift could indeed be a Wodehouse central casting character, generally interested in enjoying himself and not troubling his brain excessively. But for a lark he has written a best-selling book combining ghost hunting exploits with a travelogue, and so gets hauled in with Val, the Amazon-like daughter of the local vicar, to sort out mysterious happenings at a local house that lead to murder. The problem with Arbie is that, although he has the indolence of a Bertie Wooster, he is a sharp thinker, able with the assistance (and growing affection) of Val to work out what is happening, solve a locked room mystery and generally bring things to a positive if murderous conclusion. It isn't by any means a bad cosy crime novel - it trundles along with ...

This has to be one of the most unusual of P. D. James’s classic Dalgleish mysteries, and not only because Dalgleish isn’t the central character, but a kind of ghost at the feast. He is visiting his late aunt’s Norfolk coast windmill which he has recently inherited. Tasked with checking that the local serial killer is not the same as a London murderer (they aren’t), he is peripherally involved as an apparent final killing proves to be something more complex - but he isn’t the investigating detective at any time. As always with James, we get lots of background on many of the characters, with point of view flitting around between them, rather than staying with one or two individuals. The book also emphasises how much James was part of the Anglican tradition of mystery writers (along with, for example, the more modern examples of Richard Coles and James Runcie). It may not be as explicitly church-linked as Death in Holy Orders , but the title of the book taken from the Book of Common Praye...

Although I mostly avoid books written by celebrities (or even worse books 'written' by celebrities) like the plague, there are honourable exceptions - and Susie Dent, best known for handling dictionary corner on (8 out of 10 Cats Does) Countdown deserved such an exception. Inevitably for a lexicographer, words play a big part in her mystery novel. It's set in the offices of the Clarendon English Dictionary (a thinly disguised OED), where a team of editors start to get mysterious letters and postcards. It's soon realised that these missives refer to the missing sister of senior editor Martha - most of the book is about unravelling the clues and building up a picture piece-by-piece of what led up to and happened when Martha's older sister Charlie went missing ten years before. This is an enjoyably different premise, and Dent does a lot of character building and uncovering of feelings along the way. Perhaps a bit too much in fact. It's not until we get to around p...

I have recently received an invitation I never expected to see. Apparently I am in demand to be the editor of a scientific journal - the prestigious-sounding American Journal of Physics and Applications . You might expect me to been honoured by this offer. But something made me feel that perhaps this wasn't all it appeared to be. It is quite true that, as referenced above, I have written something that is technically considered to be an academic paper entitled Doctor Mirabilis: Roger Bacon's legend and legacy. And I know of at least one other genuine paper with my name on it (strictly part of a technical reference book), which as it happens might be more appropriate as it was physics-based, rather than history of science. But I am not an academic, I mostly write books and I don't have the right qualifications to be considered for such a post. Sadly, it feels like a situation where a name has been plucked from the internet to support some kind of dubious journal business. ...