J Nash

I've just realised I used almost exactly the same idea for an X-Block B Page approximately half a decade later. Erk. But with different sections and jokes, obv. (Similar voice, I grant you. But completely different characterisation - K Williams.)

Outwit the Puzzle Baron is inspired by a vintage Frankie Stein annual with art by The Legendary Ken Reid, available from all good bins for the price of a Finlaysonian double-take, an indecisive hop, then the plunge to rummage through litter in quite a busy park in the early afternoon, laughing gaily in a misguided attempt to make it look like you do this kind of thing all the time.

A puzzle section near the back of the annual features a drawing (by an anonymous staffer this time) of Frankie tied up in a dungeon with various objects helpfully within reach. The peculiar idea of the puzzle is to plot an ingenious yet plausible escape for Frankie, then turn to the answers and find an absurd solution of humourless rigidity that you couldn't possibly have guessed and is aggravatingly tepid anyway (eg, Frankie knocks over some cheese with a paintbrush clenched in his teeth, and a mouse runs past dragging a key for some reason). You'll appreciate some measure of how much the official proto-text- adventure solution irritated me for years when I point out I'd forgotten to be bothered about picking through a bin in company. And what kind of maniac takes a book to the park in order to throw it away? Tsk.