One Unbroken Thread

Gwendolyn Spindleshanks, the lace-making spider of Nettlewood, spins every piece from one unbroken thread, as her family has for eleven generations. This autumn her order book is full: a veil for the Widow Wickersham, doilies for the undertaker’s prize black roses, a lace face for the clockmaker’s workshop clock. But every night some of her finished lace vanishes, and something odd is left behind: a brass feather, a scatter of tiny cogs, a faint tick-tock in the brambles. Solve the puzzles, follow the clues through ten commissions, and find out who, or what, is taking the lace.

What’s inside

• 100 original loop puzzles in ten chapters, from gentle 6 × 6 grids to fiendish 12 × 12 grids
• Every puzzle has exactly one solution, checked by computer, and every one can be solved by logic alone, without guessing
• Clear rules with diagrams, a step-by-step worked example and a page of useful techniques
• A gothic mystery told in diary pages and newspaper clippings, with a twist revealed after the solutions
• Black-and-white illustrations, with a small black cat hiding in seven of them
• Full solutions, each loop drawn as a piece of lace

How it works

Join neighboring dots with horizontal and vertical lines to make one closed loop. The loop never crosses or touches itself, and a number in a square tells how many of that square’s four sides the loop uses. That is all there is to it. The rest is deduction.

For adults who love logic puzzles, brain teasers and all things darkly charming. A thoughtful gift for goth readers and mystery lovers. Printed on a square 8.5 × 8.5 inch page with large, clear grids. Book 3 of the Owlbrook Oddities: five standalone puzzle books set in the fog-bound town of Gloomwick.