Is it right to talk about my first 1000 posts in my 1000th post? Because that means that I’m talking about this post in this post. Which is kind of weird… Best not to think about it really.
So, how shall I commemorate this milestone – 1000 posts of vaguely informative and hopefully occasionally entertaining burblings about crime fiction in almost all of its forms. So far, for the various stops along the way, I’ve done:
Post 100 – September 2011 – “An Announcement of Paul Doherty Week”
Post 250 – July 2012 – “What I Don’t Like In A Mystery”
Post 300 – November 2012 – “Paul Doherty Top Five”
Post 600 – October 2014 – “Top Five Underappreciated Books”
Post 800 – November 2015 – “Talking To Myself” – one of my favourite posts, btw
Post 900 – April 2016 – “The Mystery Of History”
Yes, not a desperately regular schedule of “blogiversaries” – the rest of the multiples of 100 are reviews when I either wasn’t paying attention or simply couldn’t think of anything. But there are various other miscellaneous waffles throughout my time on the blog – only 726 posts are book reviews! – just click “General” in the Category drop-down menu on the right.
And before we kick off, a big thank you to you. Whether you’re a regular reader, just pop by occasionally or you’ve found this by accident when googling “naked pictures of Donald Trump”, thanks for popping by. And sorry for putting that image into your head…
But now, it’s competition time! And I’ve decided to do a competition that reflects at least half of my pseudonym.
This is (hopefully) a little harder than last time, when shoving the clue into the search engine on the blog gave the answer straight away, but the idea of naming the prize is still the same. Two books are up for grabs, one of which is out of print – all you have to do is let me know via the comment section the name of either one of the books – only one guess per person per 24 hours. There is one prize hidden in each puzzle. First comment with each correct answer gets the prize – I’ll post it to anywhere in the world!
Puzzle One: Very simple – a wordsearch. All of the words hidden in it are authors who I’ve reviewed on the blog. That’s all I’m saying…
Puzzle Two: The pictures are from covers of books that I’ve reviewed – to be fair, the images all appear in the review. And again, that’s all I’m saying. Oh, I should say that you should ignore the… sorry, spoilers!
Good luck!
In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel 
First off congrats my friend – that is a humongous number of posts. It’s a wonder you ever get any schoolwork done 😆 second puzzle, I’m going with EMPEROR’S SNUFF BOX. Am I even close?
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Thanks, mate. And nope.
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Well, I tried … 🙂
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Congrats on 1000 posts, Doc, and especially on such a great couple of puzzles, but mainly on running such a tight ship and providing such great insight for the rest of us to gather around! Here’s to the next thousand…
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Well done on reaching 1000 posts! Definitely tricky puzzles to say the least. Only looked at the second one so far. Figured out 17 of the 18 books from the pictures. I’m presuming we just have to figure out which of the books shown is the prize? Since I can only give one title a day, my first and probably erroneous guess will The Rim of the Pit by Hake Talbot. And yes I may lose some sleep wanting to know what picture 18 is…
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Not saying anything. Apart from “wrong”. Sorry.
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Congratulations on your 1000th post!
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This is just a guess, though not a completely wild one, on the second puzzle: Cards on the Table.
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Nope.
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Is the first one Kate Ellis.
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Nope. And I’m after a book… not sure I can arrange Kate as a prize
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Congratulations! The third one is The Ordeals of Sherlock Holmes. (I know a Nick Briggs when I see one.) But that’s a Big Finish CD, so is it technically a book? Hell, I’ll go with it.
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Well, yes, but that’s not the answer..
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I’ve found 20 author’s last names in the word search so far (Bruce, Jecks, Queen, Sprigg, Marsh, Cornell, Ellis, Deaver, Mitchell, Bude, Rhode, Christie, Doherty, Carr, Tyler, Edwards, Tremayne, Calkins, Bartram, & Brand). Are there more than 20?
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Darn it…I wasn’t supposed to post them all was I? Oh well–there are some clues for you all…
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I believe I have #1: “The Merchant’s Partner” (great book, of course).
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Correct! Ben, if you want to email me your address, then I’ll send the book out. Or, if as I suspect, you’ve already got it, then I can donate it to a charity or a library if you like.
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I believe puzzle 2 is In Face of the Verdict by John Rhode!
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Congrats. You’re the winner of a slighlty battered copy of this rarity. If you email me (puzzledoctor@gmail.com) with your address, then I’ll get it in the mail. Congratulations again.
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Congratulations, Puzzle Doctor, what a wonderful achievement! I’m afraid I was on dodgy internet connection and even dodgier equipment (I hate reading blogs and trying to comment on my phone), so I was too late to participate, but here is to the next 1000 posts!
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[…] In Blogging; Parts 1, 2 and 3 of my trawl through medieval-set crime fiction; The ridiculously hard 1000th Post Competition; My Hosting of The Verdict Of Us All – Which Author Will You Never Read. And of course, you, dear […]
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[…] Believe it or not, I like a bit of a puzzle. Now, that may surprise you if a) you’ve missed the fact that I go by the nom de plume of the Puzzle Doctor or b) you’ve missed some of the more tortuous attempts at puzzling that I’ve sent your way over the years, such as this one. […]
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