If you like Sudoku, but find it too easy, Sherlock is the game for you. The game is played on a 6×6 grid, and each row has a different set of six pictures that have to be arranged within the row. You get two sets of hints that tell you what relationship the pictures have to each other: one for to their vertical relationship and one for their horizontal relationship. There are two kinds of vertical hints and five kinds of horizontal hints. For column hints, you might be told that the H and the 6 are in the same column, or that red house and the banana are not in the same column. For row hints, you might be told that the strawberry is an adjacent column to the baby, the L is not in an adjacent column to the orange, the stop sign is in a column between the apple and the pear, there is one space between the old man and the hospital sign that does not contain the speed limit sign, or the 4 is one or more rows to the left of the 2. Through the process of deduction, you eliminate possibilities until you know what's in each square. Every puzzle can be solved with the hints that are given, but if you ask for a hint, the game will explain to you in plain English how one of the hints helped you to eliminate one of the possibilities. Getting a hint will cost you 30 seconds on your clock. When you no longer need one of the clues, you can send it to a holding bin, where you can still see it if you change your mind. You will always be told what a few of the squares are, but you can make the game easier by increasing the handicap level to get more free squares.
Sherlock was renamed Sherlock for Windows starting with v3.0. The move to Win16 increased the color depth from 16 to 256, and hovering the mouse over the hints triggers a pop-up explanation, which was replaced with a less intrusive dedicated explanation area in v4.0. The game went back to being called Sherlock when it became a Win9x game starting with v5.0. Originally there were 65 536 puzzles in this game, which was increased to 131 072 puzzles in v3.0. Originally all of the puzzles were playable in the shareware version, but it was reduced to 200 in v2.0 and to 100 by v2.07.
Added by DOSGuy
Screenshots
640×350×16c
GDI
GDI
Downloads
Complete version history:
| Sherlock v6.1 (2016) Shareware (1,912,832 bytes) | 2016-11-29 | Win9x | |
| Sherlock v6.1 (2015) Shareware (1,912,832 bytes) | 2015-09-05 | Win9x | |
| Sherlock v6.0c Shareware (1,794,048 bytes) | 2011-07-01 | Win9x | |
| Sherlock v6.0 Shareware (1,794,048 bytes) | 2009-11-16 | Win9x | |
| Sherlock v5.0a Shareware (1,347,072 bytes) | 2002-03-25 | Win9x | |
| Sherlock for Windows v4.0 Shareware (628,634 bytes) | 2000-04-12 | Win16 | |
| Sherlock for Windows v3.4 Shareware (Still searching) | 1997-09-15 | Win16 | |
| Sherlock for Windows v3.3 Shareware (Still searching) | 1997-04-23 | Win16 | |
| Sherlock for Windows v3.2c Shareware (Still searching) | xxxx | Win16 | |
| Sherlock for Windows v3.2b Shareware (Still searching) | 1996-03-07 | Win16 | |
| Sherlock for Windows v3.2a Shareware (Still searching) | 1996-03-03 | Win16 | |
| Sherlock for Windows v3.2 Shareware (Still searching) | 1996-03-02 | Win16 | |
| Sherlock for Windows v3.0d Shareware (Still searching) | 1996-01-23 | Win16 | |
| Sherlock for Windows v3.0c Shareware (370,978 bytes) | 1996-01-14 | Win16 | |
| Sherlock for Windows v3.0b Shareware (Still searching) | 1995-12-03 | Win16 | |
| Sherlock for Windows v3.0a Shareware (369,270 bytes) | 1995-11-25 | Win16 | |
| Sherlock v2.07 Shareware (122,396 bytes) | 1996-01-20 | DOS | Play online  |
| Sherlock v2.06 Shareware (Still searching) | 1994-09-02 | DOS | |
| Sherlock v2.05 Shareware (Still searching) | 1994-03-27 | DOS | |
| Sherlock v2.04 Shareware (Still searching) | 1994-03-02 | DOS | |
| Sherlock v2.03 Shareware (Still searching) | 1994-02-28 | DOS | |
| Sherlock v2.02 Shareware (Still searching) | 1994-01-22 | DOS | |
| Sherlock v2.01 Shareware (Still searching) | 1994-01-16 | DOS | |
| Sherlock v2.00 Shareware (127,021 bytes) | 1993-07-14 | DOS | |
| Sherlock v1.50 Shareware (102,257 bytes) | 1992-06-06 | DOS | |
| Sherlock v1.42 Shareware (139,690 bytes) | 1992-03-26 | DOS | |
| Sherlock v1.41 Shareware (Still searching) | 1992-03-10 | DOS | |
| Sherlock v1.4 Shareware (Still searching) | 1992-02-29 | DOS | |
| Sherlock v1.3 Shareware (Still searching) | 1992-02-22 | DOS | |
| Sherlock v1.2 Shareware (91,570 bytes) | 1991-11-24 | DOS | |
| Sherlock v1.1 Shareware (76,175 bytes) | 1991-05-11 | DOS |
Availability
Everett Kaser Software still sells the registered version of this game for $19.95 by download or $24.95 on CD-ROM.