Characters / The Canon
Sherlock Holmes
Consulting detective — the world's first and only
“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
At a glance
The profile
Sherlock Holmes invented his own profession because no existing one was equal to his mind. From the sitting room at 221B Baker Street he reads strangers like documents — a trouser knee, a callus, a tan line — and turns the reading into a science he is happy to explain and happier to perform. He works for the problem, not the fee; the cocaine bottle waits for the weeks when London commits no crimes worth his attention.
He is cold only on the surface. The record shows a man who takes cases for terrified governesses at no charge, lets sympathetic culprits walk, perjures nothing, and once — when Watson took a bullet — revealed in a single sentence a depth of feeling worth all the theatrics in the canon. He keeps bees now, on the Sussex Downs, and the world is still not entirely convinced he ever existed only on paper.
In the canon
A Study in Scarlet
1887
Watson meets Holmes, and a corpse in an empty Brixton house — RACHE scrawled in blood — opens the first case: a revenge trail reaching back to Utah.
The Sign of the Four
1890
Mary Morstan's yearly pearls lead to a stolen Agra treasure, a one-legged man, and Toby the bloodhound racing across London by scent.
The Hound of the Baskervilles
1902
A spectral hound curses the Baskervilles on Dartmoor; Holmes strips the supernatural down to phosphorus, footprints, and a very human heir.
The Final Problem
1893
Moriarty's web closes; Holmes trades London for the Alps and, above the Reichenbach falls, the world loses its best and wisest man — for a while.
The Adventure of the Empty House
1903
Holmes returns from the dead with a wax bust in the window and Colonel Moran's air-gun in the dark — the great hiatus ends with a snap of handcuffs.
His Last Bow
1917
August 1914: an Irish-American motor expert delivers naval codes to a German spymaster — and is Sherlock Holmes, two years undercover, with an east wind coming.
The Adventure of the Lion's Mane
1926
In retirement by the Channel, Holmes faces a death by flogging with no assailant — the murderer is Cyanea capillata, a jellyfish, and the clue was in a book.
Their tools on this site
Sherlock Deduction Board
The flagship. Paste a mystery and watch AI extract clues, connect the evidence, and reason to a conclusion on a living board.
About & launch →Sherlock's Mind Palace
Build your own mind palace, Sherlock-style: a spatial memory palace on a full-screen canvas with rooms, vivid memories, and a walk-through practice mode.
About & launch →The Science of Deduction
Study a stranger's visible details in your field notebook, write your deductions, and have Holmes grade every claim.
About & launch →Eliminate the Impossible
Root-cause analysis on Holmes's principle: facts extracted, every hypothesis tested, the impossible struck out.
About & launch →The Induction Engine
From instances to rules: paste repeated observations and get candidate generalisations ranked by confidence, each with the counterexample that would break it.
About & launch →Dancing Men Cipher Bureau
Secret messages in the famous stick-figure cipher, plus Caesar (with a cracker), Vigenère, and Atbash — instant, in your browser.
About & launch →The Dog That Didn't Bark
Train the rarest skill in reasoning: spotting the significant absence — the thing that should have happened and pointedly did not.
About & launch →The Trace Evidence Bureau
Read ash, mud, prints, and typefaces like Holmes: let each trace narrow the field until only one candidate satisfies them all.
About & launch →