The third riddle about ending the suspense and finding the way from Sid to Sydney

The third riddle about ending the suspense and finding the way from Sid to Sydney is the final of the three rhyming challenges discussed by Peter Diamond. Its two lines direct readers from Sid towards Sydney, but their decisive clue is not merely a destination: the word suspense points to Rupert Darby, who is found hanging from a bridge in Sydney Gardens. The riddle’s force comes from making the language of puzzle-solving describe the discovery and removal of a dead man, while its apparent directions lead the police first to the wrong place.

Form and Place Clues

The riddle reads: “To end the suspense, as yours truly did, Discover the way to Sydney from Sid.” Its compact couplet makes a verbal route out of the names Sid and Sydney. At first, the phrase about finding the way to Sydney can be taken as a practical directional clue. Peter Diamond later recognizes that the word choice carries another meaning: it connects the suspense of an unresolved case with a man suspended from a bridge.

That doubleness is built into the wording rather than added after the event. The lines promise an ending, but do not say plainly what will end or where the route leads. “To end the suspense” can describe the conclusion of a mystery; after Rupert’s body is found, it also describes what happens when he is cut down. The riddle therefore gives its solver a clue that is meaningful in more than one sense, while withholding which sense should govern the search until the hanging has occurred.

The Police Follow the Wrong Route

Before Rupert’s death is explained, John Wigfull interprets the instruction to find the way to Sydney as a reason to post six men in Sydney Gardens. He hopes that their presence will bring the suspense to an end sooner than expected. This response shows the clue working as an operational direction: the police identify Sydney Gardens as a place to search and deploy officers there, even though the riddle’s language has not yet made its full meaning clear.

Peter later tells Wigfull that the police had also followed the wrong implication of the route. They had chosen the museum instead of the bridge. In retrospect, Diamond says they might have anticipated the hanging if they had considered every word, but he does not claim that the solution should have been obvious. He concedes that the riddle had tantalized them, as the earlier riddles had, and that understanding its true meaning would have required the brilliance of the fictional detectives admired by the Bloodhounds. The missed clue thus becomes a measure of the gap between a neat puzzle and the uncertain work of interpreting one under pressure.

Meaning Confirmed by Rupert’s Death

After Rupert is found hanging, Diamond rejects Wigfull’s suggestion that the death was an impulsive act conceived the previous evening. He points to the third riddle as evidence that the hanging had been planned. Its promise to end suspense corresponds to the morning’s events: Rupert was suspended from the bridge, and cutting him down ended that suspension. The word joins a figurative condition—the waiting for an answer—to a physical fact that the police encounter.

Diamond’s reading does not make the riddle an unambiguous map. Instead, the clue’s apparent directions and its darker prediction operate together. The police did discover a way associated with Sydney, but their first interpretation sent them to the museum rather than the bridge. The later explanation converts the earlier failure into a lesson about attention: individual words had carried information that the investigators had not assembled in time. Even so, Diamond allows that closer reading might not have been enough to prevent the outcome.

Circulation and Narrative Effect

When Diamond discusses the riddle with Mrs Shaw, he emphasizes that it resembles the other two in style and was printed on similar paper, in an identical typeface, and distributed in the same way to local media. Those repeated features lead him to reject the idea that it was merely the work of someone seeking publicity. He argues that it was written with knowledge that a man would shortly be found hanging from a bridge in Sydney Gardens. The riddle’s significance therefore rests both on its wording and on its place in a continuing series of similarly presented messages.

The poem delays recognition by allowing its readers to pursue the obvious place-name clue before the hanging supplies a second, grim vocabulary for suspense. Its ending is not a clean solution in which every word simply points to one location. Rather, the police reach Sydney Gardens while failing to anticipate the bridge, and only after Rupert’s death can Diamond connect the clue’s language to the event. The riddle makes the investigation’s delay part of its design: the answer becomes legible at the moment when understanding it can no longer avert the death.