🕵️ Welcome Detective!
Our mission is to solve a murder mystery by uncovering who the killer is, which weapon was used, and when the crime occurred. It’s up to you to piece together the puzzle by examining the following key elements:
- The suspects: you'll meet a colorful cast of characters including Alice, Bob, Carol, Dave, Frida and Eddie. One of them has met an unfortunate end while some of the others are our prime suspects. Spoiler alert: in this tutorial, poor Alice is our victim so we'll focus on Bob and Carol as suspects.
- The crime: a gruesome murder has taken place, and we need to determine how it happened. Once the fatal act occurs, the victim's body remains exactly where they fell–this is a crucial detail for your investigation.
- The location: each place can be connected with the others, allowing characters to move freely. For this tutorial, we’ll explore a chilling mystery set in an eerie Victorian mansion, where people has been mysteriously disappearing from time to time. The layout changes from case to case, with three to five rooms to explore. Here's how the rooms connect:
- The weapons: various weapons are scattered throughout the rooms and the killer will pick up one of the weapons before the crime, but don't expect them to be where they "should" be. That hammer? It might be in the bathroom instead of a workshop. Logic won't help you here!
- The timeline: the murder occurred within a specific time window (e.g., between 8:00 and 9:30). You'll need to reconstruct the movements of the suspects and identify when the fatal blow was struck. There is, however, one important detail that separates these puzzles from other logic whodunit games. Our puzzles try to mimic real life, where statements and clues are often chaotic, redundant or incomplete. In that sense, reconstructing all the timeline is not necessary to solve the murder, and often it is impossible!.
- The statements: you'll get statements from suspects and evidence from the scene. Everyone will be telling the truth, but not necessary the whole story. You will need to carefully deduce and combine facts in order to uncover the truth.
🕗 Using the timeline board
Think of the Timeline Board as your detective's whiteboard – it's where all the magic happens. This tool allows you to keep track of key events, movements, and deductions as you piece together the story behind the murder. As the detective, it’s up to you to fill in the board with what you’ve deduced—but be warned, this isn’t your typical logic puzzle. Every case starts with some basic facts we know for sure:
We know where everyone was at 9:30:
Alice's body was in the kitchen
Bob was in the dining room
Carol was in the bathroom
The list of initial clues describe where each character was at the end the timeline, and it is your job to deduce, using the suspect statements and other clues,
who the killer is, which weapon was used, and when the crime occurred. We've can mark the timeline with three simple
symbols: ✓ means someone was there, ✗ means they weren't, and ? means we're not sure.
Clear ♻️
At the bottom of the timeline board lies the weapon section, which shows where each available weapon was located. For instance, the killer took the murderer weapon from one the following locations:
- The hammer (🔨) from the dining room (🪑)
- The pistol (🔫) from the bedroom (🛏️)
- The scissors (✂️) from the kitchen (🍲)
- The rope (🪢) from the bathroom (🚽)
🎓 Understanding clues and making basic deductions
Here's where it gets fun! Our suspects move between rooms every 15 minutes (they're suspiciously punctual). Our suspects must follow the location's layout when moving between rooms.
They can only move to directly connected rooms during each 15-minute interval - no shortcuts allowed! Think of it like moving across a chessboard - you have to pass through the squares one at a time.
For example, if Alice wants to go from the dining room to the bathroom, she must:
- Move from the dining room to the bedroom during one 15-minute interval.
- Stay there for any number of 15-minutes intervals (even if other suspects are also there).
- Move from the bedroom to the bathroom during another 15-minute interval.
She cannot teleport directly from the dining room to the bathroom, even though they might seem close. This rule is crucial for making deductions - if you know where and when someone started and ended up, you can often figure out where they must have been in between!
Once the movement rules are clarified, let's start this case, with the following statement:
In our murder mystery, characters move between rooms every 15 minutes, allowing us to track their locations over time through their statements.
For example, let's say we have the following clue:
☞ Bob: "I saw Alice when I arrived in the bedroom (🛏️) at 8:15"
What can we deduce? Quite a lot actually:
- 🔎 Alice was in the bedroom at 8:15
- 🔎 Bob was also in the bedroom at 8:15
- 🔎 Bob was NOT in the bedroom at 8:00
Click on each deduction to strikethrough the text, which will help you focus on other clues (try it with the clues shown above next to the magnifying glass!).
Using these deductions we can start completing the timeline board:
Clear ♻️
Check 🎯
The second we finished adding these into the timetable, other deductions start popping up! Since our suspects haven't mastered the art of being in two places at once, we can also figure out where they weren't:
- 🔎 Alice was not in the bathroom, kitchen, or dining room at 8:15
- 🔎 Bob was not in the bathroom, kitchen, or dining room at 8:15
Let's add the missing deductions:
Clear ♻️
Check 🎯
But where was Bob at 8:00? This is where our room layout comes in handy:
In this map, the bedroom has solid lines connecting it to the kitchen and bathroom. These solid lines represent direct connections - rooms that characters can move between in one 15-minute interval. The dotted line to the dining room shows an indirect connection - characters need to go through another room first to get there.
Since the bedroom connects to both the kitchen and bathroom, Bob could have come from either one. But here's a solid deduction – Bob couldn't have been in the dining room at 8:00 because it doesn't connect to the bedroom!
- 🔎 Bob was not in the dining room at 8:00
Using this information, we can add another deduction into the timeline board:
Clear ♻️
Check 🎯
Other types of clues describe when the suspects spend some time. For instance:
☞ Carol: "I was in the dining room (🪑) from 8:00 to 8:45"
This tells us:
- 🔎 Carol was in the dining room from 8:00 to 8:45
- 🔎 Carol was NOT in any of the other rooms from 8:00 to 8:45
- 🔎 Carol was NOT in the dining room at 9:00
Where was Carol at 9:00? Let's go back to mansion map to figure it out:
Looking at our room layout,
Carol must have headed to the kitchen at 9:00 (and therefore, she is not somewhere else!) – it's the only place she could reach from the dining room!
- 🔎 Carol was in the kitchen at 9:00
- 🔎 Carol was NOT in bedroom, dining room or bathroom at 9:00
Let's complete the timeline board with all these deductions:
Clear ♻️
Check 🎯
Here's another juicy clue type:
☞ Bob: "Saw nobody when I arrived to the bathroom (🚽) at 9:00"
Let's break it down:
- 🔎 Bob was in the bathroom at 9:00
- 🔎 Bob was NOT in the kitchen, bedroom or dining room at 9:00
- 🔎 Neither Alice or Carol were in the bathroom at 9:00
What else we can get from this clue? Let's take another look to the location graph:
Not only does this clue places Bob in the bathroom at 9:00, but we can backtrack – he must have been in the bedroom at 8:45 since it's the only way to reach the bathroom!
In other words:
- 🔎 Bob was in the bedroom at 8:45
- 🔎 Bob was NOT in the kitchen, dining room or bathroom at 8:45
Time to add our shiny new deductions to the timeline board:
Clear ♻️
Check 🎯
Finally, sometimes we get somehow vague clues from suspects:
☞ Carol: "I heard someone washing the dishes at 8:45"
This clue tells us that someone was in the kitchen. Wait a minute, can you wash dishes in the bathroom? Nope, absolutely ridiculous (looking at you The Sims™). Let's review what we deduced so far:
- 🔎 Someone was (alive!) at the kitchen at 8:45
- 🔎 Carol was NOT in the kitchen at 8:45
It can be tempting to try to guess where Carol was, but this is not possible. Characters sometimes can heard or see someone in other rooms, but their location cannot be inferred from this kind of clue.
However, what we can deduce using our previous observation is who was in the kitchen. Clearly, it was not Carol (she was elsewhere at 8:45 actually!). Also, we know that Bob was in the bedroom, which means that Alice was in the kitchen at 8:45.
Our first attempt to deduce facts not great, so let's review our previous deduction and refine them:
- 🔎 Alice was in the kitchen at 8:45
- 🔎 Alice was NOT in the bedroom, dining room or bathroom at 8:45
- 🔎 Carol was NOT in the kitchen at 8:45
Back to the timeline board..
Clear ♻️
Check 🎯
