What you’re playing
Each case is a real murder that ended in a conviction and is part of the public record. We rebuild the investigation as a set of clues — statements, reports, letters, photographs and telegrams — in the order the police came across them. You get one guess. Then we show you how it was really solved.
How the cases are written
We work from trial records, inquests, investigators’ memoirs, scientific papers and newspapers of the time. Clue text is condensed and paraphrased for clarity; we don’t quote modern books. Each case lists its main sources on its answer page.
Where a single word would give the answer away — a name in a telegram, say — we black it out until you’ve made your guess.
The people in them
These were real people. We never show victims or injuries, each case opens with a note in their memory, and we describe what investigators found only as far as you need to follow the evidence. We focus on older cases, and on what the investigation teaches.
What’s next
There are 5 cases so far, with more being researched. Leave your email on the home page if you’d like to hear when the next one opens.