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A deduction mystery works like a process of elimination with witnesses. One suspect card, one room card and one weapon card are hidden in an envelope; everything else is dealt out, so every card you can see or rule out narrows the solution. You interrogate the table by naming a suspect, a room and a weapon, and the first player able to refute you must secretly show you one matching card - which is information, not just an answer.

The genre's classic, Cluedo, was devised by Anthony E. Pratt, a British musician who filed his murder-mystery board game during the 1940s; Waddingtons published it in 1949 and Parker Brothers carried it to North America as Clue. The reason the format has survived for three-quarters of a century is that every game is self-generating: the puzzle comes from the deal, and the skill is entirely in how you interrogate it.

The game on this page is an unofficial, original take on the format - its own names, its own art, and a couple of deliberate mechanical changes. The cast is six original suspects: The Chef, The Gardener, The Doctor, The Painter, The Musician and The Athlete. The mansion is a 3×3 map of nine rooms - Kitchen, Study, Gallery, Cellar, Attic, Lounge, Office, Garden and Hall - and the six weapons run from The Hammer to The Trophy. Nothing here is affiliated with the trademarked board game.

• No dice: you move one room at a time to any adjacent square on the map, or stay put - turn one begins the moment you choose.
• One envelope, eighteen cards dealt: with more players you simply hold fewer cards and work harder.
• A detective notebook that auto-marks every pass and every card revealed to you, with a gold dot on any card no player can hold.
• Computer detectives that maintain the same pass/reveal records you can, and accuse only when their deduction leaves one option.

Pass-and-play mode keeps reveals honest with private hand-off screens, so the responder chooses a card without the table seeing it.

On your turn you first move: tap any room adjacent to yours on the mansion map (players start in the four corner rooms), or stay where you are. Then you may make one suggestion - name any suspect, any weapon, and the room you are currently standing in.

• The suggestion travels around the table in order. Each player who holds none of the three named cards passes publicly.
• The first player who holds at least one must show you exactly one of the matching cards, privately - in versus-computer mode this happens in a modal; in pass-and-play, through a staged hand-off screen.
• Passes are gold: every player who passes has all three cards ruled out for them automatically, in your notebook and in the AI's memory.
• You may skip the suggestion, or go straight for the accusation instead.

An accusation names all three categories - suspect, room and weapon, and the room does not need to be the one you occupy. Correct, and the envelope opens with your name on the case closed. Wrong, and you are eliminated with your hand exposed for the survivors to mine.

The distinction between the two moves is the whole game. A suggestion is free, repeatable and safe - it gathers information and risks nothing, since the responder's card is shown only to you. An accusation is a one-way door: it either wins the game instantly or eliminates you for the rest of the case (with two players, a failed accusation hands the win straight to your opponent).

The reveal rule is the engine of elimination: the first matching player clockwise from the asker must respond, and must show one card if they hold several - they choose which, which is itself a tell worth tracking. When nobody can show anything, all three named cards are ruled out for every other player, and a card that no living player can hold must be in the envelope - that is exactly what the notebook's gold dot means. The case ends when someone accuses correctly, or when failed accusations leave a single detective standing.

Winning players do one thing consistently: they never let information evaporate. Everything else follows from a clean grid.

• Suggest cards you do not hold. Naming your own card invites a cheap pass that teaches you nothing about the solution.
• Log the fails, not just the hits. A player who passes has ruled out three cards at once - three columns of elimination from a single move. The notebook records passes automatically; read it before every suggestion.
• Work the room grid. Suggestions are pinned to your current room, so plan routes through rooms you have not yet eliminated, and remember corner rooms have only two neighbours - starting corners are the slowest places to leave.
• Hunt the gold dots. When a card's row is fully ruled out across all players, it is in the envelope; three gold dots is a winning accusation and a case you can close without risk.
• Watch what the computers ask. Ruthless AI suggests only cards that are still live for them - their questions tell you what they have eliminated, which is information about your own hand's neighbours.

One timing rule protects you late: never accuse on a hunch while a safe suggestion remains. The AI will punish an early accusation by mining your exposed hand.

The most expensive habit is treating the notebook as optional. The game auto-marks passes and reveals, but the winners add their own deductions - 'she showed me one of two cards, and today she passed on one of them' is a deduction worth a manual mark. Second is amnesia about failed reveals: a player who once failed to show a card cannot hold it, so re-naming it against them later is a wasted suggestion.

Route errors cost whole turns: suggesting from a room you have already eliminated, or shuffling between two rooms while the unvisited half of the mansion goes untested. And the classic finish-line blunder - accusing before every category has been narrowed to a single candidate - turns a solved case into an elimination. The notebook will tell you when you are actually ready; trust it.