Longhand
LiveTrace one line through the letters and read the sentence as you go. Five rungs from a full maze to no walls at all, and one story a day.
From yesterday’s story
Nell Sayer · one puzzle a day, free
A story hidden in a grid as one unbroken line. A room where one guest lies. A night where one alibi cannot stand. Each is proved solvable before it reaches you, and each is new every day.
No account. Progress and streaks stay on your phone. Nothing is tracked.
Every mechanic in the line is set the same way: the page gives you everything you need, exactly one reading survives, and a machine has walked every wrong turn before the puzzle was printed.
Trace one line through the letters and read the sentence as you go. Five rungs from a full maze to no walls at all, and one story a day.
From yesterday’s story
Five guests give sworn statements. Every innocent one tells the truth, so the killer’s account must hold a lie. Clear the ones whose word stands.
The Keeper’s Last Watch · the lighthouse
Three suspects, four rooms, three hours. Build the timeline hour by hour and find the one account that cannot be true.
A Question of Timing · the Ardenmere Hotel
A murder mystery word search. Every grid holds nothing but the letters of its own hidden word, nobody tells you how many times it is there, and the number you count is the code that opens the next line of the case.
The stamp at the foot of every puzzle
Evidence A5Five files, five pencils, five questions. Every word you strike out narrows the case, and an unsigned confession on the first page tells you where to start.
Five questions, five typefaces
The books
Paperbacks from Hoot Hatch. Each one is the mechanic at full length, with the whole story printed after the answers. Listings appear here the day they go live — COLDCODE is the first.

Nell Sayer is the name the puzzle line publishes under at Hoot Hatch. Where a story is written by a program, the book says so on its listing.
Method
Every puzzle has a single answer, and a solver that knows nothing but the printed rules reaches it before the puzzle is allowed out.
No outside knowledge, no trick of wording. If the rules would need an assumption they do not state, the puzzle is rewritten, not the reader.
The daily puzzles are free and stay free. Your streak lives in your browser. There are no accounts, no ads and no trackers.
The letter
Starts with the first book. Until then, the daily story is the letter: come back tomorrow.
No form yet, on purpose. When there is one it will ask for an address and nothing else, with one click to leave.