Yesterday’s storysolved
one line through the mazePlay today’s

Nell Sayer · one puzzle a day, free

Every case has exactly one answer. Everyone else is lying.

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.

Five ways to play

Pencil first. Then the page tells you if you were right.

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.

Longhand

Live

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

Play now

Dead Giveaway

Coming

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

Judge StavrosThe seaward door stayed bolted all night.Judge EllsworthThe paraffin store was never locked.Baroness JephsonThe fog bell was rung twice, I heard it.
One room a day, soon

Whodunwhen

Coming

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

9 PM10 PM11 PM Miss WhitfieldSaloonLibraryBilliards The Night ClerkGardenGardenLibrary Colonel ReyesSaloonLibraryLibrary
One case a day, soon

COLDCODE

Live

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 A5
Play today’s puzzle

The five files

Coming

Five 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

WHOWHATWHEREWHENWHY
The books

The books

One case out, five on the way.

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

Set fair, proved twice, printed once.

01

One truth

Every puzzle has a single answer, and a solver that knows nothing but the printed rules reaches it before the puzzle is allowed out.

02

Nothing off the page

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.

03

Yours to keep

The daily puzzles are free and stay free. Your streak lives in your browser. There are no accounts, no ads and no trackers.

How a puzzle is proved

The letter

One puzzle a week, by mail.

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.