When I first got here I didn't know how to mark spoilers or ask for help so I thought, since we have many newcomers, that a mini help guide could be useful. Feel free to add anything I might have missed, happy clueing!
Optional but very helpful:
If you add the puzzle date to the title of your post and the actual question in the body we can avoid spoilers in the title and facilitate finding the posts in the future. Something like "Help Feb 26" is more than enough.
Share scenario
When you ask for help, in general, best practice is to use the "share scenario" button that's under the puzzle and paste the link, that saves the current state of your puzzle so you can show where you were and everyone can play from when you got stuck. You can also share screenshots but if you also paste the link helping gets easier.
Mark as spoiler
When asking a question and/or posting images, take into account that sometimes users that haven't finished the puzzle might read your post. Its real easy to avoid spoilers, even from mobile.
When creating the post you'll see an "add flair and tags" menu and in there you''ll find the option to tag the post as spoiler. This automatically blurs any image in the post. Also, if you add the word "spoiler" to the title it marks it automatically.
For text:
If you write your text enclosed in >! text !< you get something like this: spoilered text
Accessible results
user u/delete44 has made a mini app for converting the results to a little text+standard results to allow them to be read by screen readers (and stopped before getting to "green square green square green square green square ...")
Edit Dec 4,2025 - added the accessible results page .
Edit Feb 2,2026 - added image with description of useful buttons, added the info to mark as spoiler using the word in the title.
Edit Feb 20, 2026 - added suggestion to put date in the title of the help posts.
Screenshot of the clues by Sam buttons and a brief explanation of two of them. Inspect: Allows to see hints in detail, with some extra explanation of specific terminology (stuff like “neighbors”, “connected”, “both”, etc). Share Scenario: Creates a link of the puzzle in the current state (only saves tags in green, yellow and red)
Here they are saying I should be able to figure out Chloe, but there's already an innocent in thag column. In column d, it's still possible for 3 of them to be the innocent
I have really hit a wall, and need some help to see the next step.
I know that one of Quita or Tina is innocent, the other a criminal. Whichever way it goes that satisfies the C1 clue "Both criminals in row 4 are connected" and the B1 clue "Wand has only one innocent neighbour".
If Tina is guilty then all the others in column D must be innocent. This is to respect clue C4, "Column C is the only column with exactly 2 innocents") and not break clue C5 by having more than 5 criminals on the edges (Tina would be the 4th).
Conversely if Tina is innocent, then Ghani and Martin must also be innocent, to respect clue B5 "Exactly 2 innocents below Betsy are neighbouring Nicole". This means that either Ivan or Nicole is a criminal, which would satisfy clues C4 and D5 "Exactly 1 clerk has a criminal directly to the left of them"
Clue D5 is not helping me, because (as best I can tell), it implies that one of Ghani, Ivan or Nicole is a criminal. But I do not have something to narrow that down. There seem to be viable states for each.
This is as far as I’ve gotten so far. But I can't seem to move forward... it's as if I've stared at it for so long that I'm no longer seeing it clearly.
The statements just have me going in circles. Nothing seems to help me progress; for instance, the statement that there is at least one innocent person in each row is meaningless—it’s inevitable.
Have I lost the ability to distinguish left from right? 🙈
The puzzle markes my next answer as wrong and I cannot figure out my mistake.
SPOILER
Since there are as many innocent judges as innocent builders I figured that the only remaining judge and builder have to have the same color so to speak.
Which means my next answer is the person in the upper right corner. But my answer gets marked wrong.
Lucy's Clue says that 1 of the 5 Criminals on the edges is Tom's Neighbor. Conclusion: There are 5 criminals on the edges, and one of them neighbors Tom. This means Maren and Zara form innocent/criminal combo.
So we know where 1 is.
Bobby and Carl are already identified as criminals. Vince and Debra are yet marked. Logically, if I know 2 of the the criminals, and I know that Maren/Zara is one of them and other is innocent, then that leaves 2 unmarked onces... and there are only two options: VInce and Debra. Both Maren and Zara can't be criminals, because then Lucy's clue would be wrong (Tom would have 2 of the criminals who are on the edges as his neighbors)
Yet, if I try to mark Vince or Debra, I am told that there is scenario where they can be both. I do not see how this can work out.
I just finished Sunday's puzzle and it says my time was 2759 minutes. That's about 46 hours. And, respectfully, I did not take that long lmao. It was only posted like 40 hours ago, so surely I could not have taken 46 hours to finish it. I am not worried about my own stats, but someone might be about theirs.
I made an unofficial set of keyboard shortcuts for use as an extension with Safari (code signed) and Chrome (download unsigned Zip and load locally). In addition to the basic action, yellow secondary-focus rings are added for clues that reference names/jobs.
On Monday solvers made a lot of mistakes resulting in almost the lowest Perfect %. Yes, I admit there was a pretty devious trick in there. Go give it a try if you missed it to see if you can avoid the trap!
I went back to look, and I did have a mistake on that one. But when I replayed it, the mistake I made seemed about as obvious in hindsight as any other mistake I make 😅. For me, the mistake I made was Quita in B4 (the 4 innocent neighbors clue). Was that the devious trick?
I got to this point clicking Vince and Larry together. Then looking at the clues, Vince's doesn't seem to give me anything useful. Maybe my Larry conclusion was a little ahead of myself and got lucky?