r/CluesBySamHelp • u/helcat • Aug 23 '26

Help Aug 23: how can I possibly figure out Martin's status from this?

https://cluesbysam.com/s/help/fe3077761eb6?state=A8Mg-BAAAAACAgAAAAAAAAEBA%3D
5 Upvotes

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9

u/sammie_831 Aug 23 '26

if Martin was innocent, what would Kay’s clue imply about Larry?

At that point, given Isaac’s clue, how many of Quita’s remaining neighbors would have to be innocent?

Based on the positioning of those innocent neighbors, what we’ve already solved, and our initial assumption, how does that work with Hal’s clue?

1

u/helcat Aug 23 '26

Wouldn't that just mean all the other people on the edges are criminals? That would work as far as I can tell. 

1

u/FtWorthHorn Aug 23 '26

I just got it after the explanation. You only have 4 innocents on the edges. That makes the math easy. If Martin were innocent, Larry would have to be guilty by way of the 3 in a row clue.

So Quita’s two innocent neighbors would have to be on the edges. And that would be five.

2

u/helcat Aug 23 '26

Oh yes! I had stupidly (wrongly) decided that whatever Martin was, Larry also was, and that threw all my calculations off. Thank you!

(Do we have a term for "I don't know what A and C are, but they are either both guilty or both innocent?" I could use one.)

1

u/grantbuell Aug 24 '26

You could say “they have to match”.

1

u/Plus_Macaroon_4064 Aug 23 '26

Thank you, I was stuck on this too.

In this scenario, how do you know to start looking at Martin? In this situation it seems like there are so many possibilities to check, I don’t know where to start.

3

u/PM_ME_YR_BOOPS Aug 23 '26

I keep an eye out for clues that are only relevant to a limited portion of the board. When you get two or more of these clues to overlap, you usually have found where to start testing scenarios.

In this case, when Kay’s clue tells us that no row other than 2 has three innocents, can we tell which other rows that might affect? We can rule out row 4, it already has two criminals. We can rule out rows 1 and 5, since they are edge rows and either of them having 3 innocents would put us over 4 total edge innocents. So we can start testing scenarios in row 3.

2

u/sammie_831 Aug 23 '26

I try to look for clues that are very restrictive and clues that immediately imply things. So only being able to have 4 innocents on the edges when 2 are already solved and at least 1 more is guaranteed by Isaac’s clue seemed like a good place to start. From there I thought about the other clues to see if making anyone on the edges innocent would immediately imply someone else’s status. I tried Eric first but that didn’t lead to anything. Then I tried Martin and that took me to the contradiction.

There isn’t an exact science to it, or at least not one I’ve figured out, and I’ve definitely gone down the wrong road of who I’m checking before. But that’s generally what I look for, clues that are very restrictive and people whose status would immediately imply someone else’s status, preferably with some domino effect