streak
How to solve Red-Handed puzzles
Six rules, seven techniques, and one person who needs a story.
What is Red-Handed?
Something happened in the town of Marrow Bay, and everybody who might have done it has an account of where they were. All but one of those accounts is true. The one who lied is the one who did it, and they were alone at the scene when it happened, which is why they needed a story in the first place.
You solve it by rebuilding the evening rather than by guessing a name. Every suspect goes into a chair and every object goes into the room it was found in. The two grids lean on each other: knowing who sat where tells you which object they could have been near, and knowing where an object turned up tells you who was in that room.
The method is the old one. Rule out every suspect whose story can still hold, and whoever is left standing gave the false account. Holmes called guessing a shocking habit, destructive to the logical faculty, and no case here will ever ask you for one.
The rules
- Everybody is somewhere. Each room holds a fixed number of chairs, and every chair is taken. A two-chair room has exactly two people in it, never one and never three.
- Every object was found in one room. Each room has a single evidence slot, so no room holds two objects and no object is in two places.
- Everybody gives one account of themselves. One sentence each, about where they were, who they were with, or what was in the room with them.
- Exactly one account is false. The count is exact, which is the rule that makes every other account usable as hard fact.
- Whoever lied was alone at the scene. The scene is the one-chair room. That person is your culprit.
- Forensic lines are always true. They come from the investigators, not from anybody with a reason to lie.
On the Sherlock tier, rule four changes: two accounts are false. One of the two liars was alone at the scene and did it. The other lied for their own reasons and was somewhere else entirely.
Seven solving techniques
1. Start with what was found
Forensic lines are the only statements in the case that cannot be lies, so they are the only ones you can act on without checking anything first. Place everything they settle before you read a single account.
2. Hunt for the clash
Read every account as if it were true and look for two that cannot both hold. Three people claiming a room with two chairs. Somebody putting themselves next to a person who says they were alone. One of those two lied, and the moment you know that, every account outside the pair becomes fact.
3. Trust everybody else
This is the technique most solvers underuse. Narrowing the lie to two people does not just accuse two. It clears everyone else, and their accounts are worth more together than any single clue in the case.
4. Count the chairs
Room capacity does more work than it looks like it should. If only two people can still be in a three-chair room, the remaining chair belongs to whoever is left. If a two-chair room already has two confirmed occupants, everybody else is out of it.
5. Work the objects
Objects are a second assignment running alongside the people, one per room. Pinning an object rules that room out for every other object, which frequently settles a person you could not place directly. Deductions run both directions.
6. Test a suspect, then discard
Pick a candidate and assume they lied. That puts them alone at the scene and empties that room of everybody else. Now read the remaining accounts as true and see whether anything breaks. If a second body lands in that one-chair room, the hypothesis is dead and the suspect is cleared.
7. Eliminate, do not guess
Run technique six across every suspect. Each wrong assumption dies of a plain contradiction rather than a dead end, so you never have to nest one guess inside another. Whoever survives is the answer, and you will be able to say exactly why.
The five difficulty levels
Difficulty here is the length of the chain, not the size of the board. A case with eight suspects takes longer to write down without being harder to think about. A case where nothing can be worked out until three other things have been worked out is the hard one, and the tiers grow that number first.
Easy gives you four suspects, three rooms and two objects. Six placements and four short accounts, which is enough to learn the shape of the reasoning without holding much in your head.
Medium adds a fifth suspect and a third object. The extra object is what lengthens the chain, because working out who was near it usually settles somebody you could not place directly.
Hard puts six suspects across four rooms. Fewer people share a room, so fewer accounts can be checked against each other directly and more of the board has to be inferred rather than read.
Expert keeps Hard's board on purpose and adds a fourth object and a longer chain. A deduction you make in the fifth step is often only available because of something you settled in the second.
Sherlock makes two accounts false instead of one. That is thirty pairs to rule out rather than six suspects, with one fewer account you can lean on while you do it.
Common questions
Does a case ever need a guess?
No. Every puzzle has exactly one arrangement that fits, and a separate program proves it before the case ships. That program assumes each suspect in turn and confirms two things: every wrong assumption dies of a contradiction, and the one that survives finishes the board by itself. Being stuck always means a deduction is still on the table.
Why does the liar have to be the culprit?
Because the scene has a single chair. Whoever was there had nobody to vouch for them, which is exactly the person who needs a story. The false account and the empty room are one fact seen from two directions.
Can I tell who lied from how they said it?
No, and that is enforced rather than hoped for. Every account is checked to be falsifiable while its speaker sits alone at the scene, so no sentence clears its own speaker by its wording. Each false account also shares its phrasing with a truthful one, so the shape of a sentence never names the person who gave it.
How is this different from a logic grid?
A logic grid hands you clues that are all true and asks you to match categories. Red-Handed asks a question before any of that: which statement do I throw away? Until you have answered it, no account is safe to build on.