Game guide

How to Play Alibi

Alibi is a daily cozy-mystery logic puzzle. A death overnight, a household with statements — every word of them true, but only one arrangement of people and implements fits all of them at once. Read the rail, place each suspect and every piece of evidence back where they belong; once the last alibi locks in, the room with the killer and the weapon marks itself as the crime scene.

A death in a house full of people, and a rail of statements — every one of them true. Read them, put each suspect and every piece of evidence back in the room it belongs to, and the case closes — the room holding the killer and the weapon lights up as the crime scene.

The loop

How it works

A small cast, a few pieces of evidence, a grid of rooms — the count is identical on all three sides. Every room ends up with exactly one suspect and exactly one piece of evidence, and every statement in the rail is true.

The one guaranteeExactly one arrangement satisfies all the clues at once. That’s what lets you deduce your way to the answer instead of guessing.

The loop is short: read a clue, drag chips into rooms to try it out, then tap a chip to lock it in once you’re sure.

  • Drag chips into rooms to test a theory — free, nothing to lose.
  • Tap a staged chip to commit it — a wrong call leaves a mark.
Drag a chip in to stage it — rooms hold as many candidates as you like. Tap the right one to lock it (the mint tint means committed); the leftover same-type chips in that room clear out on their own.

Cases run from a friendly 2×3 on Monday up to a 3×4 on Sunday. Once the day’s file has loaded you can play offline; your placements and locked chips survive a refresh.

Five kinds

Reading the clues

Tap a clue to pin it (hover previews it on desktop); the rooms and chips it names light up across the board. Shape is a shortcut — the tall portrait chip is the one column rule, Above; every other clue is a wide ribbon.

Left of. Same row, the first somewhere to the left of the second — rooms can sit between them. For strict adjacency, see Next to.
Above. Same column, the first somewhere above the second — again, rooms can sit between. The portrait shape alone tells you it’s a column rule.
Next to. Rook-adjacent rooms — touching left/right or up/down, never diagonally and never with a gap.
Together. The two share one room. Mint-tinted ‘+’ in the rail.
Apart. The two are never in the same room. Coral-tinted ‘✕’ in the rail — it rules a pairing out, but never places anything on its own.
Common misreads

Watch out for

“Left of” is not “Next to”Left of and Above only fix an order along a row or column — the two rooms can have others between them. Only Next to promises they actually touch.
Only a tap leaves a markDragging and stacking chips is free, and a room can hold any number of candidates while you think. Nothing runs out, either — wrong calls are never capped, and the case never closes on you. What a wrong commit costs is the record: that slot lands as a miss on your result grid, and with it the flawless finish — every slot closed on the first tap, no hints.
Some rooms fill themselvesNot every clue hands you a placement. Apart clues only rule pairings out, and the last empty room is settled purely by elimination — once everything else is placed, whatever’s left has just one home.
Every statement is trueAll the clues hold at once, and exactly one layout fits them, so you never have to guess. If a placement forces a contradiction, an earlier one was wrong — back it out.
Worked example

Walk one through

A tiny 2×2 case. Top row Parlor · Library, bottom row Garden · Kitchen. Four suspects — Crowley, Pemberton, Vesper, Marlowe — four pieces of evidence, and six statements:

In words: (1) Crowley left of Pemberton · (2) Pemberton above Marlowe · (3) Crowley with Candle · (4) Pemberton with Revolver · (5) Vesper with Dagger · (6) Marlowe apart from Revolver.

  1. Read the two map clues

    Clues 1 and 2 are about position. Crowley is left of Pemberton — same row, Crowley on the left. Pemberton is above Marlowe — same column, Pemberton higher up.
    Don't place anyone yetClue 1 fixes their order and that they share a row — not which row — and “left of” here doesn’t mean adjacent. Hold off dropping a chip.

  2. Two clues pin three people

    Marlowe has to sit below Pemberton, so Pemberton needs a room beneath it — that forces Pemberton into the top row, at Library. Crowley shares that row on the left → Parlor; Marlowe drops straight below → Kitchen.
    The tempting misreadYou might drop Crowley and Pemberton into the bottom row instead. But then Marlowe would have no room below Pemberton — clue 2 rules that out.

  3. Elimination seats the last suspect

    No clue ever names Vesper’s room. She doesn’t need one: Parlor, Library and Kitchen are taken, so Garden is the only seat left.
    Don't wait for a clueIt’s easy to stall here hunting for a “Vesper is…” statement. Placement by elimination is a real move — the puzzle expects it.

  4. Evidence rides along — and one clue sits out

    The three Together clues drop Candle with Crowley (Parlor), Revolver with Pemberton (Library) and Dagger with Vesper (Garden). Poison has no clue — but it’s the last piece and Kitchen the last room, so elimination finishes the board.
    Spare here — never in a dailyClue 6 — Marlowe apart from Revolver — was already true the whole time and never did any work. That’s a quirk of this teaching case, which carries a spare so the rail can show you the coral chip for Apart. Real dailies are stripped of spares before they ship: every clue is there because the case can’t be pinned down without it. So when a daily clue seems to be doing nothing, it isn’t spare — it’s waiting on a deduction you haven’t made yet.

Read what’s forced, place it, and let elimination clean up the rest — no guessing required.

Win condition

Closing the case

Commit every suspect and every piece of evidence in its right room and the case is closed. The status bar climbs from Locked 0/N to N/N; at the top you’ll see the victory card.

The rail’s case file names the victim. When the board fills, the room where the killer and the weapon landed is flagged as the crime scene — its suspect marked Killer, its evidence marked Weapon: the three-part verdict you rebuilt from the statements.

A fresh case opens daily at midnight Eastern Time. Early-week files are open-and-shut; the casebook knots tighter toward the weekend, with the Sunday case sitting deepest.