About the game
Crosswords that come true.
New York, October 1924. Iris Clewe edits the puzzle page of the Evening Ledger. One Tuesday a crossword arrives with no stamp and no return address, signed "The Constructor". By midnight a pianist is dead at the Blue Lantern, and the grid described how.
Each case runs through three editions of the paper. The player solves crosswords, ciphers, acrostics, word ladders, a telephone switchboard log, a dance card, a printer's proof full of misprints. Every solved puzzle files a clue in Iris's notebook. Witnesses are interviewed, and in most cases one of them lies.
At the end the player names the killer, the place, the weapon, the motive and the liar, then answers the defence's objections with the evidence found. Each case is checked by the developer's solver to have exactly one answer, so the deduction is fair and nothing rests on a guess.
Scenes are told as voiced comics in Art Deco illustration, with a narrator and a voice for every witness, and Scott Joplin ragtime on Iris's gramophone. Mr. Pim of the Ledger's archive gives two free nudges on every puzzle; filled-in answers cost favors earned by solving, never money.
