I’ve not written about Murdle because I figured we had probably already written about Murdle, back when loads of Wordle-likes were popping up. Imagine my shock when searching for Murdle on the site this morning returned no results. This is the RPS dep ed version of saying you can’t find the big scissors without looking in the kitchen drawer first.
Murdle is a free daily logic puzzle game that you can play in-browser at murdle.com. They’re like luxury versions of those ones you’d get in thick, half-sized paperbacks from WH Smiths, next to the books of sudoku, where you have to figure out who lives in which house and what colour their car is with clues like ‘Peter does not not have a four-wheeled drive. Murdle is better, though, because the puzzles are themed around being a detective – or, technically, a Deductive – called Logico solving a murder. You get a new one every day, and it’s neat-o.
It’s the brainchild of G.T. Karber, who is currently pre-hyping a second Murdle book after the success of Volume 1. A typical Murdle game has more to it than the logic boxes of yore. Today’s clue that ‘A copy of a first-rate puzzle book was found beside the tragic maiden’ gives you the murder weapon, but you still need to find the culprit and the crime scene. Your suspects will have their hair and eye colours listed. You might have to do a quick fingerprint analysis to see who was holding a bear trap, and a coded message from Inspector Irratino (who is also the vehicle for hints) reveals where a chip of brick was found. Even the locations have pertinent things hidden in their descriptions, like how the haunted grove produces the sound of whispers.
It might take you a while to get the hang of it, but the site also has a mini-Murdle tutorial. As someone who does not have an anagram brain, I feel a bit left out of Wordle, i.e. I am absolute balls at it. Murdle, though, is right up my street, and it’s a nice 15 minute thing to do in the mornings to get me into the day. I don’t actually get the right answer most of the time, but I’m coming off an unprecedented hotstreak of two days in a row, and I thought I’d share it with my best mates (you, reading this. You’re my favourite). You can have a bit Murdle, as a treat.
