Murder Mystery Solution

Banner hint: Zoom in, it’ll be easier to see it.

Banner solution: Several letters in the bottom row are highlighted in red. Read the highlighted letters from left to right.

Code: LISTEN.

Banner hint: Zoom out, it’ll be easier to see it.

Banner solution: A word is hidden in the pattern near the bottom of the center logo.

Code: MINION.

Story solution: It’s a straight-forward logic puzzle. The right key is the Yellow Key.

Banner hint: The 1 refers to the first poster.

Banner solution: Write the word LISTEN in the top row of circles. For each circle, write the same letter in the circle it connects to.

Code: SILENT.

Story hint: That’s a grey scale.

Story solution: A small hint was that Finn could “See it with a glance”, and Finn is a canine, and canines are known to not see colour (untrue). Save the image and run it through a greyscale filter, and the word pops up. The solution is FLUFFY.

Banner hint: Where does the sun rise and set?

Banner solution: There are 6 star shaped icons on the bottom left of the paper, with one direction highlighted. These correspond to directions of a compass.

Code: SENSES.

Story solution: Another simple logic puzzle. Each test tube contains one substance, or all possible combinations of two substances. The key is knowing that being positive for one substance will result in 3 test tubes turning green, two substances will result in 5, and three substances will result in 6. Since 3 are green, there is only one positive. The only way to swap two labels and have it be consistent is having Etylate turn green, so Is and Is+Et is swapped. The answer is Positive for Imperium.

Banner hint: It’s not binary.

Banner solution: It’s morse code. Read it from top down without rotating the image.

Code: SWORDS.

Story hint: It’s a standard mate-in-1 chess puzzle. Not much to say about this except sorry for those who don’t play chess =/

Story solution: Rook, h7.

Banner hint: Multiple codes need to be entered into the site.

Banner hint 2: We have 1. Little and 2. Island. What comes next? Do you see those two Xs anywhere else?

Banner solution: The bottom marks “Little” as 1, and “Island” as 2. Putting these codes in will get you two images containing coloured lines numbered 1/3 and 2/3 respectively. To get 3/3, the player has to figure out that the phrase is Little Island Furcon, so “Furcon” is the third code. Each set of lines contains two Xs in the corners. These Xs can be found on the image. Overlaying the lines on the image such that the Xs line up will reveal the following. The coloured lines intersect at different letters - reading them from up down will spell the banner code.

Code: COBWEB.

Story hint: The goal is to find a pattern in what Finn likes and what he doesn’t like. Look closely at the words.

Story solution: The key is to find a pattern in the things Finn likes and doesn’t like. It has nothing to do with what the things are themselves, rather how the words are spelled out. With some experimentation we see Finn likes things that have double letters (e.g. tt, oo, mm). The answer is Ballroom Dancing, Keeping Secrets, Dinner Dates, Business Meetings, Porridge.

Banner hint: 🎵

Banner solution: Looking at the books on the left will show the circular patterns arranged in a certain way. On its left is 5 lines, corresponding to 5 lines of a musical stave. Each circle represents one note, from which the note letter should be taken.

Code: FACADE.

Story hint: Time to do some proofreading.

Story solution: Look at words that have extra, missing, or numbers that are replaced by letters. Collecting all the wrong letters will give you the answer. The answer is “I’m sorry for your loss”.

Banner hint: Draw a line.

Banner solution: On the banner are two circles, connected by an erased line. Redraw the line between them. There is also a set of brackets around the words, reading the letters from the first bracket to the line and the line to the second bracket will give you the answer.

Code: NOVELS.

Story solution: The player should find 3 notes, one in Finn’s backpocket, one in Finn’s fist, one under the carpet. Also, note that the glass is studded with gems and has Finn’s initials marked underneath it.

Banner hint: ⠿

Banner solution: Look near the top of the staircase railing. It’s braille, except the dots are connected by lines.

Code: TREPID.

Story hint: You need something from chapter 8.

Story hint 2: The game is Wordle.

Story solution: This uses a note found on Finn. Overlaying the note on the lock will reveal a game of wordle. Wordle was a popular word puzzle game in early 2022, the objective is to guess a 5 letter word, and letters in the correct position will show up green, while guesses in the wrong position show up yellow. In this case, 4 guesses have been made and the player has to find the solution. The answer is HYENA.

Banner hint: #??????, #??????, #??????.

Banner solution: The colours of the #s refer to the colour hexcodes. The hex codes are #C0FFEE, #ACCE55 and #F1A5C0. Entering COFFEE, ACCESS and FIASCO into the site will get 3 separate images of dots. Overlay the images and a connect-the-dots puzzle will appear. Connect the dots to get the answer.

Code: WHIMSY.

Story hint: You need something from chapter 8. There are 6 digits.

Story solution: The key is the game of tic-tac-toe in the upper right of the note that says NO ONE WINS. The grid corresponds to the layout of the cellar lock. No one wins, so the game should end in a draw. If both players play perfectly, there is only one possible way the game proceeds to a draw. The cells both players fill in indicate the numbers of the combination. The code is 691287.

Banner hint: It’s blinking. What if everything is blinking?

Banner solution: There are 6 seven-segment-displays, and a 7th one that is blinking. When it blinks, all unlit segments become lit and lit segments become unlit. Do the same for the other 6 displays.

Code: ESCAPE.

Kerac: This puzzle didn’t turn out as good as I intended. I play a lot of mahjong so I thought the tutorial would’ve been enough, but a lot of people tripped up on mahjong’s mechanics instead of figuring out the puzzle. I guess it sounded better in my head… Also, sorry for the confusion for using bamboo tiles for the winning tiles instead of circles, this is for authenticity since a mahjong set has only 4 copies of each tile.

Story hint: 5 waiting hands + 5 winning tiles = 5 winning hands?

Story solution: There are 5 waiting hands, and 5 tiles, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7. The hands are waiting for 4,7 ; 5,6,9 ; 2,3,6 ; 5,6,7,8,9 ; 3,4 respectively. The goal is to assign a winning tile to each hand. There is only one possible way to do this. The solution is 4 6 2 7 3, which will be used later.

Banner hint: The last one is “crustacean”.

Banner solution: The numbers should be replaced with card names, 10, jack, queen king and ace, forming pinemarten, jackal, queenbee, kingfisher and crustacean.

Code: JACKAL.

Kerac: This puzzle was one of the first ones I came up with. I really liked this one actually, though I acknowledge that it is WAY too difficult and specific for most players, which is why I included an easier version/a skip button. I left it in anyway because I wanted at least one challenge puzzle. You can thank Decro for the rest of the puzzles not being this hard <3

Story hint: Inputing a wrong answer will give you an option to unlock an easier version/let you skip the puzzle.

Story hint 2: Players who bet more had good hands. Players who bet less had weak hands.

Story solution: Watson - 7, Ruth - 3, Chester - Q, Lara - 8, Jin - A, Finn - K.

Finn and Chester both went all in, so they must’ve had pretty strong cards (Ace, King or Queen). Chester attacked Finn the EXACT moment he knew he lost. However, only 3 out of 5 community cards have been drawn. Which means, regardless of the remaining two cards, Chester must have ZERO chance of winning. This means, Finn must have had a King, because if he didn’t, Chester could still have won.

Chester must have either Ace or Queen. Chester could not have an Ace, because he could still have won, so he had a Queen.

There’s only one spade card left, the 7 which belongs to Watson since Lara mentioned he was aiming for a flush. That leaves Ace, 8 and 3. The Ace belongs to Jin, since Lara and Ruth both folded without betting, signaling that they had weak hands. Lara had the 8, since Ruth wouldn’t have folded with a pair of 8s. That leaves Ruth with a 3.

For the easy version, the King is coated with wine while the Queen is crumpled. The player should reason that the King belongs to Finn’s side of the table which is splashed with wine, and Chester probably crumpled the Queen card in anger from losing.

Banner hint: Why are there Os and 0s? And what’s that in the upper left?

Banner solution: The top left shows XIII instead of 13, hinting that this is about roman numerals. 5 is V and 500 is D. The trick is only to convert numbers with 0 and leave O intact.

Code: VOODOO.

Story hint: You need something from chapter 11.

Story solution: The solution to chapter 11 is 46273. The 4 tiles in the bottom left of the mahjong puzzle spell S-FE, hinting that it’s the safe code. The safe requires 3 numbers from 0-59, and there’s only one way to divide it into 3 numbers from 0-59. The safe code is 46, 27, 3.

Banner hint: Cut and paste.

Banner solution: The banner is divided into sections, with half shapes printed at the top and bottom. Cut the banner along the lines, and paste the banners vertically such that all half shapes are joined. The last shape with the star (ME) has to be rotated 180 degrees. This results in 6 rows of 2 letters each. There are small arrows on the N and E. Reading the letters in the column will give the answer.

Code: NUANCE.

Story hint: The writing is correct in the mirror, but the combination is correct on the table. How would you fix that?

Story solution: The combination will be reflected in the mirror, so the year must be a number that reads the same way reflected and normally. Since the year is 1918, the answer that makes the most sense is 1881.

Kerac: Some said that I accidentally wrote Finn to be 47 instead of 37 but it completely missed me that a player might try to connect it to Finn’s birthday, and I had no idea that I wrote him to be 47 twelve chapters ago. The puzzle was simply based on the reflection alone. Also, I technically didn’t make a mistake since (spoilers) it’s not Finn’s locker >:(

Story 2 hint: Lemon juice is commonly used for invisible ink.

Story 2 solution: There is faint writing on the paper. To get it to show up, simply load it up in any image editing software and use the paint bucket tool.

Banner hint: Where have you seen these 6 species together?

Banner solution: The 6 species refer to the characters of the story, Chester, Watson, Finn, Lara, Ruth and Jin respectively. For each red letter, take the corresponding letter in the character name at the same position.

Code: SAFARI.

Story hint: You need something from chapter 8.

Story hint 2: What do these letters have in common: p and d, q and b, n and u?

Story hint 3: The two Ds are upside down. The key is something on the dining table.

Story solution: The trick is that some scraps of paper are upside down. Unscramble it to give the answer: soup spoon.

The code was provided unhidden.

Code: FINALE

Solutions:

How did Finn die? He was… - Poisoned. Should be obvious.

Who could’ve obtained the poison? - Finn. The poison vials were found in his safe in chapter 11.

Where was the poison originally from? - The Study. The safe is in the study.

When was the poison stolen? - After the fight between Finn and Chester. Based on the process of elimination, click each option for further explanation. There’s no penalty for getting this question wrong.

How did the murderer sneak in? - From the Lounge. Finn was in the bedroom at the time, he would’ve caught anyone trying to sneak in from there.

Where did the murderer go next? - The Cellar. To poison the murder weapon.

What did the killer poison? - Wine glass. Similar looking glasses were found with initials written on the bottom in the cellar, and the killer wanted to target Finn and only Finn.

Who is the killer? - Watson. The evidence is revealed in the story. There’s no penalty for accusing a wrong suspect, except for Lara.

Who is the killer’s accomplice? - Ruth. She’s his girlfriend. Also, we know she was lying about tripping over the cabinet since the contents inside were too heavy. There’s no penalty for getting this question wrong.

“Meanwhile, they went to the bedroom…” - To cause a distraction. She wanted to lure people away from the cellar where Watson was.

“What evidence reveals the killer’s motive for murdering Finn?” - The note in the secret compartment. The rest of the options here don’t make sense.

“Which means you killed Finn for this very reason:” - To silence him. Finn sent the note to Watson, which meant that he knew something Watson didn’t want public.

Bonus post-game puzzle: LIFC - NOT ALL SINFUL = ?

Bonus post-game puzzle solution: Spell LIFC out fully, then remove all the letters in NOT ALL SINFUL, then scramble the result, which gives CREDIT.