Designer: Sid Sackson

Artist: Shannon Crutchfield, Paul Herbert, Jake Thomashow

Publisher: Eagle-Gryphon Games

It is easy to forget that Sleuth came out many many years after the initial release of Clue, the granddaddy of all deduction games. However, Sleuth itself is not a fresh-faced kid in the board game hobby. It was published by Sid Sackson more than 50 years ago in 1971, at least according to the Board Game Geek database. Since the release of Sleuth, many more deduction games have hit the marketplace, and most are a variation or evolution from the basic deduction mechanism found in Clue. Of course, as you would expect, most of the releases after Clue are more complex, introducing new materials, more suspects, elaborate spatial layouts, new ways of parceling out information between players, etc. All of these new developments makes Sleuth stand out because Sid Sackson went the opposite direction and decided to slim down game play and boil the deduction mechanism to the very basics…… and it works.

Sleuth is a pure deduction game where each player has information at hand that is not reorganized or diluted throughout play.

The core mechanism of the deduction genre is that some item is stashed away and players must guess what that item is. Usually, that “thing” is a card or a few cards with different variables linked to the theme of the game. In Clue, players must guess the murderer, murder weapon and location. In Mystery of the Abbey, players must deduce the monk that committed the murder. In the process of doing that, players need to undercover the monk attributes that make up his physical appearance. In Sleuth, gems are stolen and a single gem card is stashed away such that when players think they have figured out the answer, they can make a claim as to the identity of the stolen gem card. If the guess is correct, the game is over and there is a winner. If the deduction is wrong, play continues, with the guesser being eliminated from the game.

There are three variable to describe each gem card: types of gems (opal, diamond, pearl), color (red, blue, yellow and green) and also number (solitary, pair, cluster). In total, there is one card for each combination of variables, bringing the total to 36 gem cards in play. After one gem card is “stolen”, the remaining cards are then evenly distributed among all players, with any excess gem cards being laid out face up for all to see. Obviously, that face up card along with the initial starting hand of gems are not stolen and can be eliminated by placing a notation on individual player sheets. From there, players then ask questions to different players to obtain information. This is done with a series of questions cards placed face up in front of players. Each players starts with four cards and is replenished after choosing a question.

Question cards allow players to extract information and provides a random element to each session.

The question cards are quite brilliant and in a way, and represents the randomness inherent in Sleuth. There are three types of questions cards, one which allows a single element to be asked (e.g. How many opals do you have? How many green gems do you have?). The question can be directed to any player and the answer given is made public (e.g. I have two pearls) This type of question is possibly the least useful, especially during early stages of the game as this variable will not help you eliminate many choices. The second type of question card are the two element cards and these are potent. As you can imagine, the active player gets to use the card at any player to get an answer for two of the three variables (e.g. how many solitary diamonds do you have? How many blue clusters do you have?). As before, answers are said out loud and in addition, the player who answered must also show the cards to the questioner. Importantly, the cards do not change hands. Finally, the last category of questions are considered free choice. Usually, one variable is printed on the free choice card and the active player is allowed to choose a second variable, or not (making it a one element card instead). However, unlike the two element card, the player who answers do not have to show the cards. Play goes around and around the table until the final guesses are made to deduce the identity of the stolen gem.

Pure, streamlined and brilliant. Sleuth is basically what I have been looking for in a deduction game. It has “killed” basically all the other deduction games I have played thus far and I see no reason to try any other deduction game unless there is significant innovation in the mechanism. Sleuth is a pure deduction game where others are not. In many other deduction games, players get to eliminate characters or variables from their sheets as information is passed from one player to the next. Sleuth has that too, but my biggest beef with other deduction games is that information cards are drawn, passed along or eliminated from the pool which makes deduction virtually impossible. Games such as Mystery of the Abbey or Awkward Guests feature this type of information flow. Because a player’s hand of clues keeps on fluctuating, a previously asked question will become dated or incorrect once information is reorganized between players. This makes any notation other than outright elimination useless and even if there is some deduction, often times, it is not precise because that information may no longer be accurate, either because someone is withholding the information, or the card has been discarded. In a way, one is at the mercy of the card draw and what is available at a given point. If fortunate, a player can eliminate all suspects and narrow it down to a single possibility. Otherwise, it is more common to take a stab at several choices and making the best, educated guess. That is not exactly satisfying for me. I want to make the proper notations and deduce the answer based on my sheet.

Pure deduction games usually have a fixed set of information that is dealt out to players at the start of the game and is unaltered throughout the game. Both Sleuth and Clue feature a static hand and with the right questions, one can pinpoint the identity of every single card and assign it to each player. To accelerate the game, Sleuth allows players to actually see the cards when asking a two element question. This quickly narrows down the possibilities and is actually not necessary for the game. Indeed, one of the more difficult variants in the game recommends that players simply say and do not show the number of cards that fit the two-element criteria. One must then logically figure out through a process of deduction, which card is missing . Brain melting exercise for sure. In this sense, Clue has a stronger resemblance to Sleuth, except that Sleuth wisely removed the game board and the annoying requirement of rolling a die to move between locations to ask questions.

Final thoughts

These types of deduction games are tough and not for everyone. Even for me, I need to be in the mood to play it and it must be with the right group. The challenge here is to establish a notation methodology that records all the information without being too burdensome. The information can get confusing if conventions for note-taking are not clearly established at the onset. That usually happens for new players and it gets better over a few plays. Part of the game is of course establishing individual ways to annotate the information. I suspect once that is set, repeated plays will be easier. Some reviewers have said that the game is all about note taking and figuring out a system that works. After that, the game is done because you just take notes. I agree that part of the “fun” in the game is to establish a system of recording the information that works for each one, however another large part of Sleuth is managing the question cards. For one thing, deciding who each question is directed to is important. The same questions that can reveal important information for one player can be completely useless for another. Figuring out when to piggyback questions on someone else’s question is also important to narrow down possibilities. The line of questioning is a huge part of the game and it will be different between each sessions. While some question cards may be more helpful than others, all answers given are useful to a certain degree, either by eliminating options or to verify previously marked information.

There is no doubt Sleuth is a game of skill and winning the game requires more than just note-taking. I would love to see a group of high level players in Sleuth duke it out for victory. I suspect in a close game with a bunch of good players, the most pertinent and efficient questioning will win out and because there is a race element to the game, it is possible that some of the meta information will become important to decide when to take an educated guess. Of course one can simply play enough cards to gather all the information, but in a competitive game, speed is essential. I really enjoy Sleuth, and am happy to make this the only deduction game in my collection. I am intrigued by Code 777 as well, another old school deduction game. The only down side I can think of is that the game has a more selective and mature audience. Despite its simplicity, this is not really a family game you can pull out with granny, though I guess it depends who your granny is.

Initial impression: Great