Murder Mystery PDF: US Letter or A4?

A4 is the standard sheet in the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and most of the world. US Letter is the standard in the United States and Canada, and in a few other countries. The kits are laid out on A4, and the same file is sent to every buyer, wherever they print it. What that means for an American host is a single setting in the print dialog, not a different file. The two sizes are close. A4 measures 210 by 297 millimeters, which is 8.27 by 11.69 inches. Letter measures 8.5 by 11 inches, which is 216 by 279 millimeters. Letter is therefore about a quarter of an inch wider and about three quarters of an inch shorter. The width difference is harmless: an A4 page has room to spare on a Letter sheet. The height difference is the whole story, because 11.69 inches of layout do not fit on 11 inches of paper unless the page is scaled down. Scaling an A4 page to Letter height means multiplying by 11 over 11.69, which is 0.94. That is the six percent. Character sheets, clues, ballots and the host guide all shrink by the same factor, and the type stays comfortably readable.

Open the PDF in any reader or browser and choose print. Somewhere in the dialog there is a scaling option. Its name varies with the software: fit to page, scale to fit, fit to printable area, or shrink oversized pages. They all do the same thing, which is to reduce the page until it fits inside the printable area of the sheet in the tray. Tick it, leave the paper size on Letter, and print. If the dialog shows a percentage instead of a checkbox, type 94. If it shows a preview, look at the bottom of the page: with the setting on, the last line of text sits inside the margin; with it off, the preview shows the foot of the page running off the sheet. Print one character sheet as a test before the full job. It costs one sheet of paper and settles the question. The setting applies to the whole document, so you set it once, not per page. It also applies at a print shop, where you say it in one sentence: this is an A4 file, please fit it to the printable area on Letter. The guide to printing a murder mystery kit at a print shop covers the rest of that conversation.

At actual size, the printer places a 297 millimeter page on a 279 millimeter sheet. The 18 millimeters that do not fit have to go somewhere. Depending on the software, the page is either centered, in which case about 9 millimeters are lost at the top and at the bottom, or anchored at the top, in which case the full 18 millimeters are lost at the bottom. That is why the bottom margin may be clipped. Whether that matters depends on the page. A character sheet with a generous bottom margin may lose nothing but white space. A clue with a line of text near the foot of the page may lose that line, and a lost line in a clue is a lost piece of evidence. Since you cannot tell in advance which pages run close to the edge, the safe rule is simple: never print the kit at 100 percent on Letter. The reverse mistake is harmless. If you are in the UK or in Australia and the software offers fit to page on A4, ticking it changes nothing, because the page already matches the paper.

United States and Canada: the paper is Letter, so tick fit to page. That is the whole instruction, and it is the same on a home printer and at a shop. The guide to a printable murder mystery party in Canada covers what else changes for Canadian hosts. United Kingdom, Ireland, the rest of Europe, Australia, New Zealand and most of the world: the paper is A4, so print as is, at 100 percent, with scaling off. If your software insists on scaling, make sure the paper size in the dialog says A4 and not Letter, which some printers default to after a software update. The guide to a printable murder mystery party in the UK has the details for British hosts. Mexico, the Philippines and a few other countries use Letter as well, and the Letter instruction applies there. If you are not sure which paper you have, measure a sheet: 11 inches tall is Letter, 11.69 inches is A4. The kit itself does not change, whichever paper you use. The seven kits on the murder mystery kits page are one file each, laid out on A4, and printable on both.

Character sheets go into one envelope per character, and the envelope size follows the paper. For A4 sheets, a C5 envelope, 162 by 229 millimeters, takes the sheet folded once; a C4 envelope, 229 by 324 millimeters, takes it flat. For Letter sheets, a 6 by 9 inch envelope takes the sheet folded once, and a 9 by 12 inch envelope takes it flat. Any stationery shop stocks these. Flat is better for the clues, which get passed around and read at arm's length; folded is fine for the character sheets, which each guest reads alone. Twelve players need twelve character envelopes plus three for the rounds plus one sealed envelope for the solution, so buy a box of twenty rather than counting to the unit. Write the character name on the front, not the guest's name, so that a late change of cast means crossing out one word. One mixed case: an A4 file printed with fit to page on Letter paper gives you a Letter sheet, so buy Letter envelopes. The paper in the tray decides, not the layout of the file.

Scaling changes the size of the page, nothing else. Every character sheet, every clue, every ballot and the whole host guide come out complete on Letter with fit to page, with the same page breaks as on A4. Color is unaffected: the file prints in color or in black and white on any printer at either size. The PDF is not editable, so there is no Letter version to generate and nothing to convert; you print the file you received. The file also arrives the same way wherever you are: pay by card through Stripe, and the PDF is generated and emailed within seconds. Nothing is shipped, so a host in Toronto and a host in Manchester get the same email at the same speed. The only difference between them is the checkbox. If the print dialog on your machine offers neither a fit option nor a percentage, print one page and look at the bottom margin. If the last line is there, print the rest. If it is missing, use another computer, a phone, or a shop, and set the scaling there. Everything else about the format is on the printable murder mystery kit page.