The Heist of the Century: Mid-Level Detective Case

Twenty-four pages. The cover, a how-to page, the briefing, the inventory of the seventeen exhibits, working sheets, a conclusions report to fill in before opening the solution, then the exhibits themselves, photographed one per page: documents you spread on the table and cross-check. Everything is available from the start; there is nothing to seal. The hints and the solution are not in the file. They live on the case file portal, behind the personal code you receive at purchase: four levels of hints, an intermediate question and the final question that opens the solution. The product page is The Heist of the Century, with five real pages shown as excerpts.

Because each of its five puzzles falls in a few minutes once you have found the right exhibit, and because the timeline of the theft fits in a single night. The six other case files are rated 5 out of 5, or 4 for The Enigma Code: more exhibits, more times to reconcile, ciphers to break or a pure deduction with no puzzle at all. Here, a group that has never played reaches the solution in 1.5 to 2 hours without opening a hint, provided it reads everything. It is not a children's game: the documents are convincing fakes, with times, names and amounts to compare. It is recommended from age 14, like the rest of the catalogue.

Nobody plays a character and nobody runs the game. You print the file, read the briefing together, spread the seventeen exhibits and everyone picks up a few. The working sheets are there to note times, people and what each document proves. When the group thinks it has the answer, it fills in the conclusions report, then answers the questions on the portal. At one player it is a tight two-hour read. At seven it is a table where exhibits change hands and theories collide. The format is compared with the kits on the detective case files page.

You open a hint, one at a time. The first level reminds you where to look, the second says which exhibits to put side by side, the third reasons for you up to an intermediate conclusion, the fourth unblocks everything. Each level is a voluntary choice on the portal, and nothing forces you past the first. Then two questions: an intermediate one, to check you are holding the right thread, and the final one, whose correct answer opens the full solution. A safety exit exists after three wrong answers: a group that paid is never kept from its solution.

A group discovering printable cases, a couple, a family of three or four, a short weeknight. At $39 for one to seven investigators it is also the cheapest way to find out whether the format suits you before tackling Vanished in Paris or The Phantom Affair, which take three to four hours. If you are six to twelve and one person agrees to host, the right product is a murder mystery kit, with roles and secrets, not a case file.