Who doesn’t love a good mystery? Whether it’s unmasking a nefarious killer, determining just what colour and strength a firework is, or even where on the continent of North America did my car keys go? Deduction games are all about using the limited information at your disposal to correctly solve these board game bogglers.

A particularly well-known sleuthing game is Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, in which you, as Sherlock himself, are tasked with solving a mystery by following threads of evidence throughout the streets of nineteenth-century London. In order to crack the case, you’ll need to interview suspects, scour the newspapers for clues, and put together all of the missing pieces. These scenario-based games are excellent for solo play as well as for couples, and what’s more, there are four of them! The first one is Thames Murders & Other Cases, followed by Jack the Ripper & West End Adventures, Vanishing from Hyde Park, and Carlton House & Queen’s Park. For fans of classic detective work, playing this game should be elementary.

Speaking of running around nineteenth-century London, Letters from Whitechapel is another deduction game, this time regarding the slippery and elusive Jack the Ripper in his attempts to evade the police after committing his heinous crimes. One player gets to play as Jack, whose movements and location are known only to them, and each night they commit a murder. The other players, playing as police, must search locations on the board for traces left by Jack and possibly even try to arrest him if they can guess his location correctly. If Jack gets back to his safe house before the end of the night… well, there’s always next time.

For fans of the Loch Ness Monster and the Yeti, Cryptid is a game in which you might actually be able to discover an undiscovered creature, or a cryptid if you will. Each player is a researcher and knows a very specific detail regarding the cryptid, but of course, they don’t want to share their information with each other! Instead, on their turn, a player may ask another if the monster could be on a certain hex, in accordance with that player’s information. Slowly, over time, the available habitable areas are whittled down, and the player who manages to find the single hex that aligns with all of the players’ information, wins the game. 

Usually deduction games challenge you to use the information you possess in order to make the correct decisions; however, the popular fireworks building game Hanabi turns this idea on its head. In Hanabi, players play with their card’s backs facing them, allowing for every player to see everyone’s cards except for their own. Through the use of clever hints and leaps of faith, players must try to build five coloured fireworks from the ground up and score as many points as possible. There isn’t really a win or loss condition, just a range of points telling everyone how well they did. 

If these chin scratchers don’t quite provide you with the eureka moment you’ve been looking for, then perhaps you’d be more interested in games with traitor mechanics such as Dead of Winter or Shadows over Camelot; or games with espionage such as Spyfall or The Resistance. Good luck in deducing your next board game night and have a happy Halloween!