There have been four crimes, each committed at a different time by a different student in a different room in Hogwarts. Your objective is to make it through each of the four rooms, gathering clues and passwords to ultimately determine the facts of each crime. Your goal is to not only answer the puzzle accurately, but also faster than each of the other Houses. Points will be awarded for speed and accuracy of your House’s answers – which means that the House that finishes the puzzle first but also gets everything wrong likely will not score as well as a team that gets everything right but does not finish as quickly.
With the other members of your House, you will work together to solve a grid-based logic puzzle (similar to how you might play Clue, except here there are four different crimes, committed by four different people in four different places at four different times). There are clues in each room that provide hints as to what did or did not happen in that room (or, potentially, other rooms). You will be provided with an empty grid where you can record your answers as you find clues.
The logic grid is made up of four categories, within which there are four items, and six matching areas (outlined with a bold line). Those four categories are person, time, place, and crime. Every item is only ever matched with one item in every other category – this means that no two crimes were committed by the same person, or in the same room, or at the same time.
Each option is used once and only once. You will need to figure out which options are linked together based on a series of given clues. Each puzzle has only one unique solution, and each can be solved using simple logical processes (i.e. educated guesses are not required).
The grid allows you to cross-reference every possible option in every category. You can eliminate pairs you know aren’t true with a ‘No’, and pencil in pairs you know are related with a ‘Yes’. If you know, for example, that the murder was not in the library, you can add a No in the box where the Murder column and Library row meet. Similarly, if you know that Blaise did commit his crime at 10am, you can add a Yes in the appropriate box. Furthermore, since every option can only be used once in any given puzzle, you can eliminate the three other times in Blaise’s row and the three other suspects in the 10am column.
Continue doing this for every clue you find. Eventually you will have filled in enough Yes’s and No’s on the board that you will then be able to use simple logic to deduce the solution to the puzzle. For example, if you know that Euan committed the murder and you know that the murder was in the library, then Euan must match with the library. Similarly, if Susan committed the theft and the theft was not at 10am, then Susan must not match with 10am.
The key to this is to not overthink things. Clues will – for the most part – be fairly straightforward, whether stated plainly in writing or shown to you in each room. For each room, you will receive a series of facts that will help you to interpret what you see within that room. Moving on to the next room will require you to solve some form of puzzle within each room, however you may return to any previously visited room at any point during the puzzle (just remember the passwords to access each one!).
When it is time for your house to begin, your team will be given a starting password, at which time your timer will begin. Click on your house icon below and enter the password to begin the challenge:
Virtual Quidditch League 