Is this free murder mystery game really complete?

Yes. The Wet Half-Hour is a full four-player game: four suspect cards, eleven printed case documents, a guest sheet, a host sheet, accusation slips and a separate sealed answer file with the reveal and the fair-play audit.

Do I have to give an email address to download it?

No. The PDFs are direct links on the page. There is no sign-up, no email capture and no account.

Can the person who prints it still play?

Yes. The answer lives in a separate file behind a full-page STOP card, and nothing in the game file states who did it — the solution has to be assembled from the documents.

How long does it take?

About 45 minutes of play plus roughly ten minutes to print and cut. It runs as three timed rounds of 12, 15 and 10 minutes, then a secret ballot.

Can we play it with three or five people?

Yes. At three, leave out Dr Quill's card and read it aloud as a written statement; everything on it also appears on a document. At five, the extra person keeps time and reads out the ending.

A free four-player murder mystery you can print tonight

The Wet Half-Hour. Four suspects, eleven printed case documents, forty-five minutes at a kitchen table. Nobody acts, nobody lies, and nobody knows who did it — including whoever did it.

A complete game, free, no email address, no sign-up · PDF, US Letter and A4

The Juniper Inn, Wren's Hollow, a wet Tuesday afternoon in November. A debt collector called Edmund Rook goes down to the cellar at five past four to count the stock that secures the note on the inn. At eight minutes to five the coal merchant tips a sack down the chute, comes round to the hatch steps and finds him at the bottom of them with the door-weight beside him and his wallet open.

Four people were in the building or the yard. All four of them are sitting at your table.

Download the game — 21 pages, and the answer is not in it.

The game · US Letter (PDF) The game · A4 (PDF)

Download the sealed answer — a separate file, behind a full-page STOP card. Print it without opening it and put it in an envelope, and whoever printed the game can still play.

The answer · US Letter The answer · A4

What is in it

Four suspect cards, two to a page with a cut line. Every word on all four is true.
Eleven case documents: the constable's scene report, the village weather book, the dead man's own list of the papers in his wallet, an inn day book, a press copy of a letter, a telephone exchange ticket, a hotel manager's reply, two household books, a carrier's delivery ticket, the constable's measurements, and his sheet on the yard and the hall stand.
A one-page guest sheet and a one-page host sheet that contains no spoilers at all, so the person who prints it is not excluded from playing.
Accusation slips, four to a page, and a shared sheet the table fills in together.
A separate answer file with the reveal and a page showing exactly how it was proved, chain by chain.

The rules it is built on

These are the same five rules our paid games are built on, and this is the smallest honest demonstration of them we could make:

Nothing is memorised. A card is a reference sheet you read off when somebody asks you something.
Nothing is read aloud in character. No accents, no costumes, no acting, anywhere.
Nobody lies. Every card is literally true. The misdirection comes from omission, refusal and missing context, and "I don't remember" is printed on all four cards as a legal answer.
Nobody knows they are the culprit, including the culprit. So nobody can give it away and nobody can be blamed for giving it away.
The paper carries the whole solution. A player who talks to nobody can still solve it by reading. The four of you are the fast route, not the only one — which is why the game does not break if somebody has to leave at half past nine.

How to run it

Print, cut two pages, deal the cards face down. Then three rounds on a timer: the scene (12 minutes), the papers (15), the measurements (10). Everybody writes a secret accusation and names the one fact on paper they would hang it on. Then you open the answer.

It works at four. At three, leave out the doctor's card and read it aloud as a written statement — everything on it is also on a document. At five, the extra person keeps the time and reads out the ending, which is the best job at the table.

Why we are giving away a whole game

Because it is the only honest advertisement for the paid ones. You can read a listing that says "fair play" and "the host can play too" and have no way of knowing whether either is true. Print this, play it, and you will know exactly what we mean by both — including whether our idea of fair matches yours.

There is no email capture here and nothing to sign up for. The PDF is a link on this page.

If you want a longer one afterwards

The Hour Candle, $29 — a Christmas murder mystery for 6 to 12 guests, 90 to 120 minutes, 22 case documents instead of 11, seven suspects and five witnesses, built to the same five rules.
The Golden Tin, $39 — the same machinery for a room of 16 to 40 at an office holiday party, with an evidence wall instead of a table.
Until Breakfast, $24.99 — a 24-day murder mystery advent calendar, one envelope a day from the 1st of December.

The small print

The PDFs are free for personal use: print them as many times as you like, for your own table, your classroom, your office or your book club. Please do not resell them or put them behind a paywall. If something is wrong with a file, the fault is ours and we would like to know.