I’ve recently been obsessed with a free, online, daily game called Murdle.
It’s a daily mystery puzzle, and anyone who knows me knows I love mystery.
As a kid, my favorite cartoon was Scooby Doo. I’ve dressed up for Halloween as both Velma and Daphne multiple times. I saw both the live action movies in theaters three times each. I played (and still regularly play) the Nancy Drew mystery computer games. Half of my at-home library is full of mysteries and thrillers.
So, if you couldn’t tell, I like a good mystery, and a good puzzle.
My cousin doesn’t like to go to escape rooms with me anymore because she always wants to ask for a hint and I won’t let her. I take my mysteries seriously.
The way Murdle works is it gives you a list of suspects, weapons, locations and sometimes motives. The puzzles vary in difficulty, and there’s a new one every day for you to solve.
Sometimes I solve them, sometimes I don’t, but I always have fun with it.
I think the thing that always intrigued me about mysteries was the puzzle of it. Trying to find all the pieces and figuring out how they fit together. One of me and my husband’s favorite shows at the moment is called Only Murders in the Building, a murder mystery show starring Selena Gomez, Martin Short, and Steve Martin. And after we watch each episode every week, we talk about the new information and how it fits into the puzzle. What new motives have been revealed, who had the means and opportunity, and why it is or isn’t a certain character.
All of this is something I immensely enjoy talking about. Fun fact, I have been to two murder mystery dinner theaters and won at both of them. Not only did I solve the crime, I did so with the best explanation, which is apparently how you win.
I’ve always loved puzzles in general, but mysteries provide a different kind of puzzle, one with a lot of moving parts. They even make games of mysteries now, things like Hunt a Killer, which is a subscription service but they also make one-off mystery games that include clues, statements, audio files, evidence and so much more in a box that gives you a mystery to solve.
My husband got me one last year for my birthday, and I spent an hour or so sitting on the living room floor with all of the things from the box spread out around me, solving the mystery. Which I did solve.
Sometimes I wonder why I love mysteries so much, as I’ve met many people who don’t like them at all and find them too difficult or confusing, but maybe that’s just a puzzle piece of myself. It’s something I’ve enjoyed since I was a little kid, and I enjoy those same things today.
And I’ll enjoy it again tomorrow, when there’s a new Murdle to solve.