What is Daily Sleuth?
Daily Sleuth is a narrative detective game set in Caldmere, Maine, a fictional town with 25 locations and 65 inhabitants. Each day presents a numbered case at one location with three suspects. You read their files and make a single accusation naming the perpetrator, the crime scene, and the motive.
How to play Daily Sleuth
- Read the morning file. It contains all the evidence you need.
- Review the three suspect files for their biographies, roles, relationships, and involvement in earlier cases.
- If you get stuck, request a hint. You can use up to four without spending an accusation, but each hint lowers your rank.
- Submit one accusation naming who did it, where it happened, and why. You have five attempts.
- Share your result in the poster, file, or ticket format without spoiling the case for others.
Scoring system
The formula is displayed openly: score = (hints used × 2) + accusations spent. Lower is better. A score of 1 or below earns five stars and the Super Sleuth rank. Above 8 you remain Beat Cop with one star. Failed accusations increase your score by one and unlock an additional hint automatically, pushing the penalty both ways. You can solve the case and still solve it poorly.
Weekly difficulty scale
Cases follow a progression from Monday to Saturday. Monday opens with OPEN & SHUT difficulty. Tuesday steps up to ROUTINE. Wednesday becomes COMPLEX. Thursday reaches CLASSIFIED, where the narrative actively misleads. Saturday arrives at COLD CASE, the hardest of the week. Use early days to test your approach rather than experimenting on Saturday.
Leaderboards and progression
Daily, weekly, and monthly leaderboards rank players by stars first, then hints used, then accusations spent. You need a free account and display name to appear on leaderboards. Anonymous scores do not register. If you played without an account, create one in the same browser to preserve your solved cases upon registration.
The town of Caldmere
Caldmere exists beyond individual cases. The site includes a dedicated navigation entry for the town itself, listing all 25 locations, all 65 characters, and a counter of resolved cases. Suspects are recurring characters whose histories you can trace across multiple cases, turning the game into an ongoing crime series rather than isolated puzzles.
Strategy notes
Hints count double while accusations count single. A cautious guess costs half as much as a comfort hint. When torn between the two, the hint is almost always the wrong choice.
Each case presents only three suspects, although Caldmere has 65 inhabitants. The case narrows the field to those three. Rereading the morning file and suspect files gives you everything you need.
The narrative is the entirety of the evidence, as the site states plainly. Everything needed to solve the case appears in the opening text and suspect files.