How to play Alibi
Alibi is a daily logic puzzle about who is lying. Five suspects, one of whom took the last slice of cake, each make a single statement: about who did it, or about whether someone else is telling the truth. A suspect either tells the truth completely or lies completely, and the case file tells you exactly how many are lying. Mark every suspect Truth or Lie; get all five right and the culprit follows. It is five sentences and five choices, with nothing to see that you cannot also hear. The Daily gives everyone the same case; Practice deals a fresh one whenever you like.
How to play
- Five suspects. One of them took the last slice of cake, and each one makes a single statement.
- A suspect is either telling the truth, and everything they say is true, or lying, in which case everything they say is false.
- The case file tells you exactly how many of the five are lying. That number is the way in: nothing else pins the answer on its own.
- Mark every suspect Truth or Lie, then press Name the liars.
- A wrong answer tells you how many of your five marks were right, never which ones. You get three attempts.
- However the case ends, you are shown the working line by line: what each suspect claimed, and why it turned out true or false.
Tips & strategy
- Pair up the suspects who talk about each other. If one says another is lying, exactly one of the two is a liar; if one says another is telling the truth, they stand or fall together.
- Statements about the cake cross-check each other. Two suspects who name different culprits cannot both be telling the truth, because only one person took it.
- A liar who says "I didn’t take it" took it. Since there is only one culprit, at most one of the suspects who deny it can be lying.
- Try an assumption and count. Suppose one suspect is honest, follow what that forces, and check the number of liars against the case file: a count that does not match rules the assumption out.
- Treat a wrong answer as a clue. If your marks already match the liar count, a wrong answer is always out by an even number: 3 of 5 right means one Truth and one Lie need swapping.
Accessibility
Alibi was designed to be played without seeing it: the whole puzzle is five sentences and five choices. Each suspect is a labelled group that names the speaker with their statement, and the Truth and Lie buttons say whom they mark. How many you have marked as lying is written out as you go, a wrong answer is announced as a count, and the working at the end is a numbered list you can read one line at a time. Nothing depends on colour.