How to Solve Black Stories
Black Stories, Dark Puzzles, Lateral Puzzles, or Situation Puzzles are common names for this game of investigation. A setting, usually a murder scene, is presented to the player and she must discover the sequence of events that led to that using only yes or no questions to the person who knows the full story. I’ve played lots of Black Stories with my friends, and Iknow how they can get really, really complicated. As of this point I can solve any of them easily as long as I don’t need to research something specific (for example, I struggled with one because of a detail about Australia’s car license plate patterns. I’m not australian :-/). I decided to disclose 10 of my methods in hopes this guide helps someone who is struggling with their detective work.
#1 In death cases, pin down the cause first
Was it by external or internal wounds? Shock? Falling? Severe trauma? Burns? Asphyxia? The observable details are the most concrete thing that you can build an answer from and they can ultimately reveal the methods used and the sequence of events.
#2 Discover the answer to all six essential journalistic questions
The 6 w’s, “where, when, who, why, how and what” of every scene might be important. If you get stuck in a rut, there is probably a detail about one or more of them that you didn’t check.
#3 Get details, but not too much
Details might be either counterproductive or revealing, it’s very important to know the difference between when you are following a red herring of details and when you are on the right track. Ask about the characters’ job, superstitions, disabilities, relationships (to each other, to objects and to places), what they were doing, wearing, their physical condition. Ask about the characteristic of the objects and places. Something might matter. Or not, even if you think it does. This is actually a good tip in itself: #3.5 Let it go
#4 Don’t combine two questions in one
It’s a “yes or no” game, get your predicate logic straight. Some complicated questions have and depend on simpler questions embedded in them. An example of this is “is the guy who shot Angela a married man?”. In this question, there might actually be two questions, if “Is the person a man?” wasn’t asked before, the person might be a married woman and the statement “Is he a married man?” will be false. Even if the married part is true the narrator could say it is false to avoid confirming the false assumption.
#5 Ask if there are any animals involved in the story
Seriously. Just ask it.
#6 There might be a timeline of events
Handle timelines accordingly. If events 6 moths ago matter, or there are huge differences between the scene before and after some point, don’t ask questions that dwells in the past continuous or the present perfect as “Was it raining?” or “Was Julia with the jewels?” She might have been with the jewels before and is not anymore, the water might have been frozen 6 moths ago and is summer today, that’s why Jimmy can’t get to the other side of the pond now. In the presence of a timeline, always put time qualifiers in your questions.
#7 Intention, feelings and motives for LAST.
Forget what you watched in shitty crime shows, an officer, no matter how talented, never looks at a body and says with certainty “That was clearly a revenge by his lover”. This is just not the right way to discover things. Don’t rush this part, but if everything else is irrelevant, and you got a strange case, checking the emotions and intentions of each character might reveal important details. The nurse might have pulled the patient’s plug by accident, not because she was a villain. And the victim might have wanted to be shot.
#8 Don’t rule out simulations, fantasy scenarios or dream sequences
A person was killed, and their friends laughed. Turns out he did not die for real, they were just playing in an arcade. This is a major trick in the sleeve that might show up to confuse everyone.
#9 Backtrack
“Is all of this correct?” is a valid yes or no question. Telling everything you already know to your partner to check if you got everything right is a good way to “debug” your current answer. If you get a “No” you might have to review a detail, more often than not it’s something you assumed from the beginning and didn’t bother to ask, for example, if the scenario is happening in the present time or in dry land. Go back to #2 for that. This is often done when you are close to the end. Congratulations!
#10 Ask away
Yes, some people refrain from asking before thinking a lot about what they want to ask. Ask a lot, if you don’t know what to ask, use this guide, that’s what I wrote it for. Now go do some sleuthing :)
