WHOdunnit? (Cluedo)

Member Name: Belfastgirl

Product:	Cluedo
Date:	31/03/01 (163 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good for those amateur detectives

Disadvantages: Some people get confused at the rules

Picture the scene :-

It’s a cold windy winter’s night, everybody is doing their own thing, but one person has something dangerous on his mind. Mr Black didn’t see it coming, not a noise was made - he didn’t suspect a thing.

Mr Black is found dead at the bottom of the basement stairs, police investigators say that it wasn’t an accident, something sinister had happened in the big house - but who was the murderer?

There are a number of things about this case that is funny - Police believe that the murder was not committed in the basement, and that the body was dragged there from elsewhere in the Mansion. There are 9 Rooms in the House, where could the murder have taken place? Could it have been The Hall? Maybe the beautifully furnished Ball Room, which once hosted a wealth of Parties. Perhaps it was the Billiard Room - nice and dark in there, or maybe the library? The Kitchen has a secret Passageway to the Study, could the murder have taken place in one of these rooms, or maybe it was in the huge Dining Room, just after Dinner. Maybe someone sneaked along the back passage from the Conservatory to the Lounge?

Once we’ve figured that out, well what was the murder weapon? The autopsy report is not back yet, so we can’t know for sure. Was it maybe the Candlestick, could it have been the lead piping. Maybe it was the dagger or revolver. Could Mr. Black have been strangled by the Rope or possibly hit over the head with an old spanner?

Finally who committed the murder? Everyone has a motive, but who really disliked Mr Black so much to want to kill him? Could it have been Mrs White, the cook, Reverend Green? Surely a man of the cloth would not do such a thing. Miss Scarlet, a young rich lady? Mrs Peacock? Has Colonel Mustard got something to hide? Had Mr Black done something terrible that made Prof. Plum want to do the dirty deed?

So is the plot for the wonderfully addictive b
oard game Cluedo. You are the detective, you decide who dunnit.

The cards are placed out in individual piles, all the rooms together, all the murder weapons together and all the suspects together. Each pile is shuffled, and then one from each is picked (without looking) and placed in the middle, face down. This is the murderer, the weapon and the room in which it is created in.

The remaining cards are all shuffled together and divided out evenly amongst the players.

Miss Scarlet starts first and then moves in clockwise direction around the board.

Each player will roll two dice and move their chosen person. Once the player is in a room, they may make an accusation, based on what cards they have. The accusation would take the form of "Rev. Green in the library with the Revolver". Then each person in the game has to look and see if they have any of these cards, so disproving the accusation. This goes around in a clockwise direction and the first person to have one of these cards must show it to the accuser. The game then continues in this fashion, until someone correctly accuses. This is then checked by looking at the cards in the middle.

It can be a very competitive game. I would not recommend it for very young children as the rules can be quite difficult to grasp. We’ve had it happen on a couple of occasions that people have "forgotten" that they had a particular card, so meaning that the wrong conclusion was made, and we sent an innocent person to prison. I’m glad it was just a game.

This game is for all you would-be detectives out there, so was it really Miss Scarlet in the Ball Room with the spanner, or was it colonel Mustard in the Lounge with the Rope?

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