The Color of Murder

[Tannerman]

In the early 1990's, a series of 15 puzzles was released based on the classic board game, Clue. I purchased 2 of these off eBay a couple years ago for a few bucks, and Amy and I recently completed one of them.


The box proclaims the following 4-step process to use the puzzle:

• Read the thrilling story
• Put together the puzzle
• Discover the hidden clues
• Unravel the mystery

A booklet comes with each puzzle, providing a short story involving the Clue characters, one of which bumps off Dr. Black (traditionally, the dead guy is called Mr. Boddy, but since this puzzle series is imported from Europe, they use the foreign names).

After you read the story, you need to assemble the 14 x 20-inch, 500-piece puzzle. But here is the big challenge... there is no picture showing how the puzzle is supposed to look! Instead, you need to figure it out on your own. And that takes a little more time. It took us 3 evenings to complete.

After the puzzle is assembled, it shows a scene, which when combined with the story, is supposed to provide hints regarding who was the real murderer. Finally, with your guess in mind, you use a special magnifying glass to decode the solution to the murder. In the case of our puzzle, we got the answer correct! (Who do you think it was?)


2nd Edition Box
Being in the Clue mood, we picked up The Simpsons Clue on sale (at the same time we purchased Trouble). This is one of the many special edition Clue games that has been released over the years.


1st Edition Box
In the case of The Simpsons version, this is actually the 2nd edition based on the popular animated show. The new version, which we picked up, features full color character pawns. The 1st edition had pewter busts of the characters.


While the game play of The Simpsons version is exactly the same as the original version of the game, there is one slight change that should be noted. The original version of the game comes with just one die, thus you can only move a maximum of 6 spaces on a turn. However, in The Simpsons version, two dice are included, doubling the territory you can travel on a turn. My guess is that this was added to speed up game play. Probably not a big deal, but for a Clue fan like myself, I found it quite interesting.