Most clues describe the culprit's name. A few describe where the culprit is standing. They are the fastest clues in the game to apply and the easiest to apply to the wrong grid.
Three clues about geometry
- Not directly next to [name] — the two cards either side of the named one, on the same row only.
- Not in the same row as [name] — clears a whole row of five.
- Not in the same column as [name] — clears a whole column.
Why they are so fast
You do not read a single name to apply them. You find the referenced card, look along its row or down its column, and strike. On a grid of a hundred a row clue removes four names in about a second, and a column clue removes nineteen.
That asymmetry is worth remembering: on a tall grid, column clues are enormously more powerful than row clues, because the grid is always five wide and however many rows deep.
The one thing to be careful about
Next to means horizontally adjacent within a row. The card above and the card below are not next to anything — they are in the same column. A name at the end of a row is not next to the name at the start of the next row either, even though they look adjacent when the grid wraps.
If a position clue ever seems to eliminate the culprit, check whether you are counting wrap-around neighbours. That is the mistake nine times out of ten.
They do not survive a reshuffle
Position clues are the only clue type tied to a particular layout rather than to the names themselves. Replay a free-play rung and the grid is dealt fresh, so any position clue you memorised is meaningless — which is exactly why a replayed level is a genuinely new puzzle rather than a memory test. More on that in daily dossiers and free play.
The same reasoning in other puzzles
A position clue is geometry: it does not care what a name says, only where it sits. That makes it the fastest kind of clue to apply and the one most similar to techniques from other puzzle families.
The clearest cousin is the overlap move in a nonogram, where knowing a run of eight must fit inside ten squares tells you six squares are filled before you know anything else. In both cases you are reasoning about what the space forces, not about the contents.
If that kind of thinking is what you enjoy, logic puzzle types explained lists the families that lean on it hardest.
Find a case with position clues
Related reading
- The order you apply clues in changes everything — Clues are numbered for reference, not for sequence. How to spot the clue that halves the field, and why applying the same clues in a different order can nearly double your work.
- How to read letter clues quickly and correctly — What counts as a letter, what the puzzle ignores, and the scanning habits that make clues about first letters, missing letters and endings almost instant.
- Daily dossiers or free play? — Three shared puzzles a day against a sixteen-rung ladder in four tracks. What each mode is good for, how streaks work, and why a replayed rung is a new puzzle.
- The families of logic puzzle, and what each one trains — Zebra puzzles, logic grids, nonograms, Sudoku, Minesweeper and elimination puzzles share one skeleton. What separates them, which skill each one builds, and where to start.