Games like Clues by Sam: more daily deduction, no guessing

Sorted today's suspects and want more? These are daily logic puzzles with the same promise as Clues by Sam: every step follows from the clues, and you never have to guess. Try a tiny one first.

What you're probably looking for

Clues by Sam is a free daily browser puzzle. Twenty people sit in a 4x5 grid, each with a name and a job, and written clues let you work out who is criminal and who is innocent. Solving one person can reveal a new clue, and the game only accepts moves that logic allows. The puzzles get harder from Monday to Sunday.

So the things worth matching are: one shared puzzle a day, pure deduction with nothing left to chance, a difficulty that builds through the week, and a session you can finish over coffee. Here's how the alternatives line up.

Daily deduction puzzles, compared

Hence

The nearest match in how it feels, and the most different in how it looks. Hence is a free daily browser puzzle with the same rules of the road: pure deduction, no guessing, and puzzles that get harder from Monday to Sunday. Where Clues by Sam has written clues and a 4x5 grid of suspects, Hence has picture clues and a grid of tiles, a quick 4x4 and a bigger 6x6 each day. Tiles stacked together share a column, tiles side by side are about position, and a red ✕ turns a clue into its opposite. Nobody is guilty. You're just working out which picture goes where.

Like Clues by Sam, you can share your result when you finish. Hence's share link also lets a friend play the same board and try to beat your time.

Murdle

G. T. Karber's daily murder mystery at murdle.com. Each case asks who did it, how and where, and you cross off combinations on a logic grid. More reading and more story than Clues by Sam, with the same satisfaction when the grid resolves. There's a whole list of games like Murdle too.

mystery-o-matic

A free daily mansion murder in the browser. You piece together the killer, the weapon and the time from statements, evidence and people's movements. Pick the mode where everyone tells the truth, or the harder one where the killer may lie.

Queens

LinkedIn's daily puzzle: place one queen in every row, column and colored region, with no two queens touching. It's spatial rather than verbal, and quick. If that's your kind of habit, see games like Queens.

Pips

The New York Times' first original logic puzzle, launched in August 2025: fit dominoes onto a board so every condition on it is met. There are easy, medium and hard puzzles each day, in the NYT Games app or a browser.

How Hence compares, honestly

• Clues: Clues by Sam's are sentences you parse. Hence's are pictures you read at a glance. If you love the wordplay of clues about neighbors and professions, Clues by Sam has it. If you'd rather spend your time on the logic, try Hence.
• Grid: Clues by Sam is always 4x5. Hence has two sizes a day, a 4x4 for a couple of minutes and a 6x6 for a longer think.
• Theme: Clues by Sam is about people and professions. Hence is a cast of monsters, hats, sweets, vehicles, instruments and weather. Each solve ends with a character of your own.
• Difficulty: both start gentle on Monday and build to Sunday, and both offer a hint when you're stuck.

Want to get faster at any of these? How to solve logic puzzles covers six techniques that carry over between games.