Cozy Culprits › Guides › Games Like Clues by Sam
7 Games Like Clues by Sam — Daily Deduction Grids
Clues by Sam is the daily browser puzzle that turned a grid of ordinary faces into one of the most satisfying deduction loops on the internet: a wall of suspects, one revealed card to start, and each person you correctly identify hands you the next clue — natural-language statements you chain together until everyone is labeled innocent or criminal. It was created by Finnish game designer Johannes Ahvenniemi and launched publicly in 2025 ("Sam" is a character, not the developer). It's free, it's purely deductive — you never have to guess — and one puzzle a day is never quite enough.
That last part is why you're here. Below are seven games that scratch the same itch: clue-driven grids where every deduction clicks into the next. One disclosure up front — the first pick, Cozy Culprits, is our own game, and this page lives on its website. We've kept the rest of the list genuinely useful anyway; a roundup you can't trust helps nobody. Cozy Culprits is not affiliated with Clues by Sam or any other game listed here.
The 7 alternatives
1. Cozy Culprits — the closest match on iPhone (ours)
Mechanic: a daily "murder sudoku" — you place a cast of suspects onto the floor plan of a crime scene so that no two share a row or column, while written clues ("Poppy is beside the Colonel," "Dr. Bell is not in the Hall") eliminate possibilities. Furniture blocks cells, walls block adjacency, and when the one valid arrangement clicks into place, the suspect in the victim's room is the murderer. Same energy as Clues by Sam: every clue is load-bearing, and no step ever requires a guess — each case is generated with a solver-proven unique solution.
Platform & price: free on iPhone, no account needed, works fully offline. Ads never interrupt a puzzle, and $3.49 removes them permanently.
Who it's for: Clues by Sam players who want the same daily deduction ritual as a native app — with streaks, Game Center leaderboards and a weekly league on the daily case (Easy 5×5, Medium 6×6, Hard 7×7 — same board worldwide), a spoiler-free share card, and a Rookie-to-Mastermind campaign with 16 suspects for the days one puzzle isn't enough. Hints point you at the clue you missed and never reveal the murderer. New to the format? Here's how murder sudoku works.
2. Murdle — the daily whodunit that started the wave
Mechanic: G.T. Karber's daily mystery at murdle.com gives you suspects, weapons and locations, a set of witness statements, and a classic logic-grid to fill in until you can name who, what and where. Puzzles ramp up across the week. It's the game that popularized the daily murder-mystery format, and it spawned a bestselling book series.
Platform & price: free on the web; the Murdle books are paid and widely available. We couldn't find an official native mobile app as of this writing — beware lookalikes on the app stores.
Who it's for: players who want the fuller crime-story dressing — motives, weapons, locations — and don't mind the logic-grid checklist style over Clues by Sam's portrait wall.
3. Enigmic: Crime Puzzle Cases — mark-and-eliminate case files
Mechanic: each case hands you a board, a set of suspects and a list of clues; you mark and eliminate on the grid until only one solution survives. It's a large library of hand-sized deduction cases (950+ across its seasons) rather than a single daily ritual.
Platform & price: iOS and Android, free to download.
Who it's for: binge solvers — if your problem with Clues by Sam is strictly "one per day," a big case backlog fixes that.
4. Cross Logic — picture-puzzle deduction in bites
Mechanic: short logic riddles told with pictures on a small grid — match people to items, pets to owners, culprits to alibis — by crossing out what the clues forbid. Less mystery theater than Clues by Sam, same core elimination muscle.
Platform & price: iOS and Android (the iOS version is by Hitapps), free to download.
Who it's for: commute solvers who want sixty-second deductions and don't need a story.
5. Classic logic-grid puzzle apps — the ancestor, unlimited
Mechanic: the traditional "Einstein" logic problem — a grid of categories (names, houses, drinks…) and a list of clues like "the doctor lives beside the baker." This is the puzzle form Clues by Sam and Murdle both descend from, and several dedicated apps on the App Store and Google Play offer hundreds of them with auto-checking grids.
Platform & price: many options on iOS and Android; most are free to try, with paid puzzle packs common.
Who it's for: purists who want maximum deduction per minute and zero art direction.
6. Wordle-style deduction dailies — the same ritual, other genres
Mechanic: if what hooks you is the daily part — one shared puzzle, a streak, a spoiler-free result to compare — the format Wordle popularized now covers nearly every genre: word deduction, geography guessers, movie and music dailies. The deduce-from-feedback loop is looser than Clues by Sam's airtight logic, but the ritual is identical.
Platform & price: overwhelmingly free in the browser.
Who it's for: streak collectors building a morning "puzzle plate" of three or four dailies.
7. Paper puzzles — Murdle books and logic-problem magazines
Mechanic: the offline originals. The Murdle books collect a hundred cases per volume in the same suspects-weapons-locations format as the website, and newsstand logic-problem magazines (Dell and Penny Press are the long-running names) have printed Einstein-style grids for decades.
Platform & price: paperback money — and no battery, no ads, no tabs.
Who it's for: pencil people, gift-buyers, and anyone whose screen time budget is already spent.
Quick comparison
| Game | Platform | Price | Daily puzzle? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cozy Culprits (ours) | iPhone | Free ($3.49 removes ads) | Yes — 3 difficulties |
| Clues by Sam | Browser | Free | Yes |
| Murdle | Browser · books | Free web · paid books | Yes (web) |
| Enigmic: Crime Puzzle Cases | iOS · Android | Free to download | No — case library |
| Cross Logic | iOS · Android | Free to download | No — levels |
| Logic-grid apps | iOS · Android | Varies | Rarely |
| Paper puzzles | Paid | No |
One more note for the deduction-curious: if you've ever wondered how this whole genre relates to actual sudoku, we've written up the difference between murder sudoku and killer sudoku — they share a word, not a game.