If you’re a mystery buff or the type who loves playing Clue, have I got a neat new site for you: 5MinuteMystery.com. It’s a place where you can solve a new mystery every day, earn points, and compete against other people in the process. Even better, the content on this site is family-friendly so everyone from little Billy to Aunt Zelda can enjoy solving the mysteries together –or against each other, which makes it even more fun.
Getting Started
5MinuteMystery.com is a pay-to-play site, so when you sign up you also have to fork over $19.95. However, that’s for a full year. (And if you homeschool or are looking for ways to improve your child’s reading and/or reasoning abilities, $19.95 is a bargain because it turns learning into fun.)
However, if you’re the type who’d rather try before you buy, 5MinuteMystery.com has got you covered. They’re running a Halloween promo. If you enter the Promo Code SPOOKTEN at sign up, you’ll get a free 10 day trial.
How to Play
Before you can start earning points, you’re required to solve a “first mystery.” You don’t get any points for solving it, but you do get valuable practice at picking clues and figuring out whodunit.
See, you get points for picking the right suspect, but you also get points for selecting the right clues that helped you make your decision about who did it. There are usually four clues to try and identify. To identify them, you have to highlight a sentence that you feel provided a clue.
But choose wisely, because once you play for real, points are not only awarded for picking correct clues, but also deducted for selecting incorrect ones.
Once you have selected both your clues and your suspect, you hit the “Solve this mystery!” button and the solution is revealed.
Top Sleuths Listing and Leagues
The cool thing about the site is they have a “Top Sleuths” leader board which shows the names and points of the top players.
An even cooler thing is you can create or join a league consisting of “family, friends, coworkers, or rival schools.” This could come in handy for really making a fundraiser a success. (I’ll address the fundraiser aspect of the site below.)
My Overall Impressions of the Site
I have been eagerly awaiting the launch of 5MinuteMystery.com ever since I contacted Randy Okane, one of the site’s founders, earlier this year. I believe it had first caught my writer’s eye because they were looking for mystery story submissions. But then I saw their logo and had to know who had designed it. So I contacted them and that’s how I became acquainted with Randy, who graciously gave me the logo creator’s name, as well as some additional info on what 5MinuteMystery.com was going to be all about. I was amazed and excited to see what the end product would be.
Now that I’ve seen it, I’m smitten. And I’m not the only one. The site has only been live a couple of weeks, but already it’s drawing huge attention.
- TechCrunch featured them in their blog.
- A Japanese librarian blog talked about using them on phones (something that’s apparently big in Japan).
- ABC News will feature them on their Tech Bytes next week.
- They’ve signed an agreement with Homeschool Buyers Co-op to have 5MinuteMystery.com distributed to the homeschool market.
Another thing that Randy pointed out to me was their Fundraising section for schools, clubs, organizations, and non-profits. By selling subscriptions, 5MinuteMystery.com will give 50% of all sales generated to your group. (Beats going door-to-door selling candy or gift wrap!) They have an easy three-step process on their site that gets you set up in a jiffy.
Overall, I think 5MinuteMystery.com has a heap of good stuff going for it. The mysteries are fun to read and to try and solve, and I can see how this would also make a valuable educational tool.
I’m not very good at picking out clues (yet, I have a feeling this will be my new guilty pleasure writing diversion), but I did okay picking whodunit so far. I don’t expect to see my name on the Top Sleuths board anytime soon, but it gives me something to aspire to!
Courtney Mroch also writes in Pets and Marriage. For a full listing of her articles click here.