A murder mystery party is mostly decided before the doorbell rings. What the host sends, prints and folds beforehand is what lets a room full of people argue for an evening without anyone, the host included, knowing the answer. For The Hundredth Episode, our party game for 8 to 20 players, that preparation is small and exact, and every step in it exists to keep one secret in. This is the printable's week; the digital edition, which runs on everyone's phones, does the picking, printing, sorting and folding itself, and its host's week is a room started a few days ahead and a join link sent round. (Updated 7 October 2026: what the digital edition does on the night, and how it differs from the printable step by step, is in A Murder Mystery Party You Play on Your Phones.)
This is the host's side of the week, in order, as a checklist with the reason under each step. The reasons matter more than the steps, because they are what make a host trust a step they would otherwise skip. Why the game hides the answer from its own host, and how the night runs once everyone is in the room, are in Four Killers in One Box, and this guide does not repeat them. This is the procedure, not the pitch.
First: Who Reads What
The game arrives as five files, and the whole method rests on who is allowed to open which one. The start file carries this as a spoiler map. Read it before anything else, because every step below follows from it.
| File | Who reads it |
|---|---|
| Start Here | The host only |
| Character guides | Each player reads their own, and nobody else's. A host who plays reads only theirs |
| Evidence pack | Everyone, at the evidence waves. Safe for the host to read at any time: nothing in it names the killer |
| Host materials: the guide and the picker page | The host |
| The 90 Minutes: its own host's script, picker, shared kit and four sealed spans | The host reads the script; the role sheets reach their players at the table; the spans print blind |
| Host materials: the four sealed cases behind the picker | Printed blind. Packet evidence reaches the players at the waves, sealed cards reach their owners privately, and the host sorts without reading faces |
| The solution page | Nobody, until the reveal |
Ahead of Time: Cast, Then Send
1. Cast from the top of the list
Characters 1 to 8 are required, and the mystery is fully solvable at eight. Characters 9 to 20 join in number order: cast 9 before 10, 10 before 11, and so on.
Why: the order is built so that nobody ever refers to an uncast character by name, which makes any stopping point between 8 and 20 a clean one. The guides are written to be played by anyone; characters 9 to 20 are written without pronouns about themselves and each other. The host guide's own advice is the right one: "Cast for enthusiasm, not appearance."
2. Send each player their own guide, privately
For phone play, send each person exactly one file from the phone pack: their own. For paper, hand each person their own pages from the print pack. Never the whole folder, and never to a group chat.
Why: players who have read their guide arrive as their character, and a guide is private by design. Any time before the night works, as long as everyone has time to read; earlier is kinder to busy guests.
If you are running the 90-minute version, a third thing goes out with the guides. It has its own section below.
Setup: Thirty to Forty Minutes, Once
The host guide puts setup at thirty to forty minutes, done once, before anyone arrives. It is six steps, and the order matters.
(Updated 14 October 2026: the files on sale now print the solution's page alone, first, under a blank sheet, and the 90-minute version sends players the case file rather than the whole evidence pack. Updated 15 October 2026: the span now prints in three jobs, the solution, the thirteen items and the eight cards, and the cards fold unseen. Updated 31 October 2026: the evidence pack, now 30 pages, adds the statement sheets, and the evidence waves run 26 to 33 minutes. Updated 1 November 2026, the third edition: the evening's evidence is the START page and eight documents, each case adds six more, the print comes to about 35 sheets, and the 90 minutes is its own printable with nothing to read ahead. The steps below are the current ones.)
3. Print the base materials, and set three stations
The evidence pack prints with the name tags, voting cards, statement sheets and awards. Its START page, read at arrival, and its eight documents are identical in every version of the game. Set out three stations on any three surfaces, THE ROOM, THE SYSTEMS and THE PAPER TRAIL, and keep each stack face-down until its wave.
Why: this is the part of the game that never changes, so you can handle it freely. The face-down stacks are the three-hour evening's shape: each one flips at the top of its wave, and the room discovers the night in three steps.
4. Have someone who is not playing pick the number
A partner, a neighbor, anyone. They pick a number from one to four, or roll a die and reroll a 5 or a 6. You look no further than the picker page yourself.
Why: the four spans are unlabelled and identical in length, and nothing on the picker page or in its page numbers hints at what is inside. The only way to learn tonight's answer is to look, so the procedure never asks you to. From here on, this guide says "the page span the picker names" and nothing more specific, for the same reason.
5. Turn off two-sided printing, then print only that span, in three jobs
Do not print, scroll or preview the other three. Each span is complete in itself, and there is nothing after the four spans to go hunting for. The picker names the span's pages in the order you print them: the solution's page alone, then the six evidence items, then the eight sealed cards.
Why: the picker page says it in capitals, and adds: "Many printers print on both sides by default; turn that off before you press Print." The start file gives the reason in one line: "printed on both sides, one sealed card lands on the back of another sheet." It is the one printer default that can undo the design, so the files ask for one-sided printing wherever a host prints: the start file, the setup steps, the picker page, and the first page of the character and evidence packs. We check every shipped file for that instruction, and the files on sale today pass.
6. Print the solution first, alone, and cover it before you look; then the items and the cards
The first job is one sheet: the span's last page, with SOLUTION across its top. Before you press Print, have a blank sheet of paper in your hand, and if the print dialog shows a picture of the page, set the page number and press Print without looking at the picture. Stay at the printer, but don't watch the tray: when it stops, lay the blank sheet over the page before you look down, and fold the two together in half, the blank sheet outside. It goes under the centerpiece, or in an envelope taped beneath a chair, and leaves that spot only at the reveal. The second job is the six evidence items, with no look at the preview and no watching the tray. The third is the eight sealed cards, again with no look at the preview and no watching the tray: have a second blank sheet in your hand, lay it over the stack before you look down, and if the cards came out face-up, turn the stack and the sheet over together and pull the sheet out. Rather not print blind, or printing at a library or shop? The non-player who picked the number can print the span and hand it to you ready: the solution folded inside a blank sheet, the cards folded, the items face-down.
Why: a printer can leave the last page of a long job anywhere in its pile, and many put pages out face-up, so the solution prints on its own and is covered before anyone could read it. Folded inside the blank sheet, nothing private faces out. The cards get the same care because each one's private box prints upside down just below its FOLD HERE line, where a face-up tray would show it.
7. Fold the eight sealed character cards
Fold each card unseen: set it face-down on the blank sheet and turn the two over together. Uncover only the far end, two fingers deep. If the words there read upside down, cover them, turn the card and the sheet half a turn on the table, both flat, and uncover the new far end. Once they read the right way up, slide the sheet toward you only until FOLD HERE shows, and no further. Fold the top down along the line, over the sheet, then pull the sheet out. What is printed low on the sheet stays outside: the name, and that character's on-the-record statement, which is the same in every version of the game. The cards go in your pocket until the blackout.
Why: the name on the outside lets you hand every card to the right person without opening any of them, and the statement on the outside can be read aloud for a player who has to leave early, with the card still folded. Never unfold one, including your own if you are playing.
8. Sort the packet's six evidence items by their corner marks
Each packet item carries its wave number in a corner. Slide each one face-down into station stack 2 or 3 by that number, without reading faces.
Why: the items are designed to be sorted by that mark alone. The six packet items are the only evidence that differs between the four versions, so they are the pages you most need not to read.
That is the setup. If you are playing a character too, you get your card at the blackout like everyone else, and everything you know is procedure, not solution.
Paper, Printer, and How Much of Each
Every page of every file is US Letter, portrait, with its fonts embedded, and black and white is enough. Every page keeps its ink about half an inch from each edge, well clear of the strip a home printer cannot reach, so a printer loaded with A4 at 100% loses nothing either. The files carry no page labels, which matters more than it sounds: the page numbers you type into a print dialog are the physical pages, so the span the picker names is exactly the span you print.
For the three-hour evening, the print comes to 35 sheets for one table: the case packet's 15 and the evidence pack's 20. If your players take their guides on paper rather than on their phones, add each cast player's own pages from the print pack. The 90 minutes comes to about 45 sheets: its shared kit, the span for your number and a ballot for every player.
Choose the Evening: Three Hours or Ninety Minutes
The three-hour evening is the one the game is built around: arrival and mingling (30 minutes), the blackout and the on-the-record round (25 minutes), three evidence waves of 26 to 33 minutes each, then accusations and the reveal (30 minutes). The discovery is built in. The room learns the building one stack at a time, and the arrival hour is when everyone settles into character.
The 90 minutes is for an evening with a fixed end time, "a work event, a lunch block, a meeting room you lose at the hour." Since the third edition it is its own version of the case, THE_90_MINUTES.pdf: the same story, cast and four killers, written for ninety minutes, with nothing to read before the night.
What makes it fit
Nothing goes out ahead. Role sheets are handed out at the table, and characters 1 to 8 get a sealed card with three lines, one for each round. Three rounds of spoken lines and seven documents carry the case; a recap and a private hint come before the accusations; and every ballot asks for the three facts that convict, not only a name.
On paper, print the shared kit the picker lists first, the documents, the role sheets, the ballots and the record of every statement, then only your number's span, its solution page first. Every sheet a host must not read prints its words upside down under a hatched fold: fold each one at once, along its line, without a look at the box.
Then the clock, read aloud from the host's script:
| Clock | Block | Minutes |
|---|---|---|
| 0:00 | Welcome and the intro | 6 |
| 0:06 | Your role: role sheets and sealed cards, read silently | 6 |
| 0:12 | On the record: every character, in number order, reads their statement | 6 |
| 0:18 | Round 1: lines, two documents, talk | 12 |
| 0:30 | Round 2: lines, three documents, talk | 16 |
| 0:46 | Round 3: lines, the last two documents, talk | 12 |
| 0:58 | The recap and the hint | 2 |
| 1:00 | The table conference (13 players and up) | 6 |
| 1:06 | Accusations, twenty seconds each, then the vote | 12 |
| 1:18 | The reveal, read top to bottom | 4 |
| 1:22 | Awards | 2 |
| 1:24 | Unplanned: where an overrun lands, never the reveal | 6 |
Lines and statements are read as printed, and then the reader stops; the performance is saved for the talk. Everything said aloud can be read again: after each round, unfold that round's line log and lay it on the table, and lay out the record sheets as the statements and the extras' lines are spoken. Deal each round's documents across the table and have them read aloud; at 15 and up, deal none to Dana Okafor or Reese Renner, the two busiest people in the room. Characters 9 to 20 each have one objective, a job at the table that changes each round, and one line to say, and from 13 players they work in groups.
At 16 or more, you can run two complete games instead of one large one, each table on a different number: two tables on the same span share an answer, and whichever finishes first spoils the other.
What the 90 minutes trades away
The arrival hour and the minute in the dark: the welcome tells the room what happened instead. The discovery: seven documents in three rounds is a sharper puzzle than fourteen across three waves, and a good one, but the evening's slow build belongs to the long version. If your group likes it, the evening is sitting in the same files, with three cases you have not opened.
If Something Goes Wrong
A card opened early, or the wrong span printed, does not ruin anything: three other versions exist. Re-run the picker on the remaining numbers another night, and tonight, whoever saw something plays hardest at not showing it. If a player has to leave partway through, their character "went to the lobby to check on the ticketholders", and the game carries on, because the evidence is printed, not performed. And if the room stalls, flip the next wave early. The host guide's line on that is the best single piece of hosting advice in the box: "Evidence restarts arguments better than hints do."
The Smaller Case Prints the Same Way
The Orpheum File is the quiet evening: one or two detectives, sixty to ninety minutes, no host. It prints on US Letter, one-sided "so each hint stays on its own sheet", and black and white is fine, or you can play it entirely on screen in any PDF reader. It also comes as a digital edition that plays in the browser on a phone, with a worksheet two players can share. And if you want to try the house style before planning anything, The 90-Second Case is free and runs in the browser: four exhibits, three statements, one lie, and ninety seconds. (Updated 7 October 2026: The Hundredth Episode and The Orpheum File are now also sold together in the Season 1 bundle, $37.99, printable or digital.)
The Hundredth Episode is sold here, where a download page opens right after checkout and the same link arrives by email, and on Etsy; the digital edition is sold here the same way, with a host page in place of the files. Everything in this guide comes from the host pages of the files themselves, which are written to be safe for any eyes.
The short version
First choose: three hours with the discovery built in, or the 90 minutes, its own version with nothing to read ahead, knowing it trades the arrival hour, the flipping stacks and the three-act build for a fixed end time; the two never share a packet, so decide before you print. Ahead of time: cast from character 1 up. For the evening, send each player their own guide, privately; for the 90 minutes, send nothing, because its role sheets are handed out at the table. Thirty minutes ahead: print the base materials and set three face-down stations; have a non-player pick the number; turn off two-sided printing and print only that span, in three jobs: the solution's page alone, covered with a blank sheet and folded before you look, then the six items, then the eight cards under a second blank sheet; fold the cards unseen, their names and statements outside; sort the six packet items by corner mark without reading them.
Pick the Party
The Hundredth Episode, The Tenth Winter and Twenty-Two Gifts, our murder mystery party games for 8 to 20, are all hosted blind: with the printable someone else picks the version, on phones the room picks it, and either way you play too. For a Christmas party with friends, read A Christmas Murder Mystery for Adult Friends.
The Hundredth Episode The Tenth Winter Twenty-Two Gifts The Orpheum File About Three