Free Browser Mystery Games: The 90-Second Case, and What You Get in 90 Seconds

The 90-Second Case is a series of free mysteries that run in your browser, one case to a page, with nothing to install and no account to make. It sums itself up in four short sentences: “Four exhibits. Three statements. One of them is lying. You have ninety seconds.” If you are deciding whether a minute and a half is worth spending on one, this is what the minute and a half buys: what is on the screen, what the clock does, what you get back when you answer, and which link to send a friend afterwards.

Why each case is built the way it is, with one contradiction and paper over motive, is the subject of Caught by Paper, Never by Motive. This is the other half: the product, from the first click to the last. No case is spoiled below. Nothing here names a suspect or an answer, or quotes a file beyond its title and the place it happened.

One Screen, Four Exhibits

Every case has a page at its own address: the series path, then the case's number and name, such as /play/the-90-second-case/1-the-saturday-book-sale/. Near the top of each page is the archive line, quoted here as the first case prints it: “From the research archive of the podcast THE COLD LEDGER. Case #1: The Saturday Book Sale. Years redacted per release agreement. Also in the archive: The Orpheum File · The Hundredth Episode.” Under it sits a list of every case so far, so whichever page you land on, the rest of the series is one click away.

Nothing runs yet. The page waits behind a short paragraph and one button, and the paragraph opens with the rule that matters: “The clock starts when the file opens.” You can read the archive line, pick a different case from the list or come back tomorrow, and none of the ninety seconds are spent until you press Open the file.

Then the file opens: four exhibits, and three people, each named on a button. Before you start, the page also tells you “Any exhibit can be enlarged,” and every exhibit carries an Enlarge button. It opens a larger copy of that exhibit over the page; the arrow keys step through all four, and Escape puts you back where you were, with the clock still running. It is the same paper, bigger, and it costs nothing but the seconds you spend reading it.

Ninety Seconds, One Name

The clock starts at ninety seconds and counts down in a bar that stays pinned under the site header while you scroll, with a strip beside it that drains as the time goes. For the last fifteen seconds the numbers turn orange.

Your answer is a click on one of the three names. There is no confirm step. The moment you choose, all three buttons lock and the result appears under the file. If the clock reaches zero first, that is an answer too, and the result opens on “Time. The trail went cold.”

What You Get Back: An Explanation and a Grade

Every result card leads with a grade and prints your time out of the ninety. A right answer gets its explanation straight away. A wrong name, or a clock that ran out, does not force the answer on you: the solution waits behind a spoiler with a Show the solution button, so you can read it then, or open the file again and find it yourself.

Grade	When	What the card does
A+	The right name in 30 seconds or less	Shows the explanation at once. The line you copy calls it Detective.
A	The right name in 60 seconds or less	The same, and the line says Sharp.
B	The right name, after 60 seconds	The same, and the line says Patient.
C	The wrong name	Keeps the solution behind the spoiler until you ask for it.
Cold	The clock ran out	The same spoiler, under “Time. The trail went cold.”

How to Share a Case

Further down the card sits one line of text and a Copy result button. Solve the case and the line reads like this:

Miss it and the line owns up instead: “The 90-Second Case #2, The Sunday Collection, beat me. Grade C.”, then the same address. Either way it names the case and the grade, adds your time when you solved it, and never carries a suspect's name or the answer, so it is safe to post where people have not played yet.

The address at the end is the case's own, even when you played it from the series page, and that is the one choice worth getting right when you share. The two links do different jobs:

• The case's own link always opens that case. Use it when the post is about one case: a time to beat, a grade to match, a dare. Whoever clicks it gets the same four exhibits you had.
• The series link, /play/the-90-second-case/, always opens the newest case and lists the others. Use it when the post is about the series: the “try these” post. It is the wrong link for “beat my time”, because once a new case is added, the same link opens a different file.

After the Answer: Another File, or the Long Ones

The card always points somewhere next. On every case except the newest it says “Another file is open.” and offers the next case, and the previous one where there is one. On the newest it says “This is the newest case.” and links to the case before it.

Under that is the door to the two paid games set in the same archive. Here they get one line each:

• The Orpheum File: seventeen exhibits, a cold case and a sealed solution, for one or two players over 60 to 90 minutes. Printable, $6.99.
• The Hundredth Episode: the same universe fifteen years later, a party for 8 to 20 players. $24.99.

What is in each box is in Four Killers in One Box, which of the three to start with is in 3 Ways to Play a Mystery, and the host's week for the party is in How to Host a Murder Mystery Party at Home.

The Archive So Far

On October 1, 2026 the archive holds three cases, all set in the same fictional town, Gilder Falls:

Case	Title	Where
#1	The Saturday Book Sale	Gilder Falls Historical Society
#2	The Sunday Collection	First Congregational Church, Gilder Falls
#3	The Last Bus to Halloran	Gilder Falls bus depot

They can be played in any order, since every page lists all three, and each case page says where it sits in the run: “case 1 of 3” on the first. Every page carries the same note at its foot: “Every case, its people and its town are fiction from Wigley Studios.”

And when you reach the newest case and answer it, the card makes the series' one promise in three words: “The archive grows.”