Murdoku, Murdle and logic grid puzzles: what the difference actually is
Three formats that look alike on the shelf and solve very differently. Which is harder, which suits how you think, and where to try each one free.
On the new releases table of any bookshop right now there are three or four puzzle books with a magnifying glass, a silhouette or a bloodstain on the cover. They look so alike that it is easy to walk out with the one you did not want.
And they are not the same thing. They share the underlying mechanism — eliminating possibilities until one remains — but the experience of solving them is quite different. Here is the difference, without decoration.
Classic logic grid puzzles
The oldest of the three, and the ones almost everyone has done at some point in a puzzle magazine. The typical setup:
Five houses of different colours. In each lives a person of a different nationality, who drinks a different drink and keeps a different pet. The Norwegian lives in the first house. The Englishman lives in the red house…
They are solved with a grid table. Rows for the houses, columns for the attributes, and you mark ✗ where something is impossible and ✓ where you have proved it. Every ✓ triggers a cascade of ✗ across its row and column.
The characteristic feature: there is no narrative and no space. It is algebra dressed as a story. The satisfaction is that of a table closing itself in the last three moves.
Murdle
Murdle, by G. T. Karber, takes that format and puts a criminal frame on top. Instead of houses and drinks you have suspects, weapons and places, and instead of «who drinks milk» the question is «who did it».
The mechanics are the same old grid table. What changes — and it is a big change — is everything else: each case comes with a recurring detective, a pulp-novel tone, clues that have to be interpreted, and a difficulty that escalates across several levels through the book. The hard cases add layers: testimonies to cross-reference, deductions about who is lying.
If you come from classic logic puzzles, Murdle will feel familiar in mechanics and far superior in packaging. Which explains the months on the bestseller lists: the same old puzzle, told by someone who knows how to tell it.
Murdoku
Murdoku, by the puzzle designer Manuel Garand, goes elsewhere. Here there is a genuine change of mechanics.
Instead of a table, you have a map: a grid representing a setting divided into rooms. And the rules are:
- Each suspect occupies one cell of the map.
- No two can be in the same row or the same column — this is where the «doku» comes from, it is the sudoku rule.
- The rooms act as zones the clues refer to.
- The murderer is whoever ends up alone with the victim in their room.
The clues are spatial: «was north of», «was right next to», «never entered the kitchen», «there were exactly two people in the bar».
The practical difference is considerable. In Murdle you think in attributes: this person does or does not have this characteristic. In Murdoku you think in positions, and you have to hold a map in your head. Some people find that much more natural; others, considerably harder.
The summary
- Logic grid puzzles: grid table, attributes, no narrative. The most abstract.
- Murdle: grid table, attributes, with strong narrative and stepped difficulty. The most literary.
- Murdoku: map, positions, row-and-column rule. The most spatial, and the only one where the board matters.
Which is harder?
It depends on how you think, and that is the honest answer. But there is a fairly consistent pattern:
If you are comfortable with sudoku and tables bore you, Murdoku will suit you better. If you are the crossword sort who enjoys interpreting an ambiguous clue, Murdle.
In pure difficulty, Murdle's advanced cases go further, because the table format scales by adding dimensions and a murdoku map has a ceiling: on a 5×5 board there are only 14,400 possible arrangements, and that limits how complicated a case can get. In exchange, a medium murdoku is solved in ten minutes and leaves a better taste than a table of the same difficulty, because the result is a scene rather than a filled cell.
One thing all three share, and it is what really separates a good puzzle from a bad one: the solution has to be unique and reachable without guessing. If at any point you have to try something to see what happens, the puzzle is badly built — it is not that you are not clever enough. It is more common than it should be in books made in a hurry.
Where to try each one free
- Murdoku: our version of the format is called Criminoku — the name Murdoku belongs to Garand's book and we are not going to appropriate it. Free cases in the browser, in three levels, with a unique solution checked one by one. There are also printable cases.
- Murdle: it is a book, and worth buying if you like the format. We do not have a version of that and we are not going to make one.
And if what you fancy is the placement mechanic without any corpses, classic sudoku is still there, with five levels and pencil marks.