How to play
Seven cases, each its own murder, each with its own killer. They are signed the same way, a smiling face drawn in the victim’s blood, which is why the papers call every one of them a Red John. Everyone in the room gives an account of themselves. One of those accounts cannot be true. That is the man who did it. Your job is to work out which, and to back yourself with money.
- 01
Pick a case
All seven are open, and each stays open until its round closes. Each is a separate murder, in its own room, with its own killer. Nothing you learn in one case carries into another.
- 02
Walk in with nothing
No wallet, no signature, no transaction. The room is public data and you can open any case and stand in it without connecting anything at all.
- 03
Hear everyone out
Click each person. They tell you where they were and what they were doing, as many times as you like, and it costs you nothing to listen.
- 04
Find the story that cannot be true
Exactly one account in every room is impossible. Not suspicious, not unlikely: impossible. Someone alone in a lift who held the door for the man behind him. Someone who read the evening paper by the window, after dark, in a room with no lamp lit.
- 05
Put money on him
This is the first and only time the chain is involved. Name the man and stake what your read is worth: the name is encrypted in your browser, so nobody watching can see who you backed. Bigger stake, bigger share of the pot if you are right, and once it is down it stays down.
- 06
Collect
When the case closes you file your result, and the contract rules on it against an attestation from the enclave rather than taking anyone's word. Everyone who named the wrong man leaves their stake behind, and the people who got it right split the whole pot in proportion to what they staked, paid out as real Megapot lottery tickets.
WORKED EXAMPLE
Five people. Four say they were reading, or on the phone, or out on the step with a cigarette. The fifth says he walked the dog the long way round and was home before he set out.
Nothing about that man looks guilty. He is not sweating and he does not change his story. He has simply said a thing that cannot happen, because no walk ends before it begins. That is the whole game.
