It's been a busy season behind the scenes, and we're excited to finally show you what we've been building. This is the biggest update to 5 Minute Mystery in years, and yes, it's all still free and ad-free.
We rebuilt much of the site from the ground up: a fresh, faster look, a better way to solve (and to learn from every case), a brand-new home for teachers and their classes, a much friendlier way to write and submit mysteries, and a long list of fixes and security improvements under the hood.
At a glance
- A fresh, faster look, with dark mode
- A better way to solve
- Results that show you every clue
- Classrooms for teachers
- A brand-new mystery editor that saves your work as you go
- A new guide for authors
- Friendlier reviews for submitted mysteries
- Stronger account security
- Lots of fixes and polish
A fresh, faster look
We've redesigned the site from top to bottom, from the home page to the archives, Top Sleuths, leagues and your profile. Pages are lighter and load faster, everything works better on phones and tablets, and the charts on your profile have been redrawn.
If your phone or computer is set to dark mode, 5 Minute Mystery now follows along with a dark theme that's easy on the eyes for late-night sleuthing.
A better way to solve
The mystery page itself got the most love. Stories are set in a larger, easier-to-read type, and a case board sits beside them with your timer, the suspects and a running tally of the clues you've marked against (or in favour of) each one. Marking a clue is now a single tap on a sentence, with no more fiddly menus, and it works just as well on a phone, where the case board tucks away at the bottom of the screen until you need it.
When you're ready, pick your culprit right on the case board and submit your accusation.
Results that show you every clue
After you submit, your results now walk you through the case clue by clue: which clues you found, which you misread, and which you missed (tucked away, in case you'd like another go without spoilers). Your score is broken down so you can see exactly where every point came from, and you can see who your fellow sleuths accused.
Classrooms for teachers
Teachers have used 5 Minute Mystery with their students for years, and now there's a place built just for them. From our new For Teachers page, a teacher can create classrooms, invite students with a join code or set up simple student accounts (no email address needed), choose which mysteries the class can see, and assign mysteries as homework.
Teachers can follow each student's progress, see who has finished an assignment, and print sign-in cards for the class. Student accounts created by a teacher stay private and off our public rankings.
Setting up a classroom is free, and every teacher gets a free one-week trial once their students start solving. After that, classroom seats are a one-time purchase of 35 cents per student for a full year (with a $5 minimum order). There are no subscriptions, no automatic renewals, and still no ads for anyone.
A brand-new mystery editor
Writing a mystery for us used to mean one big form and a fair bit of guesswork. The new editor walks you through each part of your mystery (the basics, your suspects, the teaser, the story and the solution) with tips right beside each one.
As you write, it counts your words, sentences and reading time, shows you how your teaser will look in our archives, and can even fix the spacing between your sentences for you (two spaces after each sentence, as always!). Best of all, your work saves itself as you type, so you can close the page and pick up right where you left off, even on another device.
Once your story is saved, you mark your clues right on it. Every mystery needs at least three, and the clue editor shows you how many point toward a suspect and how many clear someone, so you can keep your clues nicely balanced.
A new guide for authors
Our guide for authors has been completely rewritten. It explains how clues work, what makes a great teaser, how long your story should be, and what happens after you send it in. Thinking about writing a mystery? It's the perfect place to start.
Friendlier reviews for submitted mysteries
In the past, if a submitted mystery needed work, we had to turn it down outright. Now our editors can send it back to you with notes on what to fix: a missing clue, a spacing problem, or a story that runs a little long. Your mystery stays saved, clues and all, so you can make your changes and send it right back in. You can follow every submission on your Your Mysteries page.
And remember: if your mystery proves popular with our sleuths, it joins our official mystery pool and we'll send you a $50 check!
Stronger account security
We've modernized how we protect your account. Passwords are stored using current, industry-standard protection, repeated sign-in attempts are slowed down, password-reset links work only once and expire within an hour, and changing your password signs you out everywhere else.
As always, we don't sell any data, and we don't spam your email.
Lots of fixes and polish
We also squashed a long list of bugs, some of them quite old! A few highlights: the Top Sleuths and league rankings pages no longer break on quiet days, the mystery archives no longer hide their last page, and our RSS feed now includes re-run mysteries.
Stay tuned...
We have more improvements on the way. In the meantime, we always appreciate hearing from you, and if you're a teacher, we'd especially love to hear how you use 5 Minute Mystery with your class. Please share your thoughts in the comments below, or use our Contact Us form to send us a message. We read each and every comment and message, and will reply if asked!
Happy sleuthing!
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