Deduction board game are drawn at random. Notable members of this category include "Black Box" and "Master Mind". Investigation games are board games in which the players generally play as police, detectives or other investigators. The best known game of this type is "Cluedo". In fact, many of games in this category utilize a mechanic known as "The Missing Card," which was developed by Anthony E. Pratt for "Cluedo" ("Clue" in the United States). "The Missing Card" takes a known set of cards (or other token) and removes one or more of them. By gathering information and using deduction and logic, the players
Mystery fiction before the 1800s was due in part to the lack of true police forces. Before the Industrial Revolution, many of the towns would have constables and a night watchman at best. Naturally, the constable would be aware of every individual in the town, and crimes were either solved quickly or left unsolved entirely. As people began to crowd into cities, police forces became institutionalized, and the need for detectives was realized – thus the mystery novel arose. An early work of modern mystery fiction, "Das Fräulein von Scuderi" by E. T. A. Hoffmann (1819), was an influence on "The Murders