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
Chinese crime fiction the ancient and respected "court case literature." From 1896, Sherlock Holmes was translated into Chinese. During the 1890s-1920s, European-style detective fiction was popular in China. Between 1949 and 1977, no work of fiction told of crimes committed by the gentry. Crimes were also not reported by the press as the socialist system was not supposed to foster crime. Sherlockian novels were then characterized as capitalist and low grade, arguing they aroused base passions for sex and violence. During the Song and Ming dynasties, crime fictions varied in themes. Gong'an (crime-case) fiction and swindler stories were considered the most popular subgenres.