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This puzzle is part of the Monthly Topic Challenge #7: Board games.

On a cold December night in 1992, several guests have arrived at a mansion in Beverly, Massachusetts.
An hour later, the body of the host is found in the cellar.

You have been asked to solve the crime.
All you have is a map of the mansion showing some rooms and halls of white and orange tile. Unfortunately, it is inaccurate! Exactly 8 white tiles should be orange instead.

Who murdered the host? Where? And with what?

map

Amoz
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1 Answers1

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The host was murdered:

By Reverend Green, in the Kitchen, with the Wrench.

Because:

This is clearly a Cluedo board, but some of the passageways are a bit wonky, and what's with all the orange?
With all the rooms blacked out, it looks more like a crossword grid, but we don't have any clues....

But maybe we don't need any.
A bit of counting (treating the orange squares as black) shows we have roughly the right number of entries/lengths to fill the grid with all the locations, suspects and weapons from the game.
And maybe the missing orange squares will help to sort out any mismatch.

Filling this in was more straightforward than I was expecting.
Starting with the long and short entries, the grid can quite easily be completed, giving (Extra orange cells coloured green for clarity):
enter image description here

And in classic Cluedo style, we have one location, weapon and suspect left over once the grid has been filled:
Reverend Green
Kitchen
Wrench

Engineer Toast
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fljx
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    As someone who’s never even seen a board from the game in question, much less played the game, I have to say there is no way in hell I would ever have come anywhere near thinking of this. I can only assume that ‘soorry’ here is aimed at people like me. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Feb 09 '23 at 01:08
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    @JanusBahsJacquet: There are 2 hints. First, it's part of the Board Game challenge, so a Board Game must be involved. Second, the host being murdered by one of the guests is exactly the plot of Cluedo. Doesn't mean I made the link without first reading this answer, but those are good clues... – Matthieu M. Feb 09 '23 at 18:54
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    The real mystery is why the puzzle is set in Massachusetts, USA, but uses the non-USA version of the red character's name. There was not a second "T" in the name in 1992. – Engineer Toast Feb 09 '23 at 19:20
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    @EngineerToast Oops! I have edited to fix the grid; somehow I messed that up. The production year/city were indeed intended to point to the exact version in case it helped (and serve as hints based on games produced in that time and city). – Amoz Feb 09 '23 at 19:34
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    @MatthieuM. I knew the basic premise of the game, but I had no idea what the board looked like (in fact, I didn’t even know this game had a board). My comment was mostly to express that I’m forever impressed with the ingenious leaps, connections and deductions people here are able to make, often in seemingly no time at all. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Feb 09 '23 at 20:16