Parlor Box

About Parlor Box

In Blue Prince, the Parlor room offers three boxes, blue, white and black, each with statements on it, and only one contains gems. Parlor Box turns that room into a daily puzzle. The rules are always the same: at least one box tells only the truth, at least one box only lies, exactly one box has the gems, and you may open up to two boxes per round.

Statements range from simple ('The white box is empty') to self-referential ('This statement is written on a box', 'This round, all statements are true on all boxes'), and later boxes carry more than one statement. The puzzle is to decide which boxes can be truthful and which must be lying, and from that where the gems are. Each day's game is numbered and is the same for every player, with several rounds, a count of the gems you found, global stats and a shareable result. A countdown shows when the next game arrives, at midnight US Eastern time.

The site is not affiliated with Blue Prince but points players to it. It suits fans of knights-and-knaves puzzles and anyone who enjoyed the Parlor room in Blue Prince.

How to play Parlor Box

1. Open today's Parlor Box and read the statements on the blue, white and black boxes.
2. Remember the rules: at least one box only tells the truth, at least one only lies, and exactly one holds the gems.
3. Work out which combination of truthful and lying boxes is consistent, and so where the gems must be.
4. Open up to two boxes per round, move on through the day's rounds, and copy your results at the end.

Tips

• Start with self-referential statements; they are often trivially true or false and anchor everything else.
• Test each box as the gem box in turn and check whether the truth and lie rules still hold.
• A box with several statements is a liar if any one of them is false.
• You may open two boxes, so if you are down to two candidates you can still win the round.

Questions