A missing cake, six suspects, a wall of clues and a room full of small detectives with magnifying glasses. A party that runs itself, because solving it is the entertainment.
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We ran this for a seventh birthday and it was the first party where I did not once have to announce the next activity. They were busy from the door.
The crime was that the birthday cake had been stolen. Six suspects, all family members, each with an alibi pinned to the wall and one contradiction hidden in the details.
They found it. It took forty minutes and one very loud argument in front of the clue wall, and then the cake was discovered in the garden shed and everybody ate it as evidence.
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Decide what is missing, who took it, and the single detail that gives them away. Ours was the birthday cake, and the culprit was an uncle whose alibi put him in the garden at a time he had already said he was indoors.
Make six suspect cards with photos or drawings, five alibis that hold up and one with a contradiction. Make the contradiction findable rather than clever - my first version was far too subtle and I had to feed them hints, which spoils the whole feeling of having solved it.
Yellow tape across the doorway, a chalk outline where the cake was, one dropped glove and a numbered evidence marker beside it. Black and white paper fans on the wall and a framed CASE FILE sign at the entrance.
Set this up before anyone arrives. The party starts at the front door, not at the first activity.
Magnifying glass biscuits, sandwiches cut into question marks, popcorn in kraft bags stamped TOP SECRET, and a jug of dark cherry juice labelled EVIDENCE.
Black and white striped cups and napkins over a kraft paper runner do the rest. The cake does not appear here - it is still missing until they solve the case.
Greet every guest with a paper badge and a notebook and swear them in as detectives at the door. Take this very seriously - nobody laughs, everybody signs.
Then take everyone's fingerprints onto white card with a black ink pad. This is the best ten minutes of the whole party.
Hide four clues around the house before they arrive: a torn note, a fingerprint on a glass, a shopping list and a muddy footprint.
Send them out in pairs with magnifying glasses. Give a rough area each so the whole party is not searching one cupboard.
A large sheet of paper or a pinboard with the six alibis pinned up and string between them. Everything they find gets pinned on, and then you read the alibis out loud together.
There will be one very loud argument in front of this wall. That argument is the party.
Let them accuse. When they get it right the culprit confesses, and the cake is discovered wherever you hid it - ours was in the garden shed and was eaten as evidence.
Hide it somewhere they can genuinely reach, and hide it before the guests arrive, not while they are watching.
A magnifying glass, a notebook, an invisible ink pen and a spare badge in each box, handed out at the door.
The detective kit below covers most of this in one purchase, which is cheaper than assembling six of everything separately.
Make the contradiction obvious enough that a six-year-old finds it. My first version was far too subtle and I had to feed them hints, which spoils the whole feeling of having solved it. And hide the cake somewhere they can genuinely reach.
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