More or less what I do, except that I often have multiple pairs. I use red and yellow in the top corner for the first pair, and then green and magenta in the bottom corner. And once I’ve used a clue to do the marking, if that’s the sum total of information I can wring from the clue, I gray it out then.
I, too, don’t have any good way of marking “one of these four is innocent”, or the like.
Same.
#CluesBySam - Jul 16th 2026 (Tricky)
03:55
Also similar here, but I just use one color for the pair. If I don’t know which is which, no need to color the two differently. I actually go further and typically just use yellow for every pair that arises since each pair’s spatial relationship is usually salient enough to remember during the solve, but that’s just laziness and not best practice. (On the iPad at least, I’d rather just tap for yellow twice than tap-hold-select some other color twice.)
In reference to your comment above about sometimes having to count “cops” or whatever, I make use of the name/occupation font changes when a clue is revealed or grayed out. So if it says, “There are more criminal cops than criminal guards”, I toggle the clue on/off (live/gray) a bunch of time making the “cops” and “guards” labels sort of flash, making it easy to find them all.
The problem with that is that they’re sometimes chained: Alice is opposite of Bob, but Bob is also opposite of Carol, so Alice and Carol must be the same.
True. Yeah, that’s where I rely on the spatial pattern memory for that, as it’s almost always alternating in a line or around a corner. Indeed, laziness with the color picker interface rather than best practice.
Yes, this is what i used to do, but after my son suggested the other way, i tried it, and find it much more helpful. You can often chain several people.
I solved the daily #CluesBySam, Jul 18th 2026 (Hard), in less than 16 minutes
Grumph. I confused left and right.
I solved the daily #CluesBySam, Jul 20th 2026 (Easy), in 05:03
At least i do okay on the easy ones. 
Today’s was another one with a riddle. I’d have thought a coin, except it was “something off a wall”.
A key ring?
#CluesBySam - Jul 24th 2026 (Tricky)
02:35
Not sure I can claim this is a good time though because I didn’t use one of the clues so either there was a bug or I got lucky with a guess that I didn’t think was a guess. A2 is the clue if anyone wants to confirm.
I suppose it can be that the puzzle answer is 100% determined without all the clues.
Now that you mention it, I don’t think I ever used that clue, either.
Reddit says there can be redundant clues. Huh, good to know.
I wasted a lot of time trying to use that clue too early, when there wasn’t enough info to go with it.
Interesting… I started the puzzle this morning before I went to church and various other places, and didn’t see a pause button anywhere. I came back about 5 hours later, but it said that I solved in in 33 minutes. Apparently it automatically pauses the timer after some amount of inactivity?
I think if your screen goes off it stop counting. I’ve had a bunch of times when i interrupted playing to do something else, and it’s never counted all the time i was away.
#CluesBySam - Jul 27th 2026 (Easy)
05:00
#CluesBySam - Aug 3rd 2026 (Easy)
04:07
Ugh, i miscounted on my last person.