The Mystery League

The Mystery League is a company of creative puzzlemakers. We stage live and remote games. We weave storytelling, puzzles and gameplay in unusual and amazing ways.

We bring the games to you

We design tabletop escape games that can be played at your office or at any restaurant or conference space. These games last ~2 hours. Your group will split up into teams, and everyone will play the same game concurrently.

Remote team-building

Zoom games

Our live trivia & puzzle games fix what’s broken about completely remote events.

Asynchronous hunts

For groups who want a long-term game, we can build a private ARG (alternate reality game). We build you and your group a dedicated website where teams log in to see the puzzles, which appear every few days. Teams of employees join forces and work together to solve them. The site shows a leaderboard and lets teams request hints when they get stuck. These games are entirely customizable in theme and difficulty, and they can easily scale up in duration and player size.

Destination games

These site-specific games take 3+ hours for teams of 3-5 people. We can stage any of these for you, or we can design something entirely new.

And more...

For teams looking to explore a new place, we can build games in your neighborhood, wherever you live. Get in touch to discuss.
“We hired The Mystery League to create a puzzle for our 130 person global team in Chicago. Blending a must-see historic landmark with a uniquely compelling team building experience, our team was fully engaged all afternoon. It takes a lot to impress a global innovation team, and The Mystery League delivered.” — Clay Stelzer
Salesforce
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Projects of Note

Visit the Projects page for more details →

Thank you Mystery League for helping us put on a fantastic virtual event! This wasn't “just another trivia event”. The puzzles were innovative, and the gamified virtual space added a really fun interactive and social element that our team really enjoyed. Sandy was a great host and organiser, helping us to set up a formal presentation in the virtual space before segueing into the game.  We also really appreciated how he adapted the puzzles for our three different timezone sessions, making sure the humour and trivia was inclusive for each region.  We had a blast! — Maeve Lander
Automattic
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Where to find us

“Sandy is a puzzle genius and fountain of creativity, as well as a technical wizard. He worked closely with our marketing team to understand our company brand and understand our goals of the virtual puzzle event. He created a custom 5-part puzzle game that was just hard enough (but not too hard) to evoke the spirit of problem solving and competition. As a result, the event was a huge success – bringing together employees and clients from all across the US. As months go by, it’s an event people still talk about fondly.” — Jamie Jansen
Director of Marketing, Ryan Companies
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Why hire us

Our games are mini mysteries

Teams work and solve together, one puzzle at a time, for a couple of hours. Players need to inspect stories, art, designs, and other various artifacts for important information, then apply deductive reasoning and pattern matching skills to solve a mystery.

It could easily be the most fun you’ll have all year

You know that rush you get when you solve a problem that’s been nagging at you for a while? A puzzle game injects that feeling directly into your veins, over and over.

Put another way: our hunts combine the triumph of breaking a code, the thrill of a good mystery novel, and the adrenaline rush of a playground game of tag. Our puzzles require deduction, pattern recognition, observation, and creative problem solving. They run the gamut from LEGO construction to wordplay, from code breaking to recognizing pop songs. They are designed to work for strong puzzlers or casual ones, and they work best for teams that have a mix of both. 

Also, we don’t skimp on the storytelling. All the puzzles are in service of the story, whether it’s a crime that needs solving, a quest for a hidden treasure, or a search for the planet’s newest superhero.

Who's hired us

We’ve built games and run events for dozens of companies and organizations, including:

“The Mystery League took our annual Scavenger Hunt to the next level. Our mission is to help people discover why design matters, the Scavenger Hunt is an introduction to architectural literacy. Together we tricked people into believing they were just having fun, but they were actually learning.” — Lyla Catellier
Chicago Architecture Foundation
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FAQ

Who are these games for?

Is it just for fun, or will the players learn something too?

Because they’ll be immersed in puzzles for hours, teams will be forced to come up with new ways to approach and solve problems together. They’ll have a fantastic time, and they’ll leave energized.

One thing we hear a lot from players is that they’re happy to exercise parts of their brain they don’t get to use everyday at work. People finish our games feeling smarter, happier, and more creative.

How many people need to play?

We can build a remote game or in-person hunt for a group of any size, from 10 people all the way to several thousand. There are certainly economies of scale when we design for a larger group.

How long does an event last?

Trivia usually lasts 90 minutes. Tabletop games are about two hours. If you need it smaller or longer, we can accommodate. Just get in touch and let us know your needs.

Where does it happen?

Remote hunts happen on Zoom. Our in-person hunts can be staged almost anywhere, including:

We’re based in Chicago, but we’re happy to travel anywhere. If you have a particular venue in mind for your event, please mention it when you get in touch.

How much does it cost?

For trivia prices, please visit this page. For in-person hunts, prices can vary depending on the complexity of the setting, length of event, number of players, how much tweaking we need to do, etc. Get in touch to discuss prices for your group.

How far in advance should I book?

At least two weeks is ideal.

What other puzzle stuff do you do?

First off, we frequently post visual puzzles on Instagram and short puzzles on Twitter.

Ocassionally, we put on games for the public and sell tickets. Check back to see if there are any upcoming events.

We’re also available to create puzzle-based marketing campaigns, puzzle installations, single puzzles, or hunts you can run on your own over and over again. Get in touch, and we’ll put together a proposal for you.

This sounds fun, but I’m just a person on my own. How can I play?

Subscribe to our Signals newsletter to learn about new events as soon as they’re announced.

The Mystery League helped us put on a great event. Each puzzle was so inventive, making great use of site-specific details, and the overall event held together brilliantly. All of the custom materials produced for the puzzle were beautiful and polished.” — Joe Germuska
Northwestern University Knight Lab
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Who’s behind this?

Sandy Weisz runs The Mystery League. He has been making puzzles and games since he was a teenager. He's a member of the National Puzzler's League. He writes puzzles any chance he can get, which you can find at our Signals newsletter, on Instagram, on Threads, on Bluesky, or occasionally on the NPR Sunday puzzle. He lives in Chicago with his wife, two kids, and dog.

© 2024 The Mystery League
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Let’s talk

Email hello@mysteryleague.com with any useful info about your event — or use this form — and we’ll get back to you within a couple of days.

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