Urban Clues: The Fourth Face

Last night a silk sash vanished from a family chest in the centre of Minsk. For more than a century the family called it "the copy", and on Wednesday an expert agreed. Tomorrow at ten it was due to leave for a foreign auction as a genuine Słuck sash, with a story worth hundreds of thousands. Your client is waiting at the door. You have one day. THE CITY IS THE BOARD The Fourth Face is played on foot, in the real streets of Minsk's Upper Town and Trinity Suburb. Walk to ten real places, from the doors of the Kupala Theatre to the riverside, and the case opens as you arrive: people to question, papers to read, things that can only be seen by standing there. A CASE, NOT A QUIZ • Question the people involved, show them what you have found, and press them when their story doesn't hold. • Read letters, ledgers, receipts and a diary page, and look closely: a watermark, a signature, a pencil note in the margin. • Take a document to a handwriting expert and choose what to compare. • Work the questions in your notebook. Nobody tells you whether you're right. You decide what you believe. • Keep a dossier on everyone, build your own timeline, and write notes in the margins. HISTORY THAT CHECKS OUT The story reaches back to June 1890, the opening of the city theatre that is now the Kupala Theatre, and to the Słuck sashes, whose faces carried different colours for feasts and for mourning. The real history is marked as such. Everything else is fiction written into the gaps of the record, and you can lay an 1911 city plan over today's map. YOUR CHOICES, YOUR ENDING Twenty-eight endings, shaped by what you uncover, whom you believe and what you finally put your name to. A second walk can end very differently. GOOD TO KNOW • About two hours, about 4.2 km, for one or two players. • In English and Russian. Switch languages at any time, even mid-case. • Pause whenever you like; your evidence stays with you. • Location is used only to tell that you've reached a place. • Stay on pavements and cross at crossings. No clue will ever ask you to stop on a road or enter a private courtyard.