221B Baker Street (board game)

221B Baker Street: The Master Detective Game is a board game based on Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective Sherlock Holmes and developed by Gibsons Games in 1975 and sold by the John H. Hansen Co. in the US since 1977. The players have to solve cases using the clues provided by visiting locations on the board such as 221B Baker Street, Scotland Yard, Apothecary and Pawn Broker. The original game has twenty cases, but there are eight expansion packs that provide twenty additional cases each. The second version has 40 cases, but is no longer available. A travel version, published by Gibsons Games, came out in the late 1990s, and is no longer available.

A sequel game, 221B Baker Street: Sherlock Holmes and the Time Machine came out around 1996, but is no longer published.

Gameplay
Before the game starts, a case is selected, and one player reads the case file. This fills in the players on the background of the case as well as listing the location of each clue in the case booklet. A place may provide no clue, or only a part of one. Clues may also be entirely irrelevant, or throw a player off entirely. Clues often are in the form of a riddle, especially multi-part clues.

Play begins with each player at 221B Baker Street, from which the players visit each of the locations on the board. Each place provides the player with a specific clue, which is kept secret. if the player believes that they know the solution to the case, they may return to the starting point, but if they are wrong, then they are immediately removed from the game.

Expansion Sets
8 expansion sets with additional cases were published, numbered 2 thru 9.