221B Baker Street: The Master Detective Game is a board game

Board game

A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...

 based on Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...

's fictional detective Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...

 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

221B Baker Street

221B Baker Street is the London address of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, created by author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In the United Kingdom, postal addresses with a number followed by a letter may indicate a separate address within a larger, often residential building...

, Scotland Yard

Scotland Yard

Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...

, 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.