Briefing
The Archives Go Dark
Master Yoda was found stunned in the restricted wing of the Jedi Archive last night, hours before the Council was due to unveil a newly recovered holocron. The holocron — the one he was set to present — is gone.
Eight individuals had clearance to the Jedi Archive that night. Each decoded clue reveals one trait of whoever's responsible — age, hair colour, gender, faction — and you'll need to cross-reference every one against the suspect board.
Your job: decode the evidence, narrow the suspects, and crack the case before the Council convenes.
Suspect Board
Eight Names, One Archive
Each decoded clue reveals one attribute of the culprit. Check it against the cards below and rule out anyone who doesn't match. Click a card to mark it ruled out, click again to bring it back — your choices are saved automatically.
Evidence 1 · A Scorched Data Card
What Was Left Behind
Wedged behind a shelf in the restricted wing, you find a scorched data card printed with a pattern of binary digits — the same code the Archive's protocol droids use for short tags. Each group is 5 bits. The place values (16/8/4/2/1) are shown above each group — add up the ones switched on to get a number from 1–26, then turn that number into a letter (1=A ... 26=Z).
Show me how ▸
Evidence 2 · The Access Terminal Log
Bigger Numbers, Same Idea
Pulled from the wall terminal, an access log shows a string of binary. This time it's full 8-bit ASCII — same idea, bigger place values (128 down to 1), shown above each group. Use the ASCII chart in the decoder if you need it.
Evidence 3 · No Gaps This Time
Find Your Own Boundaries
This one's trickier. The droid that logged this transmission was in a hurry — there are no gaps between the bytes, and no place values shown above them either. Still 8 bits per letter. The next letter always starts right where the last one finished (look for the highlighted bit) — click where you think it ends and lock it in once you've got exactly 8. Each byte you lock gets its own box above — work out that letter before moving on to the next one.
Evidence 4 · The Flimsi Note
Real ASCII
Tucked inside a storage locker, a short note on a scrap of flimsi — capitals, lowercase, even punctuation. This is the same encoding scheme real computers use for text, so case matters here: a capital letter and its lowercase version have different ASCII codes.
The Datavault
Ten Rounds, Fast
Behind a hidden panel in the Archive: a datavault locked with ten rounds of binary (8-bit switches). Press Start once and the switches check themselves — match a target and it moves straight on to the next one. Run out of time on any round and it's back to round 1. Crack them all in one run and a bonus file unlocks with one more clue. You will then be able to submit your guess.
Solve the Case
Who's Responsible?
You've got the evidence. Who's responsible for what happened to Master Yoda?
For Teachers
Teacher Notes
Learning objectives
- Convert binary to denary using place values
- Map denary values to letters via A1Z26 and via ASCII
- Understand why text encoding uses a fixed bit-width (8 bits) and why byte boundaries matter
- Recognise that uppercase and lowercase letters have different ASCII codes
- Use process of elimination against a data table — each clue narrows 8 suspects down by one attribute at a time
Suggested timing (50–60 min lesson)
- 5 min — Briefing + suspect board read-through
- 10 min — Evidence 1 (worked example, whole class together)
- 10 min — Evidence 2 (independent/paired)
- 10 min — Evidence 3 (independent, expect some retries — this is the point)
- 10 min — Evidence 4 (independent/paired)
- 10 min — The Vault + Solve the Case, then whole-class debrief
The deduction chain
Evidence 1 (gender = male) narrows 8 suspects to 6. Evidence 2 (hair colour = brown) narrows 6 to 4. Evidence 3 (age = thirty-eight) is enough on its own to narrow those 4 down to exactly 1 in Beginner mode. Evidence 4 (faction = Jedi Order) and the Vault's bonus file (signature move = Soresu Form) both reinforce that same suspect rather than narrowing further — by that point pupils should already be at one name, so treat both as a double-check, not new deduction. In Advanced mode a second Jedi suspect shares the culprit's age, hair colour, gender and faction exactly, so there the Vault's bonus clue becomes essential, not just reinforcement. Pupils who decode correctly but skip the suspect board will miss this — it's worth explicitly prompting them back to it after each Evidence screen.
Why Evidence 3 has no gaps (or place values)
Evidence 3 deliberately removes both the byte boundaries and the place-value labels that Evidence 1 and 2 give for free. The next letter always starts exactly where the last one ended (the tool fixes that point for you, so pupils can't accidentally lock in a byte that starts in the wrong place) — the only thing left for pupils to work out is where each letter ends, which still requires them to understand that every letter is a fixed 8 bits wide and count accurately to find it.
Differentiation built in
- The decoder helper is always visible alongside each Evidence screen — no extra click required, and it sticks in view while scrolling
- The Vault's timer can be switched off per pupil/device without losing the activity — this matters more now, since timing out on any round sends the whole run back to round 1
- The Vault's bonus decode reinforces the final attribute (Signature Move) rather than just being a timed mini-game with no payoff — pupils get one more piece of evidence, not just a score
- This page has no visible link — type the word "teacher" anywhere on the page (no need to click into a box first) to reopen it
Answer key (click to reveal)
| Evidence 1 (Beginner) | MALE |
| Evidence 1 (Advanced) | MAN |
| Evidence 2 (Beginner) | BROWN |
| Evidence 2 (Advanced) | BRUNETTE |
| Evidence 3 | THIRTY-EIGHT |
| Evidence 4 | Jedi Order. |
| Vault targets (Beginner) | 154, 23, 7, 200, 91, 250, 64, 233, 100, 175 |
| Vault targets (Advanced) | 39812, 1023, 60000, 512, 47655, 8, 65535, 22222, 100, 33101, 4096, 59392 |
| Vault bonus clue | SORESU (Signature Move) |
| Culprit | Obi-Wan Kenobi |
| Advanced-only decoy | Kit Fisto (ties on gender, hair, age, faction \u2014 broken only by the Vault clue) |