Super Hearing

How it works

You are Homelander, standing on one floor of Vought Tower, and you play from inside his head. Nine offices sit around you in a square, north at the top, and each holds one person: an intern, a PR lead, a speechwriter, a lawyer, a sponsor rep, an analyst, a junior hero, a scientist and a security chief, in three departments of three — Comms, Brand and Talent. They are job titles rather than anybody from the series, and the seating changes every day. One of the nine has been talking to a reporter about you.

Every office can answer one yes-or-no question, and the plan shows that question before you listen. Does the leak sit on the north side? Does the leak work in Comms? Does the leak share a wall with the lawyer? Choose an office, press Listen, and you overhear the answer through the wall. You get four listens. Then you point at a door, and security walks whoever is behind it out of the building.

Sharing a wall means left, right, above or below. Offices that only touch at a corner do not count. The centre office shares a wall with four others, a corner office with two.

The one rule: the leak lies

Everybody on this floor tells you the truth, because everybody on this floor is frightened of you. Everybody except the leak, who lies every single time. So a yes from the analyst means the claim is true — unless the analyst is the leak, in which case it is false.

Follow that through and it gives the puzzle its shape: nobody can clear themselves with their own words. If the analyst sits on the south side and says the leak sits on the north side, the claim is false about the analyst, which is exactly what a lying analyst would say — so the analyst stays a suspect alongside the north side. If the analyst sits on the north side and says the same thing, the claim is true about the analyst, a liar would never say it, and the analyst is cleared. Every answer is a statement about everybody else, and a different statement about the speaker.

Where you listen is the skill

Each answer splits the suspects in two: the ones it fits and the ones it does not. A question that cuts nine people four against five is worth far more than one that cuts them one against eight, and as the suspects thin out the best question changes. The plan helps you see it: choose an office and every office its question is about is outlined in amber.

Four listens is exactly enough and never generous. Three yes-or-no answers can only tell eight people apart, so every floor needs its fourth listen in the worst case. Every floor is checked before you see it: whoever the leak is, a careful listener can always find them with certainty inside four listens, and no single listen can settle it by luck. A listener who picks doors at random, even with perfect logic, gets there on fewer than two floors in three. One who always asks the question that splits the remaining suspects most evenly got there on every floor it was tested on.

You can rule offices out on the plan as you go — tap an office and choose Rule out, or press X. That is your own note, not evidence, and the game never does the deduction for you.

Three ways it ends

Pinned means you accused the only person the evidence left, and the headline says how many listens it took. Right door, on a guess means you found the leak while what you had heard still fitted somebody else; the game calls that luck even when he does not. Wrong door means an innocent person was walked out, and the game names who the leak really was. Fewer listens is the better result, and it is also fewer private conversations overheard.

At the end the plan shows what every office would have said, which answer was the lie, and a sure route for that floor — a sequence of listens that works whoever the leak is — beside the fewest listens that would have done it with hindsight.

His voice, and the ledger underneath it

The italic line under the plan is what he is thinking: about the floor, about whoever just spoke, and finally about what he did. Every line is written fresh for this page, in his first person, and none of it quotes or paraphrases the series or the comics. His reactions are chosen from who spoke and whether they pointed or cleared, never from what the answer proved, so his voice can never hint at the leak.

The ledger is the other voice, and it does not take his side. It lists every conversation he listened to as what it is — a private conversation, overheard, with no permission asked. When he accuses the wrong person it says that person told nobody anything and that the leak still has a desk and a source. When he is right, it says what the leak told the reporter was accurate.

The same floor for everybody today, and the link carries it

The floor is generated from the date, so every visitor gets the same nine people, the same questions and the same leak until midnight UTC. A result link carries your whole game — the floor, the doors you listened at in order, and who you accused — so whoever opens it works that floor, tomorrow or next month. The doors and the accusation are written into the address scrambled, with a key that changes from floor to floor, so a glance at the link does not give them away; it is a scramble rather than a lock, because this page’s own code undoes it. The page then holds your answer back: whoever opens the link sees it after they have accused somebody themselves, or straight away if they press the button that asks for it. The text that goes with the link carries the floor, the headline and how many of the four listens you used, and never which doors or who you accused — on a floor everybody shares, the doors that pinned the leak would be the answer. So the text spoils nobody, and the link spoils only somebody who asks it to. Practice floors are unlimited and numbered, and a practice link opens the same practice floor for anybody.

Today’s result, a count of floors worked and a streak are kept in this browser only, so coming back later in the day shows how today went rather than a second attempt.

Playing by keyboard, and with less motion

The arrow keys move between offices and the keys 1 to 9 jump to one, counting across from the north-west corner. L listens, A accuses (and asks you to confirm), X rules an office out in your notes, and Escape backs out of an accusation. The keys only work while your focus is in the game, so typing anywhere else on the page is never interrupted. If your system asks for reduced motion, the waveform shows the recording at once instead of sweeping into it.

Nobody is drawn, and that is deliberate

There is no figure on screen, no suit, no cape and no face. The view is his: a floor plan seen through the walls, nine offices as outlines and a waveform, and the words are his own thoughts. Naming a work and its characters is what nominative fair use permits, and this page does that plainly; reproducing a character’s visual design is a different thing, and an actor’s face is protected by a right of publicity that fair use does not reach at all. The nine people on the floor are job titles and are not drawn either.

Settle it in the forum

The board’s forum is where a result goes to be doubted. Post the link and the headline; somebody will explain that they pinned it in two by listening to the junior hero first, and that the junior hero was lying.

This is fan-made, and unofficial

This is an unofficial fan page for the television series The Boys and the comic series it is based on, naming them under nominative fair use. It is a free, unofficial fan tribute, made for fun. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Amazon MGM Studios, Sony Pictures Television, Point Grey Pictures, Garth Ennis, Darick Robertson and their publishers, or any official rights holder of The Boys.

Every word on this page is original writing, his thoughts and every overheard line included. No dialogue, script text, scene, panel, still, logo or artwork from any series is reproduced anywhere in it, no character is depicted, and nothing here imitates an official mark. Iron Realms — the strategy game the rest of this site is about — is an original fantasy world with its own map, its own houses and its own art, and has no connection to the world of The Boys.

The rest of the corner

The Boys wing lists every game in it, including Golden Hour, a sunset rescue he delays for the perfect shot, Collateral, which puts you in the air over a city of glass and scores what it cost, and The Smile, a press conference held behind his face. The fan tributes hub has the Westeros, Supernatural, King of the Hill, Fringe, Jericho, Big Bang Theory and Last Kingdom wings alongside it, and the free tools that are not about anybody’s fiction. If you would rather play something with more to it, Iron Realms is free and runs in a browser tab.