🕵️ Who makes this
I taught. Then I started making the resources I wished I'd had. Now that's the whole job.
Number Cadets is a one-person operation. I write the math, build the cases, draw the villains, and answer the email. There's no team behind this and no company — just me, working on it full-time.
It started with paper. I made mystery worksheets for my own classroom, because a page of twenty problems is a page of twenty problems, but a page of twenty problems that tells you who stole the trophy is something a kid will actually finish. The format is self-checking, which was really the point — every answer crosses a suspect off, so a wrong answer shows up immediately instead of at the end of the week when I got round to marking it.
Those printables became Kiwiland Education, and teachers have been using them in classrooms for years now. Number Cadets is the same idea, online.
This is the part I care most about, so I'll be direct about it.
Most free math sites aren't. They're free until you make an account, or free until you build a class roster, or free until a kid hits the fourth level. And every one of those steps is a place where a lesson dies — the sub who doesn't have the password, the early finisher with six minutes left, the kid whose Chromebook won't hold a session.
So the six mysteries at mystery.numbercadets.com ask for nothing at all. Click a grade, start solving. No account, no email address, no sign-in.
There is a paid version. It has more cases, and it tracks each student's progress standard by standard, which is the thing that takes real time to build and real money to run. It costs $29 a year for a family and $49 for a classroom — the details are on the plans page.
But the six free mysteries aren't bait. They're not a trial, they don't expire, and they don't get worse to push you upstairs. If you only ever use those, that's genuinely fine — you're the reason I put them up without a gate.
I'm not at a desk as much as you'd think. I run, I hike, I climb, I mountain bike, and I do adventure racing — the kind where you're handed a map and a set of checkpoints and have to work out the route yourself, usually while tired and slightly lost.
I've never been sure whether that's why everything I make ends up being a puzzle, or whether I'm just drawn to the same thing twice. Either way, it's the honest answer to why there's a mystery wrapped around the math instead of a worksheet.
You're welcome to list us. The link that works for your readers is mystery.numbercadets.com — the free, no-account one. If you want screenshots, a short description, or anything checked before you publish it, email me and I'll send it the same week.
Any question, from anyone: hello@numbercadets.com. It reaches me directly and I read every one. There's more on the contact page.
There's a reading version too, built the same way — Reading Cadets.
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