Put your name in.

Everyone signs the register on one page. When the host makes the draw, you are dealt into a firm of four or five. You find out which at the same moment everyone else does.

Five minutes to become a firm.

Name yourselves — anything you like, though something to do with The Shepherd is traditional. Then take a post each: Rulekeeper, Timekeeper, Navigator, Photographer, and a Hype-person if there are five of you. One each. Two of you can reach for the same post, and you will both be told about it. Sort it out — no case opens until the firm is in order.

And a warning to whoever takes Rulekeeper: if the firm breaks a rule, you are buying the first round. All of it.

Open a case, and its clock starts.

Each case has its own countdown, running from the moment you open it — not from the start of the afternoon. Take too long and the trail goes cold and that case is gone for good. Open them one at a time or all at once; that is your Timekeeper's problem.

Photograph the answer. An intelligent judge rules on it.

Point your camera at the real thing and send it in. An intelligent judge looks at the photograph and decides in seconds whether it shows what the case asked for — a wax seal when it is admitted, a cracked one when it is not. It is not easily fooled, and screenshots and pictures of screens will not pass.

Speed pays, and dawdling costs.

A case closed inside its first minute is worth five bonus points. Four in the second minute, three in the third, two in the fourth, one in the fifth. After that the bonus is gone and every further minute costs you a point.

Write something useful and get paid for it.

Send a note with the photograph — opening hours, a closing time, a price, a last collection. If it is precise and it is genuinely in the photograph, it is worth up to three more points. Guesses and jokes are worth nothing, so do not bother.

Do not work one street corner.

Every photograph is stamped with where it was taken. You cannot try the same case twice from the same spot inside five minutes — move along or wait it out. Afterwards, the gallery shows where each picture was taken.

Most points wins.

Firms rank on points: the cases themselves, plus what the clock paid or cost, plus your notes. Cases closed breaks a tie, then total time on the clock. The three quickest hunters go in the book by name.

Then everybody argues about the photographs.

When time is called, the whole day's evidence goes up in a gallery — admitted and thrown out alike. Like them, comment on them, and vote the best of them public.