Comparisons
Play Turtle Soup solo: Tanghenre (汤很热) or Post Mortem?
Illustration: A Glass of Water and a Gun
Turtle Soup, or 海龟汤, is what situation puzzles are called in China: a scene that makes no sense, and yes-or-no questions to work out what really happened. This page is about one specific site, Tanghenre (汤很热, tanghenre.com), where an automated narrator lets you play alone. It is not a survey of every game with that name. We are LaBoîteBleue, the studio that publishes Post Mortem, the other game compared here, and we rely on Tanghenre’s official pages, cited under each section.
In this article
| Criterion | Post Mortem | Tanghenre (汤很热) |
|---|---|---|
| Platform | Mobile app | Website, in the browser |
| Play alone | Yes, with the app’s narrator | Yes, with an automated narrator |
| Answers | Yes, no, irrelevant, or a request to rephrase | Yes, no, irrelevant |
| Play anywhere, any time | Yes, on your phone, even alone: in the car, at dinner, while you wait | Wherever you have a browser |
| Languages | English and French, written for each | Chinese, simplified or traditional characters |
| Stories | Written by the studio | Site selection plus player stories |
| Submit your own stories | No | Yes, in the lab |
Compiled by LaBoîteBleue, the publisher of Post Mortem, from the official pages cited below, checked September 29, 2026.
The Chinese words you need to follow a game
Tanghenre is entirely in Chinese, but a game only needs a handful of words. The 汤面 (tāngmiàn, “the soup’s surface”) is the statement, the scene you are shown. The 汤底 (tāngdǐ, “the bottom”) is the hidden story. Answers come as 是 or 对 for yes, 不是 or 错 for no, and 不相关 for irrelevant.
The first statement on the homepage is the classic that gave the genre its name: a man orders turtle soup in a restaurant, drinks it, then kills himself. Our library has its own version, Albatross Soup, with the statement only. Our explainer covers how the name travelled from Japan to China.
Sources
- Tanghenre’s homepage (checked )
- A game page on Tanghenre (checked )
Tanghenre, an automated referee in the browser
Tanghenre calls itself a one-player 海龟汤 game. Its author says he read through a large pile of stories, kept the ones that hold together, and handed the refereeing to a language model. Each story comes with an illustration and ambient sound. An account lets you save progress and leave comments.
Stories are sorted by theme (horror, funny, easy, classic), and the homepage warns that some contain horror or gore. Post Mortem sticks to one register: dark riddles.
Sources
- Tanghenre’s about page (checked )
- Tanghenre’s homepage (checked )
- A game page on Tanghenre (checked )
The lab, for players’ own stories
The 实验室, or “lab”, collects stories written by players. You can search by title or statement, sort by approval rate or by date, and submit one of your own.
An open collection and a studio collection give you different things. The first brings volume and surprises, with quality that is bound to vary more. The second is smaller and more consistent. Either way, read the statement before you commit: a good scene makes you want to ask your first question straight away.
Sources
- Tanghenre’s story lab (checked )
When the narrator gets it wrong
Tanghenre’s author writes that soon after launch, players complained about wrong answers, and that switching models did not make them go away. That led to TurtleBench, a benchmark built from real player guesses to measure how well models reason.
Our narrator is automated too, and it can make mistakes. We are not comparing the accuracy of the two: that would take the same puzzles, the same questions and shared criteria. On any game of this kind, the same habits help. Ask about one fact at a time. Avoid double negatives. And when two answers seem to contradict each other, ask the older one again in different words rather than building on it.
Sources
- Tanghenre’s about page (checked )
- TurtleBench, the research paper (arXiv) (checked )
Language is part of the puzzle
In a situation puzzle, a single word can set up a false assumption. Your browser’s translator will give you the gist of a Tanghenre scene, but not necessarily the exact word that is leading you astray. Your questions also need to be as precise as the statement, or a “no” and an unimportant detail start to blur together.
Post Mortem writes every riddle in English and in French, separately, so the misdirection works in both languages instead of limping through a translation.
What Post Mortem does, and who it suits
In the app, you ask your own closed questions. The narrator answers yes, no or irrelevant, and asks you to rephrase an open or either-or question. Each fact you find is shown in full during the investigation, and the statement stays on screen so you can go back to its exact words. There is no final answer to write up: the case closes once every fact is found.
On this site, the library has the free statements in English and French, to read or share, without solutions. The investigation and access to solutions happen in the app, and the game’s page shows where to download it.
Our take: if you read Chinese and like digging through other players’ stories, Tanghenre is a good place to start. If you want to play in English or French and watch your case come together fact by fact, try Post Mortem.