The Black-and-White Ball

Palazzo Zorzi-Grimani, Venice · the last night of Carnival, 1789 · a masked ball in black and white · Difficulty: Inspector 8 · 16×16

Count Vincenzo Zorzi gave the most talked-about ball of the Carnival of 1789: a black-and-white masquerade on the piano nobile of his palazzo on the Grand Canal. Every guest chose one colour and kept to it – domino, mask and gloves all in black or all in white – and the Count’s whim went further: on the chequered marble floor whoever wore black had to keep to the black squares and whoever wore white to the white ones, as if the whole company were pieces on a chessboard. Shortly after midnight the music stopped in the middle of a bar: the Count lay dead in the Library, struck down beside his own desk. The doors of the palazzo were barred at once and the fifteen people on the floor were questioned one by one – behind the masks nobody had recognised anybody with certainty. Each of them gave a single statement about where they had been at the moment of the murder, and all of them told the truth. Find everybody’s square – and the one person who was alone with the Count.

Rules

Black and white: the whole floor is a chessboard of black and white marble squares – R1C1 is white and the colours alternate; the black squares are shaded on the plan. The dress code was strict: everybody dressed in black was on a black square, everybody dressed in white on a white square. The colour of each person’s costume is shown on their card. Whoever was on a chair, a bench, a sofa, an armchair, the chaise longue or the bed counts as being on that square.
Every row and every column holds exactly one person. As soon as you place someone, cross out their whole row and column.
“Beside” = directly left, right, above or below, and in the same area. Squares with objects (pillars, tables, statues, candelabra, bookcases, the harpsichord…) cannot be occupied; the chairs, the benches, the armchairs, the sofas, the chaise longue and the bed can. A corner of an area is a square of that area that borders the outside (another area or the edge of the board) on one horizontal and one vertical side.
Directions refer to rows and columns, not to the same line: “exactly one row north of him was a woman” = the person in the row directly above is a woman, in any column; “north of Jacopo” = in a row further up, in any column.
The murderer was alone with the victim: nobody else was in that area.

Statements

Amedeo (the Count’s brother): There was a man in his area. A bench was somewhere in his row.
Benedetta (the Countess): She was alone with a guest. She was in the Ballroom.
Cosima (the Count’s daughter): She and Marietta were on the same diagonal. A chair was somewhere in her area.
Domenico (the Count’s nephew): He was in the Supper Room.
Elettra (soprano): She was the only woman beside a candelabrum.
Filiberto (French envoy): A card table was somewhere in his area. He was alone in his area.
Ginevra (poetess): She was beside the lantern. She was beside a bench that nobody was sitting on.
Hannibal (English traveller): He was the only man beside a candelabrum.
Ilaria (miniature painter): Exactly one row north of her was a man.
Jacopo (banker): A bookcase was somewhere in his row.
Katharina (Austrian countess): A pillar was somewhere in her row. There was exactly one other person in her area.
Lorenzo (majordomo): He was in a corner of his area. He was alone in his area.
Marietta (lady’s maid): The chest was somewhere in her area. She was not in a corner of her area.
Nazario (violinist): He was the only man sitting in a chair. He was alone with a woman.
Orsola (cook): The counter was somewhere in her area. A chair was somewhere in her column.
Vincenzo (the Count, the host): The victim. He was found in the Library, beside the desk – alone with the murderer.

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