The Club Championship

Hamburg, Saturday evening · a table-tennis club before the final · two finalists and a missing umpire · Difficulty: Officer 3 · 6×6

The evening of a table tennis club final in Hamburg. At seven the finalists were warming up when the scoresheet vanished from the umpire’s table – and with it Veit, the neutral umpire. Six people were in the club: the president, the coach, the treasurer, the two finalists and Veit. Veit was found dead. The final was called off.

Rules

1. Every row and every column holds exactly one person. As soon as you place someone, cross out their whole row and column.
2. “Beside” = directly left, right, above or below, and in the same area. Squares with objects (the trophy, the counter, the vending machine, the ping-pong tables, the ball machine, the locker, the cabinet, the racket stand and the showers) cannot be occupied; the doormat, the stool and the benches can.
3. 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 was a woman, in any column; “the northernmost person in her area” = nobody else in her area was in a row further up.
4. The murderer was alone with the victim: nobody else was in that area. The victim made no statement – his square, too, follows from the others’.

Statements

• Annegret (club chair): The counter was somewhere in her area.
• Bastian (coach): A bench was somewhere in his row.
• Christa (treasurer): The stool was somewhere in her column.
• Dirk (finalist): He was in the Entrance. Exactly two rows south of him was a woman.
• Emilia (finalist): She was the only woman beside a bench.
• Veit (umpire): The victim. He was alone with the murderer.

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