Scenedoku

Crime-scene logic cases

The Veranda House

Dili, Timor-Leste · the coffee-harvest dinner, 1972 · two rooms at once · Difficulty: Inspector 8 · 10×10

Dili, 1972. Vitorino, a coffee planter, was giving the harvest dinner in his old Portuguese house on the waterfront. Two thick walls cross the house, pierced by open doorways – whoever stood in one of them was in two rooms at once. When the generator coughed back to life after the evening rain, Vitorino was found dead.

Rules

  1. Whoever was on a threshold was present in both adjacent rooms.
  2. Every row and every column holds exactly one person. As soon as you place someone, cross out their whole row and column.
  3. “Beside” = directly left, right, above or below, and in the same area. Squares with objects (the palms, the tables, the radio set, the clock, the cabinet, the coffee urn, the altar, the shelf, the crate, the bookcase, the desk, the wardrobe, the chest, the stove, the sink, the loom) and the solid squares of the two thick main walls cannot be occupied; the chairs, the armchairs, the benches, the sofa, the bed, the hammocks and the thresholds – the doorways of the main walls – can. An armchair is not a chair. A corner of an area is a square of it that faces outwards (another area, a wall or the edge of the board) on a horizontal and on a vertical side.
  4. Directions refer to rows and columns, not to the same line: “exactly one row north of her was a man” = the person in the row directly above is a man, in any column.
  5. The murderer was alone with the victim: nobody else was in that area.

Statements

  • Adelina (the host’s wife): She was alone with somebody on a threshold. She was not in the Study.
  • Bendito (their son, a law student home from Lisbon): He was in a corner of his area.
  • Celestina (the host’s sister): She was in the Oratory.
  • Domingas (schoolteacher): She was on the Front Veranda. She was alone with a member of the family.
  • Estanislau (doctor): He was in the Dining Room. He was alone in his area.
  • Florentino (coffee buyer from Macau): Of the people in his area, exactly one was a woman.
  • Graciana (weaver of tais cloth from Same): She was the only woman sitting in an armchair.
  • Hermínia (cook): She was alone with a man.
  • Inácio (driver): Somebody else in his area was on a threshold.
  • Vitorino (the host, a coffee planter): The victim. He was found on the Back Veranda, lying in a hammock – alone with the murderer.

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