The Final Whistle

Olympic aquatics centre · fifteen minutes after the water polo final · the referee never reached the ceremony · Difficulty: Chief 9 · 16×16

Water polo final, five-metre penalty throws: the home side win by a single goal, the stands roar. A quarter of an hour after the final whistle it turns out that Vlatka, the referee who awarded the disputed goal, has vanished – and so has the scoresheet. Sixteen people were still in the building. Vlatka was found dead; the scoresheet never turned up.

Rules

1. Exactly one person was beside each of the two goals.
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 goals, the scoreboard, the cooler boxes, the ball bag, the pool ladders, the lifebuoys, the red flag, the lamps, the blue flag, the tables, the champagne, the potted plants, the desks, the TV cameras, the monitors, the counter, the sign, the microphone, the screen, the vending machine, the espresso machine, the lockers, the showers, the fridges, the toilet, the cabinet, the sink, the trophy and the flagpole) cannot be occupied; the pools, the stool, the benches, the seats, the armchairs, the chairs, the massage table and the podium can. An armchair is not a chair.
4. Directions refer to rows and columns, not to the same line: “exactly one row north of him was a guest” = the person in the row directly above was a guest, in any column; “the northernmost person in her area” = nobody else in her area was in a row further up.
5. The murderer was alone with the victim: nobody else was in that area. The victim made no statement – her square, too, follows from the others’.

Statements

• Ante (home captain, centre forward): There was a guest of the organisers in his area.
• Bruno (home goalkeeper): The ball bag was somewhere in his column. There was no other man in his area.
• Ciprijan (home driver): He was in the Away Dressing Room.
• Damir (away captain): He was the only one beside a bench. He was the easternmost person in his area.
• Emanuel (away goalkeeper): He was the only man beside the toilet.
• Filip (away centre back): He was the only man beside the counter.
• Gordana (technical delegate): She was beside the blue flag. She was alone with a woman.
• Hrvoje (second referee): He was beside the scoreboard.
• Iva (doping control officer): She was in the Home Stand.
• Josipa (TV reporter): She was the northernmost person in her area. She was beside a chair.
• Krešimir (cameraman): A desk was somewhere in his row. There was a woman in his area.
• Lucija (the organising committee’s secretary): Exactly one person was in a pool – not her, but somebody in her area. Somebody else in her area was beside a bench.
• Marta (the sponsor’s representative): The counter was somewhere in her column. Exactly two rows north of her was somebody beside the water.
• Nikolina (team doctor): The blue flag was somewhere in her row.
• Ozren (pool manager): The ball bag was somewhere in his row.
• Vlatka (the referee of the final): The victim. She was alone with the murderer.

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