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Scenedoku

Crime-scene logic cases

The Frontier Town

Dust Creek, Arizona Territory · 1881, an hour before the noon stagecoach · the safe was open · Difficulty: Detective 5 · 9×9

Dust Creek, Arizona Territory, 1881. At noon the stagecoach was to leave with the payroll of the silver mine – the biggest sum the little bank had ever kept in its safe. Strangers had been drifting into town all morning: a preacher, a gambler, a cattle drover and a newspaper reporter from back East. The piano was tinkling in the saloon and the horses were dozing at the water troughs when a cry came from the bank: Velma, its owner, lay beside the open safe. Locals and strangers alike give a statement – find out who was alone with her.

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 counters, the safe, the piano, the card table, the desks, the well, the cacti, the stagecoach, the water troughs, the shelf, the cart, the gun cabinet and the barrel) cannot be occupied; the bar stool, the chairs, the horses, the hay bales and the bunk 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 is a woman, in any column.
  4. The murderer was alone with the victim: nobody else was in that area.

Statements

  • Abner (the barber): Of the people in his area, exactly one was a woman.
  • Bessie (the saloon singer): She was beside the piano.
  • Clayton (the deputy): Exactly one row north of him was a woman.
  • Delilah (the schoolteacher): She was the only one beside a horse. She was alone with a man.
  • Ezekiel (a preacher): He was beside a water trough.
  • Fannie (a gambler): She was beside the card table.
  • Garrett (a cattle drover): He was in the Stable.
  • Hallie (a newspaper reporter): She was not in the Saloon. A counter was somewhere in her area.
  • Velma (the owner of the bank): The victim. She was found in the Bank, beside the safe – alone with the murderer.

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