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Scenedoku

Crime-scene logic cases

The Ghost Hunt

Castle Dunmorrow in the Scottish Highlands · Halloween night · the medium never woke from her trance · Difficulty: Detective 6 · 9×9

Castle Dunmorrow, the Scottish Highlands, Halloween night. A team of ghost hunters had been invited to film the Grey Lady, who is said to walk from the chapel to the crypt every year at midnight. At a quarter to twelve the medium of the team, Vaila, went alone into the chapel to call the spirit; the cameras in the great hall recorded only static. When the clock struck one, she was found beside the altar, cold and still. The four ghost hunters and the four people of the castle were all inside the walls, and nobody had been alone anywhere that night – or so they all say.

Rules

  1. No area held exactly one person.
  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 bookcase, the chest, the fireplace, the altar, the suits of armour, the candelabras, the globe, the mirror, the harpsichord, the curtain, the telescope, the portrait, the sarcophagi, the stuffed owl and the pile of bones) cannot be occupied; the armchair, the bench, the carpet and the four-poster bed can.
  4. 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.
  5. The murderer was alone with the victim: nobody else was in that area.

Statements

  • Alasdair (the team leader and presenter): The altar was somewhere in his column.
  • Brodie (the sound engineer): A candelabra was somewhere in his area.
  • Christabel (the camerawoman): She was beside a candelabra.
  • Davina (the researcher of the team): She was in the Great Hall.
  • Eilidh (the housekeeper): Somebody else in her area was beside the four-poster bed.
  • Finlay (the laird of Dunmorrow): He was the only one beside the carpet. Somebody else in his area was beside a suit of armour.
  • Grizel (the laird's aunt): She was in a corner of her area. Exactly one row north of her was a member of the castle household.
  • Hughie (the gamekeeper): He was in the first column.
  • Vaila (the medium of the team): The victim. She was found in the Chapel, beside the altar – alone with the murderer.

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