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Scenedoku

Crime-scene logic cases

The Haiku Bar

A board-game bar · a club afternoon · the champion never finished her game · Difficulty: Detective 5 · 8×8

On club afternoons the board-game club takes over the Haiku Bar: the tables of the Main Hall fill up with boxes, dice and score sheets, and the games often go on until late at night. This afternoon Petra, the club leader, had brought a brand-new deduction game, and the two owners, Andris and Tamás, had kept the whole bar for the club. Between two rounds Vivien, the club's unbeaten champion, announced that she knew who had cheated at last week's tournament and would tell everybody after the break. Then she went off to fetch a rulebook from the Lounge – and never came back to the table. Besides the two owners, the club leader and four club members were in the bar, and each of them had something to say.

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 tree, the bookcase, the desk, the tables, the sink, the stove, the TV, the toilet and the counter) cannot be occupied; the armchair and the chairs 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

  • Petra (the club leader): There was a man in her area.
  • Andris (co-owner of the bar): The counter was somewhere in his column. There was a woman in his area.
  • Tamás (co-owner of the bar): He was beside a table.
  • Berzsián (a regular of the club afternoons): The armchair was somewhere in his row.
  • Gergő (a card-game collector): He was in the first row.
  • Zsófi (a party-game fan): She was beside a table. She was not in a corner of her area.
  • Réka (a puzzle enthusiast): Exactly one row north of her was a woman. A table was somewhere in her row.
  • Vivien (the club's unbeaten champion): The victim. She was found in the Lounge, beside the bookcase – alone with the murderer.

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