Scenedoku

Crime-scene logic cases

Midsummer Hay

An Icelandic hayfield · Jónsmessa night · the murderer was one corner away · Difficulty: Inspector 7 · 10×10

Jónsmessa, midsummer night, at a farm in the north of Iceland: the hay is in, and the family, the haymaking helpers and the summer guests gathered in the hayfield around the campfire. Towards midnight old Valur, who had run the farm for fifty years, was found dead in the field. Nine people were out there with him. The night stayed light.

Rules

  1. This scene has no rooms: the whole hayfield is a single area.
  2. The murderer was the only person on a square diagonally adjacent to the victim’s square.
  3. This replaces the general rule “alone with the victim”.
  4. Every row and every column holds exactly one person. As soon as you place someone, cross out their whole row and column.
  5. “Beside” = directly left, right, above or below. Squares with objects (the rocks, the sheep, the crates, the cool boxes, the tents, the tractor, the wheelbarrow, the water trough, the campfire, the flagpole, the table, the barrel) cannot be occupied; the seats – the hay bales and the logs – can: whoever is on a seat was sitting.
  6. Two squares are diagonally adjacent when they touch at a corner only: one row and one column apart. Statements about such squares count everybody, the victim too.
  7. “A cool box was somewhere in her column” = a cool box is on one of the squares of her column; “a log was somewhere in her row” = a log is on one of the squares of her row.
  8. “He and Arnar were beside the same kind of thing” = each of them was beside an object of the same type; it need not be the same piece. “He was the only man beside a tent” = no other man was beside any tent; women may have been.
  9. “He was beside a hay bale that nobody was sitting on” = at least one of the hay bales beside him was empty.

Statements

  • Arnar (the farmer): He was the only man beside a tent.
  • Birta (student, the farmer’s daughter): She was sitting. A cool box was somewhere in her column.
  • Cecilía (the village nurse, the farmer’s wife): She was sitting. A log was somewhere in her row.
  • Dagur (tractor driver): A sheep was somewhere in his column. He and Arnar were beside the same kind of thing.
  • Elín (farmhand, veterinary student): Nobody was on a square diagonally adjacent to her square.
  • Flóki (the neighbouring farmer): There was a woman on a square diagonally adjacent to his square. He was beside a hay bale that nobody was sitting on.
  • Gréta (photographer): She was in the first row.
  • Haukur (geologist on a hiking holiday): He was beside a hay bale.
  • Ingunn (teacher from Reykjavík): Nobody was on a square diagonally adjacent to her square. She was beside a sheep.
  • Valur (the old farmer, Arnar’s father): The victim. He was found beside a hay bale.

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