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Crime-scene logic cases

The Jazz Cellar

A cellar club in Saint-Germain-des-Prés · Paris, 1959, between two sets · the gramophone kept turning · Difficulty: Detective 6 · 9×9

Paris, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, 1959. In the vaulted cellar the quartet had just finished its first set; a champagne tower sparkled on the bar, a critic, a record producer and a film actress sat among the guests, and everybody was talking about the saxophonist from New Orleans. Valéry, the owner of the club, had withdrawn to his office to listen to a test pressing – and to decide whose contract he would not renew. When the band was called for the second set, the gramophone was still turning, and Valéry lay beside it. Everyone in the cellar gives a statement – find out who was alone with him.

Rules

  1. Only members of the band were on the Stage.
  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 champagne tower, the piano, the drum kit, the safe, the desk, the microphone, the double bass, the bar counters, the gramophone, the potted palm, the tables, the pillars, the mirror, the coat rack and the lamp) cannot be occupied; the bar stools, the armchair and the sofas 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

  • Armande (the singer): The potted palm was somewhere in her column. Somebody in her area was beside the piano.
  • Baptiste (the pianist): He was not in the Bar.
  • Clarence (the saxophonist from New Orleans): He was in a corner of his area.
  • Dominique (the double-bass player): She was the only woman beside a pillar.
  • Edmond (a music critic): He was the only man beside a pillar.
  • Francine (a film actress): The armchair was somewhere in her column.
  • Germain (a record producer): He was beside a table. Exactly one row north of him was a man.
  • Huguette (the cloakroom attendant): She was not in the Bar.
  • Valéry (the owner of the club): The victim. He was found in the Office, beside the gramophone – alone with the murderer.

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