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Scenedoku

Crime-scene logic cases

The Laundry

An old steam laundry · washing day · the owner was found at the mangle · Difficulty: Detective 5 · 8×8

Monday is washing day at Ventura's steam laundry, and the old building was full of steam and noise from dawn: the washtubs bubbled, the mangle creaked and the yard was white with drying sheets. Four workers kept the place running, and three customers had come in with their bundles – a hotel housekeeper, a waiter and a bride with her wedding dress. Ventura, the owner, was last seen going into the ironing room to check the irons heating on the stove. When the mangle fell silent, Amparo went to see why – and found him dead beside it. Nobody had left the building, so the police asked all seven where they had been.

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 counter, the shelf, the tree, the desk, the carpet-beating rail, the handcart, the laundry baskets, the washtubs, the rinsing trough, the table, the mangle and the stove) cannot be occupied; the benches and the stool 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

  • Amparo (ironer): A laundry basket was somewhere in her column.
  • Baltasar (washerman): Exactly one row north of him was a man.
  • Consuelo (washerwoman): She was beside the handcart.
  • Domingo (delivery man): There were exactly two other people in his area. He was in the last column.
  • Encarna (hotel housekeeper): She was sitting on a bench. She was alone with a laundry worker.
  • Fermín (a waiter collecting his uniforms): A washtub was somewhere in his column.
  • Graciela (a bride with her wedding dress): She was beside a washtub.
  • Ventura (owner of the laundry): The victim. He was found in the Ironing Room, beside the mangle – alone with the murderer.

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