Before Lift-Off

A balloon festival meadow · dawn, minutes before the mass ascent · no rooms, no walls – and the murderer was one corner away · Difficulty: Chief 9 · 16×16

At dawn the meadow of the balloon festival was crowded with baskets, envelopes spread out on the grass, gas bottles and roaring fans: at sunrise the whole field was to rise together. Valter, the festival’s chief pilot, was to give the signal – instead he was found dead beside a balloon basket, strangled with a tether line. There are no rooms and no walls on the meadow, and yet nobody saw a thing: in the half-light everybody was busy with their own balloon. Fifteen people were out on the grass: five pilots, five members of the ground crew and five guests. The murderer was the only one a single corner away from him. Read every statement, find everyone’s square and work out who was that close to Valter.

Rules

This scene has no rooms: the whole meadow is a single area.
The murderer was the only person on a square diagonally adjacent to the victim’s square.
Every row and every column holds exactly one person. As soon as you place someone, cross out their whole row and column.
“Beside” = directly left, right, above or below. Squares with objects (the balloon baskets, the balloon envelopes, the gas bottles, the fans, the sandbags, the trees, the hedges, the flagpoles, the crates, the handcarts, the tables, the cool boxes, the signpost, the tents) cannot be occupied; the seats – the hay bales, the camping chairs, the benches and the logs – can: whoever is on a seat was sitting.
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.
“A handcart was somewhere in her column” = a handcart is on one of the squares of her column.
Directions refer to rows and columns, not to the same line: “Exactly one row north of her was a man” = the person in the row directly above hers is a man, in any column.
“He and Joost 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. “Somebody else was beside the same gas bottle as him” = another person was beside that very gas bottle.

Statements

Alvar (Swedish champion): He and Joost were beside the same kind of thing.
Berit (Norwegian rival): She was beside a gas bottle. Exactly one row north of her was a man.
Casper (Dutch newcomer): He was beside a bench.
Dóra (local favourite): There was a man on a square diagonally adjacent to her square. She was sitting.
Evelin (last year’s winner): She was beside a gas bottle.
Flórián (burner mechanic): He was beside a balloon basket. Nobody was on a square diagonally adjacent to his square.
Gerda (chase-car driver): Exactly one row south of her was a woman. She was sitting.
Hajnal (meteorologist): She was the only woman beside a cool box.
Ivett (envelope seamstress): She was sitting.
Joost (gas supplier): There was a man on a square diagonally adjacent to his square. He was sitting on a bench.
Károly (mayor): He was beside a crate.
Liv (photographer): A handcart was somewhere in her column.
Magnus (sponsor): He was beside a hedge. Somebody else was beside the same camping chair as him.
Noémi (reporter): Exactly one person was on a square diagonally adjacent to her square. Somebody else was beside the same sandbag as her.
Osvald (retired balloonist): Somebody else was beside the same gas bottle as him.
Valter (the festival’s chief pilot): The victim. He was found beside a balloon basket.

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