Pit Stop

Monza, Saturday evening · the garage after qualifying · pole position and an empty cockpit · Difficulty: Officer 4 · 6×6

Monza, Saturday evening of the Italian Grand Prix. At eight o’clock the pit lane fell quiet, and Valentina, who had just taken pole position, was nowhere to be found. Six people were in the team’s corner of the paddock that evening, Valentina included. She was found dead. Nobody celebrated the pole position.

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 scoreboard, the cone, the racing car, the tyre stacks, the cart, the computer and the desk) cannot be occupied; the stools and the chair 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 was a woman, in any column; “the northernmost person in her area” = nobody else in her area was in a row further up.
4. The murderer was alone with the victim: nobody else was in that area. The victim made no statement – her square, too, follows from the others’.

Statements

• Alessandro (race engineer): He was beside a tyre stack. The desk was somewhere in his row.
• Beatrice (chief mechanic): She was the only one beside the racing car.
• Carlo (team principal): He was beside a stool.
• Donatella (press officer): She was in a corner of her area. Exactly two rows north of her was somebody beside the cart.
• Enzo (the second driver): The cart was not in his area.
• Valentina (the lead driver): The victim. She was alone with the murderer.

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