The Puppet Theatre

A small puppet theatre · after the evening show · the director was found behind the scenes · Difficulty: Detective 5 · 8×8

The little puppet theatre had just given the last performance of its season, and the applause was still ringing when the lights went down. Four puppeteers were putting the puppets away, and three guests had stayed behind for a glass of wine with the company – a critic, a schoolteacher and a mother whose children had seen the show four times. Václav, the director, went backstage to lock the chest with the oldest puppets, as he did after every show. He did not come back for the toast; Dorota found him dead beside the chest. The doors had been locked since the audience left, so the puppeteers and the guests were asked where they had been.

Rules

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, and in the same area. Squares with objects (the wardrobe, the curtains, the costume rack, the chest, the spotlight, the ladder, the folding screen, the dressmaker’s dummy, the sewing machine, the lantern, the potted plant, the counter and the poster) cannot be occupied; the chairs, the stool and the benches can.
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.
The murderer was alone with the victim: nobody else was in that area.

Statements

Adéla (puppeteer, the voice of the princess): She was not in the Workshop.
Bedřich (chief puppeteer): A chair was somewhere in his column.
Ctibor (puppet maker): There was at least one other person in his area.
Dorota (puppeteer and seamstress): Exactly one row north of her was a woman. She was the only one beside the potted plant.
Evžen (a theatre critic): There was another man in his area. He was sitting on a bench.
Františka (a schoolteacher): She was the only one beside a bench.
Gabriela (a mother of two): A chair was somewhere in her row.
Václav (director of the theatre): The victim. He was found backstage, beside the chest – alone with the murderer.

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