The Lakeside Sauna

Savonia, Finland · a July evening · the sauna builder's last steam · Difficulty: Rookie 2 · 6×6

A July evening at the Halonens' summer cottage on a lake in Savonia. The wood-fired sauna had been heating since the afternoon, and the sun hardly set at all. When the last steam had cleared, old Väinö, who had built the sauna with his own hands fifty years earlier, was found dead. The birch whisk stayed on its nail.

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 sauna stove, the coat rack, the washtub, the firewood, the table, the fir trees, the rock and the reeds) cannot be occupied; the benches and the deckchair can.
3. The murderer was alone with the victim: nobody else was in that area.

Statements

• Aleksi (a forestry student, Väinö's grandson): He was on the Lakeshore.
• Brita (a piano teacher, Väinö's daughter-in-law): She was in the first row, but not beside the sauna stove.
• Charlotta (a lawyer from Helsinki): She was sitting in the deckchair.
• Dimitri (the neighbour, a fisherman): He was in the Changing Room.
• Eila (a nurse from the village): She was beside the table.
• Väinö (a retired sauna builder, the host): The victim. He was found in the Sauna, beside a bench – alone with the murderer.

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