Night Shift

A distribution centre · the night shift · every scanner logs in along one row or one column · Difficulty: Chief 10 · 16×16

Dock 16, a distribution centre beside the motorway, two in the morning. The night shift is racing to make up the peak-season backlog: pickers, three forklifts, a packing line that never stops. At the start of the shift Vlad, the shift manager, gave everyone a numbered scanner card. At ten past two he did not answer his radio: he lay dead in Goods-In, beside a crate. The shift did not end that day.

Rules

1. Everyone was given a numbered card (1–16), each card bears a different number, and everyone was in the row or column whose number is on their card.
2. Rows are numbered from top to bottom, columns from left to right, 1 to 16, as on the edge of the board.
3. Every row and every column holds exactly one person. As soon as you place someone, cross out their whole row and column.
4. Rows are numbered 1–16 from top to bottom, columns 1–16 from left to right, as along the edges of the board. Every card shows a different number from 1 to 16.
5. “Beside” = directly left, right, above or below, and in the same area. Squares with objects (the shelves, the crates, the forklifts, the conveyor belt, the cones, the lockers, the tables, the barrels…) cannot be occupied; the chairs, the benches and the stools can. A corner of an area is a square of it that faces outwards (another area or the edge of the board) on a horizontal and on a vertical side.
6. Directions refer to rows, not to the same column: “exactly one row north of him was a man” = the person in the row directly above is a man, in any column.
7. “A chair was somewhere in her row” = a chair is on one of the squares of her row, in any area; “somewhere in his area” = on a square of the area he was in. “Right beside an area where nobody was” = a square directly left, right, above or below him belongs to another area, and nobody was in that area.
8. “She was the only woman beside a cone” = no other woman was beside any cone. The office workers are Melinda, Nils, Odessa and Vlad.
9. The murderer was alone with the victim: nobody else was in that area.

Statements

• Audrey (a picker): There was exactly one other person in her area.
• Brice (a picker): He was in the Cold Store.
• Claudia (a picker): She was the only woman beside a cone.
• Derrick (a picker): He was alone in his area. A locker was somewhere in his area.
• Enya (a picker, on her first shift): A crate was somewhere in her row. She was not in a corner of her area.
• Franklin (a forklift driver): He was beside a shelf.
• Goldie (a forklift driver): She was beside a shelf.
• Hunter (a forklift driver): There was an office worker in his area.
• Ivana (a packer): She was not alone in her area.
• Jonah (a packer): He was alone in his area.
• Kiara (a packer): A chair was somewhere in her row.
• Liam (a packer): Exactly one row north of him was a man. He was beside a crate.
• Melinda (the shift supervisor): A chair was somewhere in her row.
• Nils (the security guard): He was right beside an area where nobody was.
• Odessa (the dispatcher): Somebody else in her area was beside a cone.
• Vlad (the night-shift manager): The victim. He was found in Goods-In, beside a crate – alone with the murderer.

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