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Scenedoku

Crime-scene logic cases

The Skating Pond

A village skating pond · a winter evening · the warming hut went cold · Difficulty: Detective 5 · 8×8

When the village pond freezes over, Villő opens her warming hut on the bank: mulled wine on the stove, benches around it, skates for hire next door. That evening four skaters were out – a hockey player, a figure skater, a speed skater and a beginner – and Villő's three helpers, the ice keeper, the rental attendant and the mulled-wine seller, were somewhere around the pond. Villő herself went inside to feed the stove. When the skaters came in frozen an hour later, the hut was cold and dark, and the owner lay dead beside the stove. The lanterns had lit the whole pond all evening, so everybody could say where they had been.

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 fir trees, the mulled-wine kettle, the skate racks, the stove, the counter, the signpost, the lanterns, the marker cones, the campfire, the barrel and the snowman) cannot be occupied; the benches and the sled 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 is a woman, in any column.
  4. The murderer was alone with the victim: nobody else was in that area.

Statements

  • Ajtony (hockey player): The counter was somewhere in his row. Exactly one row north of him was a man.
  • Bíborka (figure skater): She was the westernmost person in her area. She was beside a marker cone.
  • Celesztin (a beginner on skates): He was alone with a woman.
  • Dömötör (speed skater): The counter was somewhere in his column.
  • Edina (skate-rental attendant): She was beside the campfire.
  • Farkas (ice keeper): He was beside a bench.
  • Gyopár (mulled-wine seller): She was in the last column.
  • Villő (owner of the warming hut): The victim. She was found in the Warming Hut, beside the stove – alone with the murderer.

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