The Standoff

A Chicago speakeasy · autumn 1928 · a truce with eight guns in the room · Difficulty: Chief 10 · 16×16

Autumn 1928, Chicago. Behind Iggy's barbershop is Vita's speakeasy: a bar, a dance floor, a card room and the cellar where the gin is made. Tonight the Northside and Southside gangs came to bury the hatchet, four gunmen each, and Vita hosted the truce. At midnight Vita lay dead in her office, beside the open safe.

Rules

1. No two gunmen were ever on the same diagonal.
2. Every row and every column holds exactly one person. As soon as you place someone, cross out their whole row and column.
3. “Beside” = directly left, right, above or below, and in the same area. Squares with objects (the mirrors, the sinks, the shelves, the coat racks, the crates, the barrels, the tables, the pillars, the instruments, the safe…) cannot be occupied; the barber chairs, the chairs, the bar stools, the sofas, the armchair and the bench can. An armchair and a barber chair are not chairs. 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.
4. Directions refer to rows and columns, not to the same line: “exactly one row north of her was a man” = the person in the row directly above is a man, in any column. Two people are on the same diagonal when they are as many rows apart as columns. The gunmen are the eight members of the two gangs.
5. “A chair was somewhere in her row” = a chair is on one of the squares of her row, in any area; the same goes for columns, and “somewhere in her area” = on a square of the area she was in. “He and Francesco were beside the same kind of thing” = beside objects of the same type; they need not be the same piece. “Somebody else was beside the same coat rack as him” = another person was beside the very same coat rack.
6. “She was the only woman beside a crate” = no other woman was beside any crate. “Beside a chair that nobody was sitting in” = at least one chair beside him was empty.
7. The murderer was alone with the victim: nobody else was in that area.

Statements

• Albin (the Northside boss): Somebody else was beside the same coat rack as him.
• Bart (a Northside gunman): A crate was somewhere in his area.
• Clint (a Northside gunman): He was sitting.
• Darlene (a Northside gunwoman): She was the only woman beside a crate. She was in a corner of her area.
• Edward (the Southside boss): He was in the Cellar.
• Francesco (a Southside gunman): There were exactly two other people in his area. He was beside a chair that nobody was sitting in.
• Gianni (a Southside gunman): He was in the Bar.
• Holly (a Southside gunwoman): There was a man in her area. A pillar was somewhere in her area.
• Iggy (the barber): A barber chair was somewhere in his column. He and Albin were on the same diagonal.
• Josie (the bartender): A barrel was somewhere in her area. She was alone in her area.
• Kathleen (the singer): Somebody else was beside the same coat rack as her.
• Lloyd (a stockbroker): He was on the Bandstand. He and Francesco were beside the same kind of thing.
• Martha (a flapper): A chair was somewhere in her row.
• Nancy (a reporter): Exactly one row north of her was a man. She was sitting in a chair.
• Odessa (a dancer): She was sitting in a chair. A barrel was somewhere in her row.
• Vita (the owner): The victim. She was found in the Office, beside the safe – alone with the murderer.

← Cases