CaptainEd

But I agree, my solution doesn't use the wilted lettuce, the grey meat, the spoon, the plate, or the towel. Did the murder happen earlier "today" (ie, the day of the evening in which Study of Scarlet and Sirloined Letter take place)?

Challenges: * Y-san says poison was ingested, so no accidental seppuku * Violet says nobody could get near Victor or his mise en place, so no poisoning his food or equipment. * B-kun the Infallible says that any of the partners could be implicated by the A, (and so could Violet, although more ambiguously), so therefore we can't tell who did it from the letter * B-kun says that the murderer probably removed the poisoned evidence. * Most of us are suspicious of Violet's manner when describing the murder scene, but Y-san rejects that kind of reasoning because it's really about the trickiness of the culprit. Other data: * Violet says the police learned that the three partners each had visited the kitchen, coming out with specific items. Perhaps we can actually believe her, and believe that she did NOT enter the kitchen until she found the body.

Assuming this is a standard letter multiplication problem (X multiplied by MAS to yield TREE), with each letter taking on a different digit from the set 0-9, with no leading zeroes, in decimal arithmetic...

Good job k-man! I sure did accidentally lose the "w". And, TSLF, that puzzle is a TDF (tour de force)!

It sure does, KevinK! Nice work, except...this implies en=1 (from twenty=20, tw=2, ty=10) o=1 (from one=1) ni=9 (from nine=9) t=10 (from ten=10) w=1/5 y=1

Witzar, from my myopic view, it does look like I have done so. But I've found that the Denizens are far more imaginative in their puzzle-making than I am, and I can easily imagine that TSLF has envisioned something more complex than "z" * "e" * "r" * "o" = 0, etc. I just can't imagine what it would be... Thanks for your support!

TSLF, is it true that fractional values are permitted? Also, did you ever see the numbers that dtdt wanted an explanation for? I didn't. I'm impressed that you were inspired by it.

10 (Roman) > ('mas',Spanish) 3 (Brooklyn) 10 > 3 is true, though uninteresting. I doubt this is the required interpretation...

Able: "Why does a Q always answer a question with another question?" Baker: "Why shouldn't a Q always answer a question with another question?"

Glad you like it, but now, in the absence of a poison scanner dog, what in the world was the solution you were envisioning?

Indeed, The solution discovered by you and Bushindo is immediately applicable to N colors and prisoners for any N, while Phaze's solution requires some additional conditions.

Kudos to Anza Power and Bushindo! It is surprising just how much can be performed by a team in collusion, but incommunicado!

I totally agree--Badhri's principle is much more practical in terms of masses.

Interesting problem, TSLF! Thanks.

I think I see it more clearly now--any number of coins always weighs strictly more than a smaller number of coins.

Good point. It would be nice to have a number of coins where there's a benefit to a multi-coin weighing. My solutions for single-coin weighings are 8 weighings for 5 coins, 11 weighings for 6.

K-man, you've clearly given it a lot of thought. I wonder if this number of weighings can resolve more than 4 coins.