soop

Try starting in the corner; that limits your initial cover, but it gets complicated fast.

THat part is fine because (as you say) of the "wall". However there does need to be a knight on B3 in the picture otherwise C2 can escape.

yeah - I just read my post - I ****ed it up again O_o. Yes, your post is EXACTLY what I meant. Apologies to everyone who's read this so far - can we get a mod to tidy this up? I can't edit the first post anymore.

No; if one knight is in the corner and in check from another knight, he still has 1 other square he can escape to. However, in this puzzle, escaping to that square will put him in check again. So you start with one knight, and you need at least 2 knights to cover the first. But then you need to cover the other two knights, etc etc.

Yeah, I gave the hint about tasting as he expected it to taste, but perhaps that was too vague. The basic premise I started out with was to start with an impossible crime, and then thinkup circumstances in which it could happen. In this case it was 'someone commits murder over a year after they themself die'. Poison was an obvious candidate, the sugar I believe I got from an episode of columbo, and from there the main difficulty lay in the how the murderer would ingest his own poison, knowing that he would be unlikely to do so knowingly. Firstly I considered that he may have handled it improperly and been poisoned through skin contact, and then I considered the bitter medicine. The next difficulty lay in convincing the reader (you) that Antionette was not likely to be the murderer. The Aunt doubled up here, by a) not being present at the time of Josephs death, and also providing the time factor. From there on, everything else was pretty much garnish. To be honest, I was woried that it was too vague entirely, as apart from mentioning they take tea, sugar is not mentioned at all, let alone the mention of what the medicine actually tasted of. However, if I do another one, I'll be sure to factor these in (to be honest it could also use some proof reading and a bit more than just a couple of hours work).

Oooops... I was going to make it: What is the minimum number of knights you can place knights on a chessboard (using their regular movement pattern) so they fullfill the following critera: 1 - Each knight is in check from another night 2 - No knight cannot escape from check But for some reason I considered them to render the same result. Does that one make more sense? Sorry for being dumb :#

What did you think generally? I was worried to begin with that it was a bit too obscure,but I was stunned when all the observations were picked up. I actually thought you might get it last night Chuck (and to be honest, I kind of wanted the chance to post the story first). *edit* yeah, if you look back at some of the answers you can see how close everyone was. I forgot to add at the end of the story, that obviously if Antionette were the murderer, she would have disposed of the arsenic-laced sugar.

Another chess question. On a regular chessboard, what is the minimum number of knights you can place so that each knight (using its regular movement pattern) is in check by another knight.

It's because he was so feverish, he didn't know what's going on. And cough syrup these days has sugar in it (or sweetners and flavourings). I really wanted to call the puzzle "a spoonful of sugar" (as in "helps the medicine go down") - but that would have given it away. And arsenic never leaves your body. Although you can withstand a bit, it's an element, and it's deadly in small doses. I'd hypothesize that a spoonful mixed into the whole sugarbowl would have been enough for all concerned, and in one of its forms, it comes as a white crystaline powder - making sugar an excellent concealer.

This one is great

Thankyou, goodnight Taliesin!

I've heard something similar before, so I'm pretty sure of the answer. I'll leave this for someone else, but I will say this: I'm from England, so I would never have heard of the St. James Place Hotel.

I believe the answer is: I like these. Keep 'em coming!

Ah, I have it;

Just an interesting aside; I was in the pub one night, and one of the tables had a chess board printed on it. As far as I remember, I put empty glasses on the board in a way that: 1. There were as many glasses on the table that there could possibly be given that 2. If the glasses could have the same moves as every chess piece, no one piece could take another. It was some time ago, but I believe there were about 7 or 8 glasses. (bearing in mind that this was late on a Friday night, years ago, but it could make for an interesting puzzle). *edit* so far, I can only get 6

oh, also, any comments, solutions, suggestions, please post them here. I already have a rough outline for the next one.

Thankyou all for taking part. And now, for the solution:

last thing before tomorrow - the medicine tasted how he would expect it to taste. what would you expect the medicine taste like?

very clever! but, unfortunately, incorrect. there is after all a murderer, is there not?

Dupin was just sceptical about unscientific explanations, that's why he decided "the hand of man" was involved. I haven't used the letter R until just now in this post.

Hey, posting fom my phone. Just thought I'd add, no-one has it yet, but the main thing is, I'm surprised that many of you have bought up very important observations. If there's a particular point which makes you think "but why?!", it's important.

good work, I'm off - answers tomorrow? And good work chuck. you're the most likely to get it with that thinking.