Tallies in the Players' Box

Very Hard — logic-grid deduction puzzle

Four guests kept count of their players' points in the box on finals day, and the steward's neighbour tallies are all that give away who sat where.

It was the last day of the grass-court tennis, and four players had made the two finals on the main court. Each player had one seat in the players' box to give to a guest, so Jack, Eleanor, Samuel and Florence sat one to a row. The front row was right beside the court. Then came the second row and the third row, and the back row was furthest away. Every guest held a different lucky charm and kept count of the points their own player won. No two counts came out the same. Between matches, the box steward turned it into a game. Next to each guest's name went a neighbour tally: the count from the row just ahead of that guest added to the count from the row just behind. A guest in the front row or the back row had a neighbour on one side only, so that guest's tally was just the one count. Then the steward left the guests to work out who had counted what.

Clues

  1. The steward's neighbour tally for Jack came to 149.
  2. Samuel sat closer to the court than both Eleanor and Jack.
  3. Either Samuel had the feather or Eleanor sat in the front row, but not both.
  4. The coin holder's count fell somewhere between the feather holder's count and the pebble holder's count.
  5. The feather holder and the pebble holder each counted fewer points than whoever held the ribbon.
  6. Only one of these was true: Eleanor held the coin, or Florence counted 88 points.
  7. If Jack held the coin, then Florence's count was 61.

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