Left at the Baths — Daily puzzle for 2026-10-04

Very Hard — logic-grid deduction puzzle

At closing time in 1911, four attendants each cleaned one room of the Harrogate Turkish baths and picked up something a bather had left behind, but one line in the lost-property book was false.

Harrogate, 1911. It was closing time on a busy Saturday at the town's Turkish baths. Four rooms ran in a row from the entrance, each one hotter than the one before, from the first room to the fourth. Albert, Walter, Harold and Percy went round one last time. Each of them cleaned a different room with a different tool, and each picked up one thing a bather had left behind. The manager's clerk wrote down what they reported in the lost-property book. But it had been a long day, and three of the lines the clerk wrote are in doubt. One of those three is false. Sort out what really happened, and every lost thing can go back to its owner.

Clues

  1. Line A: Albert, whoever carried the bucket and whoever found the key were three different people.
  2. Line B: of Harold and Albert, one found the key and the other carried the brush.
  3. Line C: if Percy did not carry the brush, then the attendant in the third room carried the sponge.
  4. Only one of lines A, B and C was false.
  5. Two of these three were true, and one was false: the attendant in the first room carried the bucket; Albert found the key; the attendant in the fourth room carried the sponge.
  6. The ring was picked up in an earlier room than both the slipper and the key.
  7. Only one of these was true: whoever carried the bucket found the slipper; Albert carried the brush; the comb turned up in the second room.
  8. If the comb was not found in the fourth room, then Albert found the ring.
  9. Harold carried the sponge if Percy did not clean the third room.
  10. Of these three, two were true and one was false: Albert carried the brush; Albert found the slipper; Walter cleaned the first room.

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