The Last Roses — Daily puzzle for 2026-10-13

Easy — logic-grid deduction puzzle

On a crisp October morning, four helpers tidied the last roses in four beds of a walled garden and counted every faded bloom they cut.

On a crisp October morning in 1994, the last roses were fading in the walled garden at Fernley. Four helpers came with buckets and sharp snips to cut off the faded blooms. Margaret and Edwin were old hands, while Tom and Ruby were newcomers. Four rose beds ran in a row along the path: the gate bed just inside the entrance, then the well bed, the sundial bed, and last the wall bed against the far wall. Each helper looked after one bed, and each bed grew a rose of its own colour. The white and apricot roses were climbers, trained over arches; the red and pink roses were low bushes. Every faded bloom went into a bucket and was counted. Over tea they played a little game: a helper's next-door count was the blooms cut from the beds right beside their own. The gate and wall beds each had only one bed beside them, so a helper at either end counted just that one bed's blooms.

Clues

1. Whoever looked after the white rose ended up with a next-door count of 28.
2. Edwin's next-door count came to 51.
3. The helper who cut 28 blooms worked on one of the climbers, the white rose or the apricot rose.
4. Neither Margaret nor Edwin, the two old hands, looked after the sundial bed.
5. At tea, the helper who looked after the pink rose found their next-door count was 14.
6. Ruby had a next-door count of 33.
7. The wall bed went to neither of the newcomers, Tom and Ruby.

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