Hanging the Winter Show — Daily puzzle for 2026-10-25
Very Hard — logic-grid deduction puzzle
Three painters each had one portrait hung in a London gallery's winter show, and one of the hanging clerk's three notes was wrong.
Late in the autumn of 1884, a London gallery was getting ready for its big winter show. Three young painters, Edwin, Harriet and Lucy, each had one portrait chosen for it. The gallery had three rooms in a line, counted from the front door. In every room the pictures hung in three rows, one above another, from near the floor almost to the ceiling. Each portrait had its own sitter, its own frame and its own background. The hanging clerk dashed from room to room with a pencil and wrote three quick notes on the plan before the doors opened. In all that rush, one of the notes came out wrong.
Clues
Note A: The portrait in the second room was not in the gold frame.
Note B: The portrait of the admiral, the one in the oak frame and the one with the grey background were three different paintings.
Note C: Of the portraits of the bishop and the widow, one hung in the second room and the other was painted by Harriet.
Of the clerk's notes A, B and C, only one was wrong.
No two of these were the same portrait: the one hanging in the second room, the portrait of the widow, and the one with the brown background.
Only one of these was true: the portrait of the admiral hung in the second room; the portrait in the ebony frame hung there; Edwin's portrait hung on the top row.
Of these three, two were true and one was false: Edwin's portrait hung in the first room; the portrait with the crimson background hung on the bottom row; the one with the brown background hung on the top row.
Either the portrait of the bishop hung in the third room or it had the grey background, but not both.
Only one of these was true: Harriet's portrait had the crimson background; the portrait in the oak frame had the grey background; whatever hung in the second room was on the middle row.
Edwin painted one of the portraits of the admiral and the widow, and the other one hung on the middle row.
Read the clues, rule out what cannot be, and prove what must be. Every GRIDIGMA puzzle is verified by a solver that shows the reasoning behind each step, so a solution is never a guess.