The Lost Exam Page

Hard — logic-grid deduction puzzle

Kieran, Maeve, Silas and Vivian had to rebuild a lost page of the exam record before their results could be signed off.

At the shorthand exam, four candidates took turns at the desk while the examiner read a passage aloud, and each one raced to copy every word down. Each candidate also put a small shorthand mark on the page, and no two used the same one. The examiner numbered the turns one to four and kept a record of each. When the exam was over, one page of that record had gone missing, and with it the list of who went when, who copied what, and which mark was whose. Kieran and Maeve tried to remember the order of the turns. Silas sorted through the stack of shorthand pages, and Vivian found a scribbled note in the margin of the examiner's pad. Nobody's results could be signed off until the record was whole again.

Clues

1. Kieran and Maeve took their turns one right after the other.
2. Maeve, the candidate who used the hook and the candidate who used the loop were three different people.
3. Kieran's turn number and Vivian's turn number added up to five.
4. The turn numbers of the ruling and the sworn statement added up to three.
5. The turn numbers of the circle mark and the hook mark added up to four.
6. The sworn statement and the hook mark fell in two different turns whose numbers added up to three.
7. The testimony page carried the loop mark.
8. At least one of these was true: Kieran went before the candidate who used the circle, or Silas went right before or right after the candidate who copied the testimony.

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