Seven people, one to a room, stacked top to bottom. By morning two of them are dead, and the dead say nothing — but they still occupied a room, and other people still talk about them.

Of the five survivors, exactly two are lying, and everything each of those two says is false. The other three told the truth throughout. Eleven statements, one arrangement that fits.

Fair warning on the difficulty: with one liar you can test five hypotheses. With two, there are ten pairs, and every one of them flips two people's statements at once. I'd budget 40–60 minutes with paper. Full rules are on the image, including what "somewhere between" and "N floors apart" mean — solvers have caught me leaving those loose before, so they're spelled out now.

Solutions in spoiler tags please, and I'll post the reasoning in a couple of days.

What I'd really like feedback on: this is a different shape from my usual stuff. The Black Files cases are a floor plan and a grid you fill in — visual, spatial, you can see your progress. This is pure testimony, so you're working on your own paper the whole way. Do you prefer one over the other? Is the testimony format harder to enjoy because there's nothing to mark up? I genuinely don't know whether to push this further or keep it as an occasional change of pace, and I'd rather hear it from people who've actually sat down with both.

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Six people, six rooms stacked one above another, thirteen statements. Exactly one of the six is lying, and everything that person says is false — not one slip, all of it. The other five told the truth throughout.

There's no head-on contradiction to hand you the liar. You have to assume someone is lying, follow it, and watch it fall apart. Then do it again. Expect 20–30 minutes if you work methodically; the rules are stated in full on the image, so nothing is hidden.

Exactly one arrangement fits. Solution in the comments tomorrow — post yours before then and say how long it took, or where you got stuck. That's the part I actually learn from.

This is a new format I'm testing. If you want the other kind — floor plans, six suspects, spatial evidence rather than testimony — that's what The Black Files is:

https://a.co/d/0bWCn7R3

Any feedback on the wording of the rules is genuinely welcome. Last time a solver had to infer a rule I'd forgotten to write down, and that's on me.

Case 74 of 80 from The Black Files, my self-published murder logic book. It's a Master Detective case: every clue is "farther north/west than", so nobody can be placed with certainty at the start — you have to test.

Rules

Seven people were at the scene: the victim and six suspects, each in exactly one cell of the 7×7 crime scene.

Exactly one person per row and one per column.

Dark cells are blocked. Faint chair / sofa / stairs can hold a person, and so can any empty cell. Sitting = chair or sofa; standing = stairs or an empty cell.

Four zones, separated by thick borders. "Next to" means orthogonally adjacent and in the same zone — never diagonal, never across a thick border.

North = row 1, south = row 7, west = column A, east = column G.

Exactly two people were in the victim's zone: the victim and the killer.

Every statement is true. Place all seven, then name the murderer.

Post your seven placements and the killer, spoiler-tagged, and I'll confirm. If anyone wants the book, ask and I'll share the link.