The Murder at High Noon

Gameboards
#4

Ah, yes: the usual queries. We will dance to this tune, as usual.

There is only one entrance to the roof: the roof access door mentioned in the narrative. No human entered the roof without passing through that sole entrance.

For clarification, I see no reason to refuse a few of these Red:

For the purposes of this Game, glass does float on blood; it is consistent with glass falling onto the body from above.

The window was indeed open air, unless a) it was bad weather, in which case it would close via a mechanical steel grate, not unlike a retractable roof; or b) the glass panel mentioned in the narrative has been pulled over it.

However, regarding the gap offered by the window: I refuse! cacklecackle

It was plenty big for a human to squeeze through! But it won’t matter in the end; it was magic which killed him, after all! Eheheh!

I won’t refute your blue, as it stands; I have no need to! After all, it is my contention that the mentioned bowman (“someone”) is the God of the Sun! Perhaps your blue is true, after all. cacklecackle

#5

Repetition requested: This “mechanical steel grate” did not close for the whole of the day of the murder.

#6

The aforementioned mechanical steel grate did not close at all during this Game!

#7

Can you really leave that window gap open?

Any visitor could have stolen the doctor’s keycard and then used it to access the roof. Then all they had to do is shoot from there, climb down and quickly return the card, climb back up, and leave. (If leaving the roof without the card was an issue they could have stuck something in the door to keep it from closing.)

It’s not really clear whether there are cameras watching the staircases to the roof, so if there are I guess you can ignore this one.

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#8

Good good, I would expect no less from such a master of the board.

Time to light the fire, this’ll be over before I have to turn them!

There is only one entrance to the roof: the roof access door mentioned in the narrative.

Are there any other means of accessing the roof which non humans could utilize? I’ll ask it in the form of a request.

Repetition requested: No creature or object could access the roof by any means aside from the roof access door.

Time for a retooling:

Dr Jeremiah was killed by a human on the roof who fired an arrow at him through the window. They then shattered a prepared panel of glass to leave shards on the victim’s body.

Repetition requested: Dr Jeremiah was killed after Eleven o’clock prime meridian on June 19, 19XX.

Repetition requested: Dr Jeremiah was killed after 45 minutes past Eleven o’clock prime meridian on June 19, 19XX.

Repetition requested: The above reds refer to the timezone the murder took place in.

Repetition requested: Every location relevant to the murder (aside from Egypt) is in the same timezone.

Repetition requested: The murder does not take place in Egypt.

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#9

Dr. Snell’s keycard remained on his person, within the living room, all the way through 11:45. In addition, recall this portion of the narrative:

[quote=“ghagler, post:2, topic:1030”]
Everyone who entered that room that day had already left by 11:45, with the sole exception of the victim. Excluding the hole in the ceiling, there were no other entrances to the steel-ringed room but the front door; and while the front door itself wasn’t constantly watched, all paths to this inner sanctum were.[/quote]

This, as mentioned previously, may be considered as Red. So how, then, could his keycard have been stolen?

By magic, of course! Eheheheheh!

I will be gracious and clarify more:

No non-human object related to this Game could access the roof by any means aside from the roof access door. The same goes for humans.

Dr. Snell was murdered between 11:50 AM and 12:00 noon of June 19, 19XX, as told in the narrative; this will be referred to as “high noon” in subsequent Reds. These times correspond to the same times, timezone, and other ways of measuring time as told in the narrative. Every location relevant to the murder is referred to in these same times, timezones, et cetera, besides Egypt, but the murder does not take place in Egypt.

As for your theory:

Of all humans capable of murder, only the three interviewed characters (Dr. Kenneth James Arnold, Professor Jameson Wren, and the General) could have committed this murder.

But how did they get to the roof?

Welcome to Rokkenjima
#10

My first suspect is the General if only because of his slip-up about being less depressed as soon as he heard about Dr. Snell being murdered. I doubt Jameson Wren is the murderer, a man who hasn’t seen the victim in ages and only came to catch up on old times hardly has a motive for murder, now would he?

The mystery of the glass panel is hardly an issue with our current information. Dr. Snell removed the glass panel himself. It’s very possible he even had it on his person when he was murdered, and it shattered just as or after he was murdered. This explains why the message didn’t show up that day, and how the glass panel was removed even though ‘no one could have removed it’.

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#11

Here’s my twisted bizarre blue! I apologize for the lack of proper respect shown to your board ghagler, but I can’t let this possibility slip away.

“Dr. Snell’s Keycard” and “Dr. Snell’s personal Keycard” are two different things, due to bizarre naming convention X. Therefore, the roof could still be unlocked by a killer even when “Dr. Snell’s keycard” remains in the room.

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#12

Eheheh—suspicion of such treachery is wise. Alas:

There is only one kind of keycard, which both statements of “Dr. Snell’s Keycard” and “Dr. Snell’s personal Keycard” refer to.

(To clarify in case of confusion: the glass panel could not have been on the window before high noon, as the message would’ve rather obviously appeared at some angle inside the room, which it did not.)

Dr. Snell did not remove the glass panel at any point on the day he died.

#13

Oh please. He removed it the day before the incident.

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#14

Ha! Very well:

Dr. Snell did not remove the glass panel at any point on the day he died, nor did he have it on him. The glass panel was on the roof, though not covering the window, at the beginning of that same day.

#15

Hmm~ now isn’t that interesting. On that day, the glass panel had been deliberately set up to fall at high noon. It shattered on Dr. Snell’s head with the shards giving him a fatal injury. One of the suspects stuck an arrow in the skull afterwards to mask the true method of murder.

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#16

Getting creative, Battler! Eheheh—but how would one have stabbed this arrow into his heart? No one else existed inside the living room during the period from the beginning of high noon till the camera infallibly saw Dr. Snell dead, with the arrow piercing his heart!

(Note: I fixed an inconsistency in the narrative where one sentence said the arrow pierced his heart and another said it pierced his skull. Both say heart now.)

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#17

could access

Then explain how an arrow fired from a nearby plane could not reach the roof. If not then we might have a logic error…

#18

“related to the Game” implies that, even if such an arrow were to be fired, it would have no effect on the Game. Or, if it would have an effect on the Game, it could not be fired for some reason.

This naturally includes someone firing an arrow from a plane and killing Dr. Snell.

#19

Time for some unlikely guesses, going with Karifean’s falling glass pane theory.

The arrow was set up to fall together with the glass. Heck, maybe it was connected to the pane to add extra weight and make it more likely it’d fall with enough force to pierce the heart.

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#20

The arrow entered Dr. Snell through a direct act of another; it was not set in motion by any kind of trap or by gravity.

#21

Very well. Take this one, then.

The General stabbed Dr. Snell with the arrow before high noon began. It didn’t pierce all the way through his heart yet, and the victim did not even notice he had been stabbed due to his back pain medication. The falling glass pane then pushed it in further

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#22

The arrow did not pierce or touch Dr. Snell’s skin before high noon! This includes fringe cases of strange contraptions or mechanics that would allow the arrow to take an inordinate amount of time to actually hit him after being set in motion. The arrow both was initially set in motion and pierced his skin at high noon!

#23

Okay, brilliant myster there ghagler. And I probably will not be able to solve this that easily… :stuck_out_tongue:

Okay so, by 11.45, the victim was the only one in the room.

Repeat it: When saying everybody who entered the room left by 11.45 with the exception of the victim, all of these people left using the front door!

We know that until 11.45 the keycard was on Dr. Snell, in the living room. May I ask which period of time this holds? Or rather, did Dr. Snell have it on his person the entire day?

There is also the matter of the past. For several months even, this message was visible at high noon precisely. So somebody must have had it everyday.

Or… A much simpler solution. On the day of the murder, the roof access door was never locked!

Thereby evading the need to get/replace the keycard from Dr. Snell.

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