The resort was far too charming a place for such a senseless, smelly crime. Seven rustic bungalows, four of them on a lagoon (A through D), two on the oceanfront (F and G) and one in the middle (E), were connected by pathways as shown on the map below. A fisherman saw a sinister-looking man carrying a large basket approach the resort from the lagoon and sneak into one of the bungalows bordering that body of water. The man then stalked along the pathways from one bungalow to the next, leaving rotting fish everywhere.

Police detectives determined from a set of muddy footprints that the vandal had traveled along each pathway exactly once. The detectives saw no footprints leading away from the resort, so they concluded that the fishy character was still hiding in one of the bungalows. Unfortunately, the footprints on the pathways were so indistinct that the detectives couldn't tell the direction in which they pointed. What is more, the fisherman couldn't remember which of the four bungalows on the lagoon the criminal had first entered. The police were therefore unable to retrace the fiend's route¿all they knew was that he'd never walked the same pathway twice.

This article was originally published with the title Something Fishy.

Comments