One Name Left: The Ward Was Never Empty

The ward was never empty. So somebody was always awake.

The night shift at the Ellesmere runs from the last round to the first light, and the doors stay locked until the morning bell. Somebody is awake on every floor, the porter keeps a book of who is inside, and nobody walks out of a locked infirmary. When something happens in those hours, whoever did it is still in the building.

Twenty cases, and every one of them ends on a single name

Each case gives you a roster of suspects and a short set of clues. Every clue is true. Cross out the people who cannot fit and keep going until one name is left. The first case is a five-clue warm-up with twenty-two suspects. The last is eleven clues and forty-eight.

Every puzzle in this book was checked by computer

All 151 clues were tested against all 672 suspects by a solver written separately from the program that built the puzzles. Two things are true of every case here. Exactly one suspect survives all the clues. And no clue is filler: remove any single clue and more than one suspect survives.

If you have ever finished one of these books and found names left over that no clue accounted for, that is the problem this one was built to solve.

A rule-out grid for every case

Most books hand you a wall of names and wish you luck. This one gives you a grid first: strike a value the moment a clue kills it, then sweep the roster once. It is how these puzzles are actually solved.

What is inside

• 20 cases in one infirmary, from a stolen ward book to a murder on the last round of the night.
• 672 suspects in all, and every one is a real candidate until a clue rules them out.
• A short story with every case. Not a bare list of names: a crime, a setting, and a reason to care who did it.
• A worked example at the front, solved step by step, so you know exactly how the clues behave before you start.
• Room to write on the page, and a record at the back to log what you solved.
• Full solutions at the back, never printed on a facing page.
• No arithmetic anywhere. Not one clue asks you to add, count or calculate.

8.5 by 11 inches, 98 pages. Book 3 of One Name Left. Each volume stands alone.