Sherlock Holmes Puzzle

February 2, 2022

Find the Killer: Sherlock Holmes Puzzle

Solve the Sherlock Holmes Puzzle given below.
Premise:-

There were 6 people in an elevator A, B, C, D ,E and F. Suddenly the light went out. When it came on, A was found dead. Detectives arrived and interrogated everyone, the witnesses, suspects, people who knew the suspects, but could not find any clue as who the killer was.

Ultimately the case was taken to the famous detective Sherlock Holmes. He came on the crime scene, and did some investigation, and was able to draw the following deductions.

Sherlock holmes puzzle with solution

Deductions:-

  1. All the suspects have different weight, shoe color, umbrella, car or hair color.
  2. Suspect who had tan shoes owns a pink car.
  3. Suspect with an orange car weighs 90 kg.
  4. C owns an orange car.
  5. Suspect with a blue car had a pair of purple shoes on.
  6. Suspect wearing tan shoes weighed 75 kg.
  7. D had a pink umbrella.
  8. F has black hair.
  9. B weighs 110 kg.
  10. The suspect who weighs 95 kg was wearing purple shoes.
  11. The suspect with black umbrella did not have blue shoes.
  12. The killer has a blue car.
  13. The suspect with white car does not weigh 85kgs
  14. E was wearing brown shoes.
  15. The suspect who weighs 95 kg does not have black hair.

Question:

Using these deductions, how was Sherlock Holmes able to find the killer?

Detailed Solution

D is the killer. How? Let’s examine the clues again. Since there were 5 suspects, and each of them had different weight, shoe, umbrella, car and hair, we can start by forming a table to sort the given data:-
  • We can exclude A, as he is the victim
weight shoe umbrella car hair
B 110kg(#9)
C 90kg(#3) orange(#4)
D pink(#7)
E brown(#14)
F black(#8)
  • From deduction number #12 #11 and #5. We can say that the killer, who has a blue car, was wearing purple shoes, weighs 95kg and does not have black hair.
  • From the table we know that:
    • C has an orange car so C is cleared.
    • E was wearing brown shoes so E is cleared
    • B weighs 110 kg so B is cleared
    • F has black hair so F is cleared.
    • All this leaves D, therefore we can conclude that D is the killer.
Detailed solution for Sherlock Holmes Puzzle