The room clue: in a room, not in a room

What the clue says

The board is cut into rooms by thick walls. Each room has its own floor and its own name, written in one of its cells. A room clue names one of those rooms. The person stood on one of its free cells: bare floor, a rug, or a seat such as a chair or a bed. Scenery such as a plant or a table fills its cell, so that cell is never an option, even inside the right room.

What it rules out

Everything outside the room. On a 6×6 board with seven rooms that often leaves four or five cells out of thirty-six, which makes the room clue one of the best places to start. Mark the room's cells as candidates for that person and cross out the rest.

Then look at the shape. A room that is one column wide puts the person in that column, and nobody else can use it. A room that covers two rows means one of those rows is taken. These small consequences are where most early moves come from.

The negative form

"She was not in the Kitchen." This clue removes one room and leaves every other room open. Read it as a filter: it never places anyone, but it removes cells that other clues left standing. It is most useful late, when a person has two cells left and one of them is in the named room.

Common mistakes

• Taking the label for the room. The name sits in one cell, but the room is every cell inside the same walls.
• Merging two rooms with a similar floor. A wall is a wall even when both floors are wood. Follow the thick lines.
• Counting scenery as a seat. A plant or a table in the room blocks that cell.
• Reading "not in" as "near". The negative form says nothing about the rooms around it.

How it combines with other clues

Pair it with an object clue and the person often has a single cell: the only chair in that room. Pair it with a row or column clue and the answer is where the line crosses the room. Across suspects, two people confined to the same two columns claim those columns, which is the idea behind the technique read every clue as a map. Room clues also feed alone and with another, since those clues are about who shares a room.