---
title: "Seven Signatures. Two Are Impossible. One Of Them Is Only The Clock."
dek: "A reader broke last week's puzzle in fourteen minutes and then found a flaw the setter had not intended. This one states where every registry stands, because that was the flaw."
kind: puzzle (Puzzle)
desk: Culture
author: Nadia Ferreira-Ost (fictional)
published: 2026-09-05T14:00:00Z
url: https://theyburied.com/article/chain-of-custody-no-2
tags: puzzle, logic, provenance
genre: satire
status: fiction — nothing in this story happened; every person, source and document is invented
---

# Seven Signatures. Two Are Impossible. One Of Them Is Only The Clock.

*A reader broke last week's puzzle in fourteen minutes and then found a flaw the setter had not intended. This one states where every registry stands, because that was the flaw.*

Custody Chain No. 1 gave six entries and hid one impossible signature among them. Forty-one
readers found it. Wilhelmina Sarpong-Ashby found a second problem the setter had not put
there — an entry that survived only because the puzzle never said whether the registry was
at the airport or in the town.

So this week every registry comes with its address. That is not decoration. One of the two
impossibilities below cannot be seen without it.

**Seven entries. Two of them cannot have happened.** One fails on geography. The other
fails only on the clock.

## The registries

- **Perth registry** — city centre, twenty minutes from the airport.
- **Singapore annex** — inside the airport's cargo terminal. No transfer time.
- **Zurich store** — city centre, fifteen minutes from the airport.
- **Lisbon office** — city centre, thirty minutes from the airport.

Zurich to Lisbon is a two-hour-forty-five-minute flight. Nothing else in this puzzle turns
on a flight time.

## The chain

| # | Date | Received by | At | Signed |
|---|------|-------------|-----|--------|
| 1 | 4 Apr | A. Okonjo-Halstead | Perth registry | 09:10 |
| 2 | 4 Apr | B. Trelawny-Boye | Perth registry | 17:40 |
| 3 | 9 Apr | C. Delacroix-Whitby | Singapore annex | 11:05 |
| 4 | 12 Apr | D. Vandenbroucke-Ige | Singapore annex | 14:20 |
| 5 | 16 Apr | E. Adeyemi-Strand | Zurich store | 08:50 |
| 6 | 16 Apr | F. Sarpong-Ashby | Lisbon office | 11:30 |
| 7 | 21 Apr | G. Oyelowo-Vasquez | Lisbon office | 13:30 |

## Where the seven were

- **Okonjo-Halstead** was in Perth for the whole of April. He is in this puzzle for the
  same reason he was in the last one, which is that he signs for everything and goes
  nowhere.
- **Trelawny-Boye** was in Perth from 2 to 6 April.
- **Delacroix-Whitby** was in Singapore from 7 to 14 April.
- **Vandenbroucke-Ige** was in Zurich until 12 April and in Singapore from 13 April.
- **Adeyemi-Strand** was in Zurich for the whole of April.
- **Sarpong-Ashby** was in Lisbon from 14 April.
- **Oyelowo-Vasquez** was in Lisbon from 18 April.

## The rules

A folder cannot be received by someone who was not in that city that day. It cannot arrive
somewhere before it has physically got there. And the chain runs in order.

## The answers

**Entry 4 fails on geography.** Vandenbroucke-Ige was in Zurich until 12 April and did not
reach Singapore until the 13th. She cannot have signed in the Singapore annex on the 12th.
This is the same shape as last week's answer and most solvers will find it first.

**Entry 6 fails on the clock, and only on the clock.** Every person in it is in the right
place: Sarpong-Ashby has been in Lisbon since 14 April, so the signature is unremarkable.
The folder is the problem. It was in the Zurich store, in the city centre, at 08:50. Fifteen
minutes to the airport, a two-hour-forty-five-minute flight, thirty minutes from the Lisbon
airport into town: three hours thirty at the very best, and that assumes an aircraft waiting
with its door open. The folder cannot be in Lisbon before 12:20. It is signed for at 11:30.

Nobody in entry 6 is lying about where they were. The entry is impossible anyway.

That is the whole reason the addresses are printed this week. Put the Zurich store at the
airport and entry 6 becomes merely tight. Put the Singapore annex in the town and entry 3
becomes questionable too. A custody chain that does not say where its registries are is not
checkable, and a great many real ones do not say.

*Custody Chain No. 3 has eight entries and one impossibility, and the impossibility is in a
date nobody thinks to check.*

---
They Buried is a satirical newspaper. Every story, source, document and person in it is invented. It reports from a fictional world in which the conspiracy theories are true, with the method of a real daily.