Eight Signatures. Everyone Was Where They Said. One Entry Still Cannot Have Happened.
The last two puzzles failed on geography and on a clock. This one has nobody in the wrong city and nobody moving faster than an aeroplane, and one entry is impossible anyway.
Custody Chain No. 1 hid a signatory in the wrong city. No. 2 hid a folder that could not have travelled in the time given. Both were caught by readers in under a quarter of an hour, which is a compliment to the readers and a note to the setter.
This one is different. Every person below was in the city they signed in. Nothing moves faster than an aeroplane. The chain runs in order. One entry is impossible anyway.
The registries
- Reykjavík registry — city centre, forty-five minutes from Keflavík.
- Oslo annex — inside the airport terminal. No transfer time.
- Tallinn store — city centre, twenty-five minutes from the airport.
- Riga office — city centre, twenty minutes from the airport.
None of those distances matters this week. They are printed because the series prints them now, and because a reader who has to ask whether they matter is doing the right thing.
The chain
| # | Date | Received by | At | Signed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 Feb | A. Okonjo-Halstead | Reykjavík registry | 10:15 |
| 2 | 11 Feb | B. Fairweather-Sunda | Reykjavík registry | 14:40 |
| 3 | 19 Feb | C. Delacroix-Whitby | Oslo annex | 09:05 |
| 4 | 24 Feb | D. Bergkamp-Rios | Oslo annex | 16:20 |
| 5 | 29 Feb | E. Amankwah-Pryce | Tallinn store | 11:00 |
| 6 | 6 Mar | F. Adeyemi-Strand | Tallinn store | 08:30 |
| 7 | 14 Mar | G. Oyelowo-Vasquez | Riga office | 13:45 |
| 8 | 21 Mar | H. Sarpong-Ashby | Riga office | 10:10 |
All dates are 2026.
Where the eight were
- Okonjo-Halstead — Reykjavík, the whole of February.
- Fairweather-Sunda — Reykjavík, 8 to 14 February.
- Delacroix-Whitby — Oslo, 17 to 22 February.
- Bergkamp-Rios — Oslo, 23 February to 2 March.
- Amankwah-Pryce — Tallinn, the whole of February and March.
- Adeyemi-Strand — Tallinn, 4 to 9 March.
- Oyelowo-Vasquez — Riga, 12 to 18 March.
- Sarpong-Ashby — Riga, from 20 March.
The answer
Entry 5. Amankwah-Pryce was in Tallinn for the whole of February, so she is in the right city. The Tallinn store is where the folder should be by then. The time is unremarkable. Her itinerary, the geography and the clock all pass.
2026 is not a leap year. There was no 29 February.
The entry is signed on a day that did not occur.
This is the failure that gets through, and it gets through for a reason worth naming. A solver checking a custody chain builds a mental table of people and places, because that is what the previous two puzzles trained them to do and what a forger is assumed to get wrong. The date column is treated as an index rather than a claim. It is read to order the rows, not to be tested.
Every real document examiner this newspaper has spoken to says some version of the same thing: the cheapest forgery to catch is the one with an impossible date, and it is also the one that survives longest, because the people checking are busy with the interesting part.
Custody Chain No. 4 has nine entries and no impossibility at all. The chain is sound. What is wrong with it is somewhere else, and it is not in the table.
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