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ANSWER - July 2002
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Answer: To begin with we can see that it is Oddi who owns the Marauder, since it is not Sven or Bjarni, and Hrolf owns the Black Serpent. Given that the giant squid was killed by the man with the smallest moustache, we can try to place the man who owns the Merciless, the man who was wounded in the arm and the man who killed the sea sleen. Suppose it was the third-placed man (that is, with the third-biggest moustache) who owns the Merciless. Then the second-placed man was wounded in the arm and the man with the biggest moustache killed the sea sleen. Then the second-placed man must own Ocean Jarl in order to have the next bigger moustache than the man who was wounded in the leg. But now we can't place Oddi. Every slot has a known ship or monster, all of which are incompatible with what we know about him. Hence it is not the third-placed man who owns the Merciless. Therefore it was the man with the smallest moustache who owns Merciless, and the third-placed man who was wounded in the arm. Now the owner of Ocean Jarl must have had the biggest moustache: he can't have been second, as the man after him was wounded in the leg (and the third-placed man was wounded in the arm) nor third (as the fourth-placed man killed a giant squid, not a huge shark). It was this man who killed the sea sleen, as it cannot have been a huge shark nor the man-eating whale (which Oddi, the Marauder's owner, killed). Hrolf and Oddi must occupy the middle two places, where the ships are still undetermined, so Sven must have been first or last - and we know he has a bigger moustache than someone, so he cannot have been last. This means that he was first and Bjarni last. Since Bjarni was unwounded, it was Sven who was wounded in the head. For the sake of completeness, Oddi, who owns the Marauder, is in second place; he killed a man-eating whale. This means that the third-placed Hrolf killed the huge shark.
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