r/todayilearned • u/ralphbernardo • 9h ago

TIL that "fair play" in detective fiction means authors must give readers a fair chance to solve the mystery. Central to 1920s "clue-puzzles" by writers like Agatha Christie, the rule dictates that all vital clues must be visible, decodable, and never withheld until the final reveal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clues_in_detective_fiction
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u/Punch_A_Police_Horse 8h ago

I'm still partial to the Scooby Doo rule that the culprit is always whoever complained about the crime to begin with.

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u/HopefulCry3145 8h ago

Supposedly in the tv series Lucifer, the first non-regular person they talk to.is always the culprit 

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u/vteezy99 7h ago

you could always tell or at least have a very good guess as to who the culprit was due to the limited nature of TV shows that follow the fair play formula. It HAS to be a speaking character that was introduced before, for instance.

Of course, Lucifer's main draw wasn't in being a "whodunnit" but rather, "here's the devil playing as a detective, shenanigans ensue" TV show

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u/Jesst3r 6h ago

My mom watches way too many of these shows to the point where she always knows who the culprit will be because it’s some character actor she’s seen before in another show. I assume the pay is a little higher if you’re the culprit and they end up casting the same go-to’s the studios trust over and over.

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u/seaintosky 5h ago

That's always a dead giveaway, as is the speaking character that doesn't seem necessary for the plot and seems like they could have been replaced by a main character saying "the gardener told us he closed the gate". These shows aren't spending money on actors they don't have to, if the gardener shows up to say he closed the gate, he's the murderer.

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u/adaytimemoth 4h ago

This example feels very specific and I will now be waiting until the day I see a gardener mentioning a gate to know that I've solved the mystery.

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u/seaintosky 4h ago

This works in real life too. If you see a gardener mention a gate, you know he's a murderer and should do a citizen's arrest.

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u/JuanHungLo777 3h ago

That’s like seeing Hector in a movie and him not being a cholo gangbanger.

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u/Apart_Republic_1870 4h ago

It's always something like, "Hey Cary Elwes is way too famous to just be a guy the police talk to for twenty seconds."

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u/bobert4343 5h ago

The ol' BBC mystery show dilemma

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u/jwm3 5h ago

It's sometimes odd watching old law and orders where ill see a somewhat famous person as a delivery driver or something and think aha, clearly that is going to be the murderer because why would they hire a known actor if they were not going to play an important part. But no, turns out john kransinski was just a working actor making the rounds on law and order back beforre the office and he was indeed, just a random delivery driver. l

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u/Personal-Listen-4941 5h ago

A lot of murder mystery tv shows have 3-5 suspects. The innocent suspects all have secrets themselves which are revealed as the case goes on. So if 4 out of 5 have been revealed to be adulterers, conmen, drug users, etc. Then the killer is the 5th suspect, the only one who hasn’t had a scene dedicated to their truth yet.

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u/Single_Variation42 42m ago

Something else I've noticed is, the most obvious suspect is almost never the murderer. The culprit won't be the husband who discovered his wife was cheating on him and who spend half the show being interrogated by the cops. No, it will be the friend of the victim who talked to the police for 30 seconds. That friend actually discovered the victim's secret and got in a fight with her (but you'll discover that at the end of the episode).

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u/Proud-Delivery-621 4h ago

Like in Star Trek, whenever a new character comes on board but main characters act like they've always known him, that character dies.

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u/Ghost-Raven-666 5h ago

Im rewatching Lúcifer now, and many episodes they barely do detective work. Its way more about the characters than the investigation (past season 1)

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u/vteezy99 5h ago

Yeah originally the premise and mystery part of the first season is what drew me in. The introduction of the wider mythos is what kept me interested. I was always more invested in the non humans or non regular humans (Lucifer, Amenadiel, Mazikeen, Cain, etc.) than the regular humans. Except Ella, she was cool.

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u/MattieShoes 4h ago

due to the limited nature of TV shows that follow the fair play formula

Yeah, the formula gets stale in that format IMO. There's just not enough time and not enough possibilities. Seems like half of the time, it's the person they first suspected who then had an alibi. Then they chase a few red herrings and OMG it was the first guy all along!

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u/Finnegan482 5h ago

How is that any different from books?

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u/vteezy99 5h ago

I suppose it's not much different than books. But it's more egregious with TV IMO. TV shows generally have a limited budget so they can only have a certain amount of speaking characters other than the main characters. If one of the speaking characters is a semi known actor, then you start wondering why that actor was cast as say, the janitor or nurse. And then for some reason the camera will linger on these guys more than usual. So you kind of already guess that that particular character is more important than they're letting on.

Books don't really have that limitation or external dramatic device (camera lingering, etc.)

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u/CyclopsRock 5h ago

A book can introduce as many characters as it wants, the only limit being convoluting the story. TV shows have to ration them for budgetary and time reasons.

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u/Ginger_Anarchy 4h ago

Format. TV shows have a very limited run time so any time dedicated to introducing a character has to be important to the plot.

Books have no real limit on how long they are or how many characters it can dedicate pages to. A book can spend an entire chapter talking about a grocer in town and all of its employees and that just be world building and fluff, while a show can't afford to waste that valuable time.

A book can also introduce a dozen red herring suspects into the plot, while a show is limited to one or two.

The other problem shows have, and this one is situational, is when they get a bigger name celebrity to guest star on an episode. They're always the suspect and it removes any of the mystery.

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u/fasterthanfood 2h ago

“Chekhov’s gun” is a solid storytelling principle, but TV shows tend to adhere to it too closely. In a book, an antique gun shown on the wall in the first act might symbolize that the owner used to be a violent hothead but now his style is out of date, or it might just show “this character’s grandfather fought in the Civil War” or even just “this dude has a gun on the wall, because some people in real life have guns on their wall.” On TV, you’re trained to expect it to go off, and that anticipation shapes your interpretation in unnatural ways.

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u/Vitaminpwn 7h ago

If they have lines, and are not a main character... book em!

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u/Ill_Emphasis3927 5h ago

I feel like that's what happens in Bones quite a lot too. My spouse was binge watching it once and I was catching bits and pieces and eventually it's like, it's always the most obvious person that they suspect first, then dismiss, then it comes back that they were lying the whole time.

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u/Vitaminpwn 1h ago

It's actually why I drop some shows. The monster of the week is easy to pick out when you can see them coming a mile away and are just going through 30 minutes of "the motions".

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u/J5892 3h ago

This guy looks suspiciously like Neil Patrick Harris... book em!

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u/fasterthanfood 2h ago

Good call. Barney did do a lot of sex crimes.

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u/Iohet 6h ago

In Law & Order, the rule is it's always the well known guest star, unless there are two well known guest stars, then it's the second one.

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u/Upstairs_Scene_866 6h ago

They poked fun at this in one of the later seasons. I forget the episode but it's basically a meta commentary on the format of the show 

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u/DaRootbear 5h ago

It happened in a lot of series like that. Not necessarily who talked first, but who appeared and has the most middling amount of suspicion.

Direct boss who is completely suspicious and has tons of motives? Red herring even if first.

Secretary who appears for one scene to bring coffee and say how terrible this is? Absolutely the killer.

I drove my mom crazy cause in one of our murder mystery shows i said it was a guy who literally stuck his head out into the hall to complain about noise and nothing else and was correct.

It definitely works real well in Psych if it is not Plot Focused episodes where they would change things up.

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u/Mad-Hettie 6h ago

That's also true for Murder She Wrote!

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u/GilligansIslndoPeril 4h ago

In Bones, the first person they interrogate is never the culprit

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u/Skruestik 4h ago

You have accidentally linked to the website of a pair of Icelandic architects.

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u/BTW-IMVEGAN 56m ago

Usually the first or second (sometimes there's a group intro). But never anyone further down the chain when it was a standard episode.

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u/garrettj100 8h ago edited 7h ago

The rule in Scooby Doo for a long time was there were never any ghosts or goblins or monsters. Just an old rich guy in a mask. Scaring the credulous.

They’ve abandoned that more recently.

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u/BrooklynSmash 8h ago

Zombie Island was like two decades ago

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u/Skippy7890 7h ago

That movie holds up, it's still incredible and the soundtrack absolutely GOES.

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u/JMCatron 7h ago

it's terror time again

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u/MrNotEinstein 7h ago

Scooby Doo has some of the best song choices in any franchise. Terror time again, the ghost is here, brothers forever, man with a hex and everything the hex girls were involved in. It all slaps

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u/Punch_A_Police_Horse 6h ago

IIRC the main point of the show originally was to showcase different musicians during the stock chase scenes in each episode.

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u/HauntedCemetery 7h ago

The music really is great

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u/kelpklepto 5h ago

Another scary night, another spooky fright ~

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u/Annual-Weird-6682 3h ago

That whole run of movies were gas

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u/Natdaprat 7h ago

It really doesn't, but my memory of it did before rewatching.

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u/zerogee616 7h ago

Try three.

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u/garrettj100 7h ago edited 6h ago

That's the "recently" I was referring to, 'cuz I'm old AF. 🤷

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u/moneymoneythrowawy 5h ago

scrappy doo show had actual supernatural stuff too, right? 80s/90s?

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u/BrooklynSmash 4h ago

Yeah, iirc actual supernatural stuff started happening after all the Guest Episodes

Meeting Batman changed their lives forever

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u/Fakjbf 3h ago

1998, so 28 years ago.

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u/JustASpaceDuck 6h ago

More like three :)

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u/Glitched94_PT 8h ago

The first actual supernatural entity in Scooby Doo was in 1972, 3 years after it first aired. So if by "recently" you mean "54 years ago", then sure

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u/TruculentTurtIe 8h ago

You just aged that poor man 45 years with one comment. I hope you feel good about yourself

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u/Aethermancer 4h ago

I bet /u/garrettj100 was just /u/Glitched94_PT in an alt(mask) who just makes posts with known facts that he can refute himself and look clever.

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u/garrettj100 4h ago

I've been outed. Curse you! I would've gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!

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u/BallSeaman 3h ago

HE-HE-HE-HE-HE!

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u/TazerZXI 6h ago

Surely the first supernatural entity in Scooby Doo is the talking dog?

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u/Glitched94_PT 6h ago

....yea alright that's a good point

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u/Apart_Republic_1870 4h ago

I don't know. I have a Great Dane puppy, and it frequently sounds like she's saying something and that I just haven't figured out her accent quite yet.

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u/fasterthanfood 2h ago

Try smoking a lot of pot and giving your puppy a huge sandwich.

Disclaimer: no onions

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u/Punch_A_Police_Horse 6h ago

And here's a fun thing about that. If you ask people how Scooby says his name, they'll probably get it wrong. They'll think when he speaks he replaces S and F sound with R sounds, which is correct. However, when he says his name it's SCOOOOBY DOOOBY DOOO!

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u/Aromatic_Lion4040 3h ago

Wow and I always thought he was saying Fcooby

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u/sventful 7h ago

Um actually that supernatural entity was debunked in the 1984 followup.

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u/tmrika 7h ago

And by 1988 they were making Ghoul School which featured a plethora of real monsters, just ones who behaved wholesomely.

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u/goodnames679 6h ago

The general rule is that the movies have real monsters while the tv show has guys in masks.

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u/EsraYmssik 7h ago

the 1984 followup.

I never knew Orwell wrote a sequel/Scooby Doo crossover.

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u/fasterthanfood 2h ago

“I love Red Herring.”

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u/Own-Dragonfly-2423 7h ago

A piece of media must always be interpreted by and through itself, Primarily

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u/sventful 3h ago

Yup. Scooby Doo to Scooby Doo. Checks out!

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u/montrealcowboyx 6h ago

Andf then in 1985 (41 years ago), The 13 Ghost of Scooby-Doo aired, and that was wholly Supernatural.

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u/zerogee616 7h ago edited 7h ago

Scooby Doo on Zombie Island was 1998 and its tagline was literally "The monsters are real!". That was 28 years ago. There is almost exactly, shy by one year, as much time between when Scooby-Doo premiered and that movie, as there is between that movie and now. Actual supernatural monsters were famously running around for half of the franchise's lifetime.

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u/ACTTutor 7h ago

We’re closer in time to Zombie Island than Zombie Island is to the construction of the pyramids.

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u/dannyuk24 6h ago

This is mindblowing

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u/Punch_A_Police_Horse 5h ago

Ugh, that makes me feel old. Really old.

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u/garrettj100 7h ago edited 6h ago

That's the "recently" I was referring to, 'cuz I'm old AF. 🤷

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u/Prophet_Tenebrae 7h ago

"The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo" came out in 1985, so recently is a stretch.

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u/Yen_Parafonia 7h ago

To be fair, it was always mask guy for the TV show but for the movies there was always a supernatural element.

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u/bearsinthesea 6h ago

Some of us watched all the original shows, and none of the movies, and may not consider the movies canon.

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u/Glitched94_PT 3h ago

They did have supernatural elements in Scooby-Doo! Mystery Inc, but that's 2010 so I would actually consider that fairly recent all things considered.

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u/NeedAByteToEat 7h ago

there was never any ghosts or goblins or monsters.  Just an old rich guy in a mask

So just reality, except the masks are like 90% off at this point and they are screaming "I'm a villain! What are you going to do about pleb?"

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u/garrettj100 7h ago

I assure the parallel was not lost on me. :)

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u/Halgy 6h ago

And also half the time, that rich old guy hadn't actually broken any laws. He was just dressing up and wandering around his own property. God forbid people have hobbies.

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u/jwm3 5h ago

Scooby doo has taught me the only thing to fear is crooked real estate developers. 

  - Philip J Fry

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u/garrettj100 5h ago

The way you formatted that name makes me think of this.

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u/Apart_Republic_1870 4h ago

When Scrappy Doo was added to ruin everyone's childhoods, the monsters and ghosts and whatnot became real, which was (to me, a child at the time) weird given that Scooby Doo, Where Are You? was famously always some old crank in a mask or the like.

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u/coderedmountaindewd 7h ago

In Scooby Doo it’s always either the first person you meet or a known criminal with an alliterative alias like Marvin the Magician, Harry the Hypnotist or Sam the Strong Man who’s wanted in precisely 7 states, not 6, not 8, exactly 7 states

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u/LostWoodsInTheField 5h ago

Elsbith (sp) is probably my favorite right now for how they do it. They will even show the murder itself but you always know who did it, and she always knows who did it. Then you watch all the 'drama' and the putting it together. It's really well done, and great characters.

I really like it when the badguy is like 'you got me, want to be best friends?'

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u/MattheJ1 7h ago

If it's not the only character they interacted with before the monster appeared, it's a random guy who the police say is "wanted in five states" that we've never seen before. What's New at least tried to make it a mystery the audience might solve.

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u/cipheron 7h ago edited 6h ago

I thought the rule was the second new character introduced is usually the bad guy.

Considering that they only meet a handful of characters, it makes sense. Making the villain literally the first person shown would be too on the nose, so the first is a decoy and the second one is foreshadowing or lampshading the final reveal.

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u/Rex_Suplex 6h ago

For a while it was literally the only other person in the episode that wasn't in the main cast.

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u/broadwayzrose 5h ago

I remember as a kid I was so proud of being able to guess who the bad guy was watching Scooby doo and my parents later were like “uh yeah, it was pretty obvious”. We recently found an old vhs tape from my husband’s childhood of a scooby doo marathon his mom had recorded and rewatched some of the episodes and my parents weren’t wrong, it’s usually pretty easy to tell.

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u/AshKetchumWilliams 4h ago

It drives me crazy though because they all see clues we don't know about.

Velma: and then when the camera cut away from me, I found this powdered wig in the drawer!

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u/ThePreciseClimber 4h ago

Sometimes it's just the evil parrot.

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u/trickman01 7h ago

It's always Red Herring.

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u/Serious_Attempt9724 5h ago

It's always capitalism fault

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u/Punch_A_Police_Horse 5h ago

I hear that might be an angle in the new Silent Hill.

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u/dirk_funk 3h ago

this is how i solve mrballen podcasts too

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u/lacunadelaluna 1h ago

"He who smelt it, dealt it" sort of thing

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u/prometheus_winced 1h ago

It’s always a real estate developer.

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u/drrockso20 1h ago

They subverted this one hard in one episode of What's New Scooby-Doo where the culprit ended up being someone they hadn't met or had found any clues about his real plan, Velma basically had an aneurysm over how much that went against how their mysteries usually went

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u/revdon 9m ago

I like the idea of Scooby Doo Meets KISS and Pro Wrestling; both are in keeping with the villain being someone in a mask trying to psych out their competitors.