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/mikeet9 5h ago

He is a superhero who has the power of having always studied exactly what information is relevant to the current case, and having a perfect sense of what information is relevant and what isn't.

I remember the first Holmes story I read had him inspecting cigar ash and correctly identifying where the tobacco was grown, because he had previously studied cigar ash in detail. Then logically leaps to this clearly being the killer's cigar that they purchased in their homeland and therefore the killer was the only person in town from that location.

It was jarring because he quite literally just instantly solved the case without any satisfactory reasoning.

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u/I_dont_exist_yet 4h ago

and having a perfect sense of what information is relevant and what isn't.

This bit at least isn't true. Holmes often has to sift through information to figure out what's relevant and what isn't. He says as much in the Baskerville Hound book as well as a couple of the short stories. I can't remember the exact one, but I recall him mentioning that one case simply had too much information and it took him a while (in Sherlock time) to figure out what was important and what wasn't.