Fair Play Whodunnit: Difference between revisions

 

 

 

In 1928, the writer Father Ronald Knox created a "Ten Commandments" of plot devices that more or less codified the rules of the Fair-play whodunnit:

 

== Anime and Manga ==

** Unfortunately for ''Detective Conan'', this doesn't translate to the anime, which feels free to [[Clueless Mystery|hide the evidence from you]]. (Although, especially early, Funimation made more of an attempt to translate cultural-specific info than Viz does with the manga.)

** The anime is sometimes good about playing fair, and other times shamelessly cheats. It depends on the writer, though the show seems to cheat more nowadays than they did in earlier seasons. Any story based on the manga will still be fair play, though, ''unless'' something crucial is [[Compressed Adaptation|cut during the shift from manga to anime]].

** [[The Murder of Roger Ackroyd]] is also extremely fair. The way Poirot ultimately solves the crime is by reading what Dr. Sheppard wrote down which is ''exactly what the reader is reading''. Which means that an acute reader could actually pick up most of the important clues before Poirot does.

* [[Michael Connelly]]'s mystery novels are often these; ''The Poet'' actually won an award for Fair Play.

* There's a [[Lord Peter Wimsey]] mystery where a particular missing item from a painter's setup is an important clue that the painter had been murdered, rather than died accidentally, and the page revealing what it is before [[The Summation]], in a vaguely clever twist, is removed for "the entertainment of the reader". {{spoiler|The painter was an oil painter, and the missing item was... well, read the book for yourself.}}

** [[Dorothy L. Sayers|Sayers]] still plays fair, though. There are three or four other scenes between the missing page and [[The Summation]] which, taken together, can be used to work out what the object was and what happened to it.

** ''[[The Caves of Steel]]'' and the other Elijah Baley novels were also written to prove that it was possible to write a Science Fiction Fairplay Whodunnit, despite the risk of violating the Fourth of Knox's Commandments above.

** Asimov also tweaked the novelization of ''[[Fantastic Voyage Plot|Fantastic Voyage]]'' to provide clues to the identity of [[The Mole|the saboteur in the crew]], as well as to [[Hand Wave|paper over the scientific problems with the concept]].

* The ''[[Ellery Queen]]'' novels -- the first eight, which contain a nationality in the title, and the ninth, "Halfway House" -- were like this, and would actually have a point before the solution where the story would pause and the author would tell the reader that they now have all the facts required to solve the mystery. This "Challenge to the Reader" was carried over to the [[Ellery Queen]] radio show and 1970s TV series, where Ellery would make a "Challenge to the Viewer" before the final ad break.

* [[Neil Gaiman]] says that he tried to make ''[[Murder Mysteries]]'' entirely solvable for acute enough readers -- he even made the ''title'' a clue (as it implies that {{spoiler|more than one murder took place}}).

* The British game show ''[[Who Dunnit]]!'' was based upon this concept.

* ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'': [[Girl of the Week|Arissa]] asks Odo if he's worked out who the killer in the book was. He says "by the third page." Either he's just that good or the book's just that bad.

* The short-lived ''[[Scene Of The Crime]]'', hosted by Orson Welles, was an attempt at a series revolving around a different fair-play mystery or two per episode.

* The ''[[Clue (game)|Cluedo]]'' TV series.

*** The writers lampshade this by ending the first part with Dr. Hibbert turning to the viewer and saying "Well, I couldn't possibly solve this mystery...can YOU?" Then the camera pans back and we realize he's actually talking to Chief Wiggum.

*** The reason the fan didn't win was because the contest was so poorly designed. The way it worked was that of all the entries, the producers would choose a thousand, out of which they would pick whoever sent in the correct answer. Unfortunately, from the thousand that they picked, no one actually had the correct answer. You would assume that they would just start again with another thousand, but the rules specifically stated that the winner had to be out of the ''first'' thousand picked. So, they just chose someone randomly. Of course, this meant that any number of people could have sent in the correct culprit, just were unlucky to not wind up in the final thousand.

** {{spoiler|From the same scene, the Mare Do Well is seen with a unicorn horn, and then a moment later with pegasus wings. Outside of Celestia, Luna, and Cadence (who are ruled out for size considerations), no pony has both horns and wings, indicating that more than one pony is posing as the Mare Do Well.}}

** When Pinkie runs down to the caboose, {{spoiler|Rainbow Dash's mane style is visible in silhouette}}

** Next, in the engine car, {{spoiler|the "conductor" uses a female pony model and a yellow ear is seen. These put together mean Fluttershy.}}