As I've mentioned one of my favorite teaching stories is The Nine-Mile Walk by Harry Kemelman, for it is a model of close reading of a piece of speech. I've thought about applying the lessons of close reading to a question, and turning it into a section of the book. Recently I heard a clue which capped a question which I knew could be written with terrific clue density and implied clue density. It's a first draft of what will go in, but it highlights the nature of questions that tell you clues, and then tell you clues in the spaces.
I'm conducting this as an extended dialogue between myself and my brain where time is infinite within the length of this question, and we have time to write down all our arguments. This is not a model of how my brain works, nor am I picking up all these clues and running with them. However, when my brain, the logical, ratiocinative, deduction and inference engine, picks a fight with my conscious thoughts bouncing around like a Tigger in tumble dry, the brain certainly has the Nicky Welt intonations down.
The Base Rule of any analysis of a question is this:
0. Assume the answer is someone you've heard of.
And since this needs to be a little more tightly defined for what we need to do:
00. Assume the answer is someone, somewhere, or something that a being of moderate attention, residing in an English-speaking nation, in the year 2023, would have heard of, if not necessarily know any details.
The question began...
[Budd Schulberg fictionalized..." ]
DEK's BRAIN:
"1. Suspect that the answer is American
2. Suspect that the answer works in the English language
3. Suspect that the answer was prominent in the early half of the twentieth century."
DEK: "Okay brain, back those assumptions. I am assuming you're working from the name alone, and that If Budd Schulberg is American, the answer is, and so on?"
BRAIN: "Yeah, when was the last time you've heard of anyone called "Bud" or "Buddy" who wasn’t at least 60 years old?"
DEK: "True, the one who died recently around here was in his 90s. You have more?"
BRAIN: "And extend that out, when was the last time you'd seen that first name on a British or Australian person?"
DEK: "Okay, but English-language, could be German, Scandinavian?"
BRAIN: "Suspect, but not certain. And since I implied it with 2.
4. Suspect that the answer is a person.
The next word will be the identifying class of information, and what comes before only fits people and events. Play the more likely of the two. Continue reading."
["Budd Schulberg fictionalized this writer in The Disenchanted,"]
BRAIN:
"Confirms 4. Supports 1 and 2.
5, reformulating 3. Answer flourished before or at the same time Budd Schulberg flourished. Which means that it could go back as far as the late 1800s but that's not the way to bet.
6. Answer had close enough contact to Budd Schulberg to have their character assessed to be fictionalized. Implies geographic, chronological proximity. Occupational?
7. Suspect the answer might not be male, but that's only because writer didn't use "him" in that spot. Weak supposition.
I don't quite have a context for who Budd Schulberg is just yet, outside of an author or other creator. The title is in English,... probably.
Title means nothing to me."
DEK:
"The name tickles something, but I can't recall what. Explain 5 to me, and the audience."
BRAIN:
"Cause and effect, you can't have a relationship with a person who dies before you're born, or vice versa. You can't have a significant relationship with a person if you're half way around the world from them. The clues place the answer somewhere near Budd Schulberg at some point in Budd Schulberg's life prior to him having the will to create a work about the answer. If we establish Budd Schulberg as living in the 20th century America, it eliminates people who flourished in 19th century Russia for example."
DEK:
"Continue?"
BRAIN:
"Continue."
["Budd Schulberg fictionalized this writer in The Disenchanted, describing his time as a Hollywood screenwriter.” ]
BRAIN:
"7. Answer is a writer, but not known as a screenwriter.
8. Answer is from an era when Hollywood notably imported major writers to Hollywood.
9. Answer is prominent enough to be recruited for work in Hollywood.
10, extending 2. Answer is a writer who worked in English, does not exclude a writer whose native language was not English."
DEK:
"Okay. And I think I now have a context for the name Budd Schulberg. I remember the name as part of the Hollywood blacklist era."
BRAIN:
"Good. Given that was the 1950's, the time period fits, Schulberg was a screenwriter,and the interaction with the author could have taken place in the 1920s, 30s, or 40s. That supports 8. So at this point we're looking for a writer prominent between 1920 and 1950, who went to Hollywood to write scripts. Hold it a second. Could it be someone who was caught up in the Hollywood blacklist? "His time as" being limited by those events?
11. Answer is a writer prominent from 1920s to 1950s.
12. Answer is possibly involved with the Communist party in the US during that time.
Continue."
["Budd Schulberg fictionalized this writer in The Disenchanted, describing his time as a Hollywood screenwriter. Edmund Wilson edited this writer's own"]
BRAIN:
"13. Answer is a writer in English, likely American prominent between 1920 and 1950.
14. Answer had a close professional relationship with Edmund Wilson.
Edmund Wilson, I think is a literary editor over that same period, and American. An American author would have an American editor."
DEK:
"Fair assumption."
BRAIN:
"Okay try this:
15. Author died sometime before the 1950s."
DEK:
"I'm listening."
BRAIN:
"Why would the editor be notable? The editor is notable if the writer's own work is significantly incomplete. The question writer is drawing attention to the fact that the writer didn't finish whatever's to come."
DEK:
"OK."
BRAIN:
"And that probably makes 12 false, and takes the clause about not necessarily native out of 10. That's fine, I was only holding that possibility open for Nabokov. 12 of course goes because you can't be part of the 1950s Red Scare if you're not alive in the 1950s. "
DEK:
"So you've got Writer, screenplays and some other primary form, American, flourished between 1920 and 1950, died but died in the 1940s?"
BRAIN:
That gives us what: Steinbeck, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Tennessee Williams...
DEK:
"Knock Tennessee Williams out of that list: he died later, choking on a plastic medicine bottle cap. Medicine bottles at this time were glass and bakelite."
BRAIN:
"You remember...that...about Tennessee Williams."
DEK:
"Yes, and it's paying off here. Shall we continue?"
BRAIN:
"Let's keep open the unknown possibility here, we may have underestimated the question's difficulty. But yes, continue."
["Budd Schulberg fictionalized this writer in The Disenchanted," describing his time as a Hollywood screenwriter. Edmund Wilson edited this writer's own account of his dissolution, The Crack-Up."]
BRAIN:
"16. Answer had a significant period of decline followed by enough of a recovery to be introspective about it, but not long-lasting enough to complete the work.
The time period and phrasing of that title definitely fix us to after the popularization of psychology. I'm more confident about our list."
DEK:
"I'm leaning in a direction because I'm pretty sure Steinbeck and Faulkner got Nobels after 1950. And that sure feels like late stage Fitzgerald."
BRAIN:
"Again with the feels."
DEK:
"Inferences can only get you to here. Here's where we would have to be ready to jump if we were actually playing this thing."
BRAIN:
"Well, shall we see if our parachute's packed? Continue."
["Budd Schulberg fictionalized this writer in The Disenchanted," describing his time as a Hollywood screenwriter. Edmund Wilson edited this writer's own account of his dissolution, The Crack-Up. His wife told the story of their troubled marriage"]
BOTH:
"And there we go."
BRAIN:
"17. Answer has a wife of notable importance, possibly even worth being an answer herself.
18. Answer has a wife who is also a writer.
19, confirming 16, Answer's period of decline was accompanied by marital strife.
Shall I keep writing?"
DEK:
"YES!, That's the whole point of this exercise, to show all the clues people can pick up here."
BRAIN:
"Then continue."
["Budd Schulberg fictionalized this writer in The Disenchanted," describing his time as a Hollywood screenwriter. Edmund Wilson edited this writer's own account of his dissolution, The Crack-Up. His wife told the story of their troubled marriage in Save Me the Waltz."]
BRAIN:
"20. Wife of answer wrote Save Me the Waltz."
DEK
"Finally something for the title people to work with. I guess the For 10 points is coming?"
BRAIN:
"...."
DEK:
"You're the one who says continue."
BRAIN:
"...."
DEK:
"You know they say you're lazy because of stuff like this."
BRAIN:
"Fine, I'm bored, let's get this Fitzgerald question over with, Continue."
["Budd Schulberg fictionalized this writer in The Disenchanted," describing his time as a Hollywood screenwriter. Edmund Wilson edited this writer's own account of his dissolution, The Crack-Up. His wife told the story of their troubled marriage in Save Me the Waltz. For ten points--name this author who told of his Hollywood time in stories of Pat Hobby,"]
BRAIN:
"Lolwut?"
DEK:
"It's an idiosyncratic choice. Are you now interested? You were expecting the Last Tycoon to show up?"
BRAIN:
"But that's not a title, we have to roll this up with titles. Besides The Last Tycoon was an incomplete work like The Crack-Up as well."
DEK:
"You're assuming that The Crack-Up is incomplete, we have to look that up after. And you're assuming that writers are predictable."
BRAIN:
"But that, I mean it could give people pause."
DEK:
"Yes, some pause, but the sequence has been pounded down to the point where there's no differentiating difficulty. A little variety isn't too bad, and this could still resolve with the Last Tycoon here."
BRAIN:
"Wait, who wrote this?"
DEK:
"...."
BRAIN:
"You ass."
DEK:
"I remember they did a PBS production of the Pat Hobby stories."
BRAIN:
"Good grief! This is your compulsive reading of TV Guide isn't it?"
DEK:
"And you have stuck with analyzing this question for much further than you would have if I had just run through it."
BRAIN:
"...."
DEK:
"21, please?"
BRAIN:
"21. Answer wrote short stories.
22. Answer wrote short stories about screenwriter Pat Hobby ARE YOU HAPPY NOW!?"
DEK:
"Continue?"
["Budd Schulberg fictionalized this writer in The Disenchanted, describing his time as a Hollywood screenwriter. Edmund Wilson edited this writer's own account of his dissolution, The Crack-Up. His wife told the story of their troubled marriage in Save Me the Waltz. For ten points--name this author who told of his Hollywood time in stories of Pat Hobby, of his marriage in Tender is the Night, and of life among the smart set in The Great Gatsby."]
BRAIN:
"23. Answer wrote Tender is the Night.
24. Answer wrote The Great Gatsby.
That is a long "for ten points.""
DEK:
"Parallelism for the first two parts, and the third is just being good about including the very very last clue possible. The loops about Hollywood and the failed marriage are closed off so they can give other clues. And if you have the ability and free space on a question about F. Scott Fitzgerald to include reference to The Great Gatsby, you include The Great Gatsby."
BRAIN:
"But if it's included here it's significant for something else:
25. The Great Gatsby does not appear as an answer in other parts of this packet or tournament. Shall we continue?"
DEK:
"Continue."
No, not all questions can be analyzed like that, most shouldn’t, and nobody is going to extract all that information out of a single question, especially in the actual time alotted to people listening to a question. But it's not necessary to extract that much information to form an answer; you really only need to spot one good uniquely identifying clue. But players can take different approaches to the idea of eliminating ideas until they have a small set of possible answers. In this analysis, we had elimination based on chronology and cause and effect, geography and proximity, style of creations, and obscure titles leading to less obscure titles. We even managed to fit in the odd biographical anecdote which eliminates possibilities. All are useful.
Note that in this we're not trying to act on our first impulse, that may be necessary in play, but this is an abstraction. Also note our impulses can be wrong. Nabokov stayed in play as an option for way too long. It took a while to pick up on where we had heard Schulberg's name, but in actual game play, this would have flown past us, and we'd not have all the information about the Hollywood blacklist to sift through. We take negs sometimes not because we have too little information, but because the information we have introduces possibilities the writer failed to consider.
Also please note, boredom does happen in this exact way. If the player is predicting too many of the moves of the question, they can place themselves exactly where the brain found it, expecting the path to lead straight down. It won't bite on the first question, but it can numb the brain into a slower reaction going forward.
If I had faced this question in college, I'd get it exactly after for 10 points because Save me the Waltz wasn't part of the canon then, but I would have remembered the Pat Hobby stories for exactly the reason the brain was annoyed by it. Time shift to today and I'd probably have gotten it earlier because of Z: The Beginning of Everything, which would have been about the same chronological gap from show airing to today. But then again, I might not have. I remember Z, and I remember the PBS show, but I saw neither. My memory of the old show is in fact from TV Guide, which doesn't exist, and there isn't a logical replacement which could put a complete list of today's available television programs before a player. I don't know how today's player would stumble across that sort of knowledge for themselves, and I think over time that means a lot of paths through which knowledge could be composed into questions will become wasted clues.