The Grand Game turns out to be a match, or have a match, or . . .

 It's been a good week.

Sherlock & Co. had my favorite episode ever. I signed up for March's Holmes, Doyle, & Friends conference. And a noted Sherlockian authority declared that Sherlockiana and professional wrestling are pretty much the same thing.

I KNEW IT!!!!

Going back as far as June 1985, and a little newsletter article entitled "When Holmesamania Was Running Wild" commemorated the "Brawl at the Falls" where Holmes surely body-slammed Moriarty into the abyss (and Watson horribly corrupted "body slam" to make it sound faux-Japanese), I've been trying to connect professional wrestling and Sherlockian scholarship. Always trying, but never quite getting there, I have spent the laster nearly four decades trying in vain to tie the two together.

And then, like some Krampusnacht miracle, it happened. 

I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere posted Scott Monty's revelation "The Sherlockian Game Gets A New Word in the Dictionary."

"What could that word be?" I wondered aloud, as I often claim to do when I'm writing my reactions to things. Could it be "Canon?" No, in the dictionary already. "Headcanon?" I had, just this week, heard a wrestling podcaster refer to his own headcanon about a particular wrestling storyline and wondered where that word came from first. And then I just went "Heck with all this guessing!" and read Scott's article.

Kayfabe! Kayfabe was the wo . . . wait a minute. That's a pro wrestling term!

But it all became clear as he cited the word's broader usage: "tacit agreement to behave as if something is real, sincere, or genuine when it is not."

And just as wrestlers train, work out, and strain their bodies to perform their art, so do Sherlockians train their minds, exercise their studies, and push their talents with words to perform their art. Both occasionally risk looking quite ridiculous, and sometimes just go for it and look quite ridiculous on purpose. The same countries seem to favor both . . . Japan, England, America . . . though the Saudis haven't arranged a BSI function in their homeland the way they got the American WWE to bring their best.

And of course, there is that one classic movie that brought in a pro wrestler to fight Sherlock Holmes, only to have Watson do a run-in and beat Holmes's foe with a chair -- those guys knew what was up! One more sign that Holmes and Watson was far ahead of its time and the rest of the world will catch up to it eventually. (And that, my friends, is NOT me doing kayfabe.)

As the producer of a podcast called Sherlock Holmes Is Real, I guess I probably knew there was some kayfabe in this hobby all along. But I just didn't know that word connected us with pro wrestling so well until today. Thanks, Scott, and a happy Krampusnacht to all, and to all a good night! (Except for those bad kids who are going in the bag!)