Playing cards versus playing chess.

There's a subject that I've written on before that came back to me tonight: the difference between playing cards and playing chess.

My personal view is that Sherlock Holmes was a card player . . . which we know he was, given his aborted attempt to get a game going in "The Red-Headed League." But not only that he was a card player, that it was, at his core, more the player of cards than ever the player of chess.

Moriarty might have been a chess player. Mycroft might have been a chess player. Powerful men with grand plans, moving pieces around the board that was England, or perhaps the world. But Sherlock?

Sherlock was the one who could see "the fall of the cards," as he said in "Bruce-Partington Plans." He never knew just what hand the villains of England were going to deal for him next . . . he just looked at the cards he was given and worked out how best to play them.

"You must play your cards as best you can when such a stake is on the table," he told Watson when they faced Charles Augustus Milverton. And he was right. That case was a very bad hand, and Holmes made more than one play that was out of his normal methods -- a seemingly heartless bit of fraud, a burglary, covering up a homicide.

Those in power get to play chess . . . whether they are good players or ill . . . but the lowly consulting detective is only left with every bit of skill he possesses and the hope that luck will bring the right cards his way.

Something about that is ringing very on-point with me right now, as we see a greater game being played out in the news, with the stakes as high as we've seen in some time. Time for the card players, like our friend Sherlock Holmes, to ply their skills.

And I think of Josiah Amberly, a pathetic, futile broken old man, as Watson described him, who was a chess player. A chess player who planned out his schemes of punishment for those he felt wronged by to the last detail. And Amberly was successful to a point . . . the point Sherlock Holmes picked up the cards Amberly had laid out for him.

Perhaps I have a certain fondness for card-players, and their ability to deal with what might be a perfectly awful situation in the moment and still bring about a happy conclusion. I also have a definite fondness for Sherlock Holmes.

And I don't think those two are unconnected. Here's to the card-players.

Panel punditry panic!

The deadline for applying to be on a panel at 221B Con 2017 is fast approaching, and with just a couple of days left, choices need to be made.

Well, that is, if one would like to sit on a panel.

Therein lies the source of my perturbation.

Life in the old world of Sherlockian doings gave one plenty of room to get comfortable with public speaking. Stand at a podium, give a talk on a subject with prepared remarks, reading from an essay you'd already written in the early days or speaking a little more freely from an outline as one got better at it. Public speaking, not a problem. You knew where it was going to go.

The panel discussion, however?

Well, it's a completely different animal. You get to join a few people in giving your considered opinions on a topic in an unstructured format. Interaction, the balanced mix of personality, with . . . hopefully . . . some give and take, can make for a delightfully unpredictable wellspring of info and ideas.

The nature of the panel feels like it calls for experts on a topic, or at least colorful personalities familiar with same, and while I can ramble all day at a keyboard, my default setting for being at a table full of new faces is to sit back and see what they have to say before jumping in with my own bits . . . a defense mechanism built from a lifetime of not knowing what is liable to offend a given person when the roulette wheel of thought starts spinning.

The other thing about looking at 221B Con panels, and this is what I love most about them, is that so much of it is not the traditional Sherlockian world I spent previous decades in . . . Sherlock-oriented panels. The number of subjects one knows nothing about interspersed through a list of panels one might know a thing or two about makes the entire list a very daunting thing. Just looking at it makes me feel like a total noob in a hobby I've been in all of my adult life.

And so, determined to be a little more participatory at this year's con, the first step seemed to be copying the whole list of panels and make a first pass, eliminating every panel where the most I could contribute would be dressing up like the Queen and doing that little queen-wave at the audience.

That left . . . amazingly . . . sixteen whole panels that I could be somewhat knowledgeable on.

Now . . . panels where I might possess more savvy than the average Sherlockian. That cut the list down by half, to eight.

One of those bores me entirely . . . so seven.

Seven panels where I think I could make a decent contribution, and with only a list of those seven to look at, my panel punditry panic has subsided completely. From here I can build my case as a panelist for each of those seven and let the good folks at 221B Con decide where I might be of use. That case-building might result in another disqualification or two, so let's see . . . .

Well, I might or might not have taken one of those off my final list, but basically I tossed them at the runners of 221B Con and let them sort it out. If they put me on zero panels, I'm fine with that . . . no matter what panel you sit on, you get to miss some other panel you wanted to see. And these days, with so many bright, young minds full of energy and enthusiasm (Last year a panel on Sebastian Moran by a couple of very young ladies still remains a vivid memory of how great these new fans can be.) . . . this aging male Sherlockian doesn't really think he needs to be talking quite so much, and listening more.

Looking forward to doing a lot of listening at 221B Con this year, as ever.

Year of the Fighting Cock.

During their initial months together, Sherlock Holmes was explaining one of the basic rules of his mind palace to John Watson. (In the 1880s version, Holmes called his mind palace a "brain attic," of course . . . an attic being the perfect mental metaphor a child would develop for storing interesting things away.) And that rule of mind palace governance was simple: Don't put anything into it that you aren't going to need.

The reason for this explanation was Watson's astonishment that Holmes didn't care about what celestial body orbited what, specifically that the Earth travelled around the sun. Later, when Holmes would display knowledge of such things as the obliquity of the ecliptic, it would seem to have been a bit of a put-on, but still, it gives one pause to wonder if Sherlock Holmes cared at all about the lunisolar calendar used in China . . . the one that brings us to Chinese New Year every year.

The are twelve animals symbolically assigned to each year in a twelve-year cycled of the Chinese lunisolar calendar, and six elements assigned to those. A given animal-element combination comes around only once every sixty years. And this year, after sixty years of waiting, we've come back around to the fire cock.

Those sensitive to words that also have sexual connotations might like to say "fire rooster," but going by the language of the Sherlockian Canon, a good Sherlockian must stick to the fire cock. And how does that relate to Sherlock Holmes?

Well, actual cocks are mentioned three times in the original Canon of Holmes.

First is in the innocent young Lucy Ferrier's words in A Study in Scarlet as she mistakes vultures for "Cocks and hens."

Second is the non-human murder victim of "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge," which Holmes points out as "A white cock, most interesting! It is really a very curious case."

And thirdly, there was the pub called "the Fighting Cock," from "The Adventure of the Priory School." In that story, an illegitimate heir to power with a brutal accomplice uses that pub to hold an innocent young fellow named Arthur hostage. Powerful men's secrets and less-powerful men looking to profit all combine for a mess that only Sherlock Holmes can straighten out.

And if you think that doesn't make for a fine forced metaphor about this particular year, you just aren't letting your mind open up quite enough.

A fire cock would have to be a fighting cock, and Sherlock Holmes's time at the Fighting Cock resulted in illegitimate and low characters being arrested or sent to the other side of the world.

We should be so lucky in our own year of the Fighting Cock. Happy Chinese New Year!

Unrecorded podcasts live!

Podcasts are legion now, and 2017 has brought a couple of new ones on old Canon to the Sherlockian fore: "I Grok Sherlock" out of Toronto and the just-announced "Trifles" from the "I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere" crew. But as much as a fan of podcasts as I am, this morning I find myself all about the Sherlockian discussions that take place live and in person.

Most of my experience with Sherlockian meet-ups in the past has been the varied styles of scion meetings that usually include food, can be at a restaurant or someone's home, include papers or presentations, possibly a quiz, and a lot of socializing. After well over thirty years at this hobby, now I'm actually discovering something new that I'm sure has previously existed in other places for a very long time: the library discussion group.

Meeting folks in a library to talk about Sherlock Holmes takes away the food and those ancillary folks who are just coming for drinks, dinner, or socializing, and really seems to focus matters more on the subject at hand. And unlike a book club, only seven percent of original Holmes works are novels, so the focus tends to get even better in devoting the time to a short story. And what perfect short stories they are for that focus!

My favorite podcasts, I've noticed, are the ones with multiple voices and multiple points of view, playing off each other in new and unexpected ways every episode, and what does one get with a good discussion of a Holmes tale with a table full of people?

That very thing.

Podcasts can be very entertaining, but their one-sided nature does have its downfalls. I've found I tend to dearly love Sherlockian podcasts about fanfic which I know nothing about, yet am never as happy with podcasts about Sherlockian topics I know too much about. When  the podcasters stretch for some piece of data they don't have at hand (yet is right in the front of your brain) or make a statement that's completely wrong in the heat of the moment . . . and then elaborate on it . . . the inability to talk back can bring a little frustration. A good discussion group can give you all of the fun of a podcast, yet you're there to interact, ask questions, and enjoy the fun first-hand.

Don't get me wrong here -- I love podcasts. They've replaced radio for background listening for driving, chores, or anything else that doesn't command your full attention. And there's plenty of time between actual meet-ups for those. But, oh, a good Sherlockian discussion group!

I'd like to thank my St. Louis friends in the Parallel Cases for demonstrating to me that a library group could be a very stimulating environment for Sherlockian fun, as well as the Peoria folk who turned out last night to talk Sherlock. On to next month!

About to discuss the dishonorable Dr. Watson.

I was re-reading "A Scandal in Bohemia" for Thursday night's discussion of it at Peoria's North Branch Library (at 6:30, if you're local), when I was struck by a particular pair of statements.

"I understand that this gentleman, your friend, is a man of honour and discretion, whom I may trust with a matter of the most extreme importance. If not, I should much prefer to communicate with you alone," the king of Bohemia says to Sherlock Holmes.

Dr. Watson rises to leave immediately. Sherlock Holmes pushes him back into his chair and says, "It is both or none."

And while we love Holmes's sentiment, look again at what the king actually says. He seems to know who Watson is, and actually compliments him. All Watson has to say is "Thank you, I shall be honored to show myself worthy of your trust," or something similar. Even a simple, "You can count on me!"

But Watson seems to have doubts as to his own standing as a man of honor and discretion. Or whether he's worthy of trust. He's quick to try to excuse himself.

And, also rather notably, Sherlock Holmes doesn't say anything at all about Watson's trustworthiness, or vouch for him in the slightest. He just goes "Both or none," and "You may say before this gentleman anything which you may say to me." In other words, "We're a matched set. The same." Holmes doesn't say anything about his trustworthiness either.

The king binds them with a promise, however, with a two year duration. And both men give a verbal affirmation of that promise. The first vows in a matter in which vows become very important.

Yet I still have to wonder at this hint of an unworthy, dishonorable Watson. Almost like he had failed such a test on a case prior to this one, and requires Holmes's absolution. Was it just Watson's marriage that had "drifted us away from each other," as Watson writes in the story's beginning? Or was there something else?

One of the things fans and writers, be they professional or amateur, have long enjoyed about Sherlock Holmes is the way the stories inspire other stories, and even a couple of lines like those just mentioned seem to be "heavy with child," so to speak. What was going on with Watson in "A Scandal in Bohemia?"

I'm not entirely sure, but I'm looking forward to discussing it, among other things, this Thursday night.

That first short story . . . .

Looking back at "A Scandal in Bohemia" from this, the far future, one can find it a very odd choice for the first of an ongoing series that would be the Victorian era's predecessor to the TV series.

While Sherlock Holmes had been fully introduced in two novels previously, was there an expectation that readers of The Strand Magazine had read Lippincott's Magazine the year before, or Beeton's Christmas Annual over three years before? Watson seems to think so, as he cites the latter in his narrative . . . a line that makes perfect sense to latter day readers who so often have all of the stories gathered in a single collection. But at the time the story came out?

"What's this A Study in Scarlet he's talking about?" would seem a natural response.

Sherlock Holmes doesn't even seem to be a detective, if one reads the opening to "A Scandal in Bohemia" cold. He's "a trained reasoner" who "was still, as ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime." Watson writes of it less as Holmes's profession and more of as a deeply immersive hobby.

Watson is paying Holmes a visit and just happens to be there when a man in a mask shows up to talk about royal blackmail. The very first story of Sherlock Holmes to cross many a reader's path and he's nowhere near the cliche murder-solver that he is so often automatically cast as. He's a domestic spy or an artful burglar in this case . . . but a detective? Not at all.

And then he blows it. First story in the series. First client in the series. And he blows it.

All well and good if you've had two successful novel-length cases prior to get established. But as the opening to a new series? A very curious choice. Almost like somebody in the decision process had a real crush on a certain celebrity character (or whom it was based on) when placing it at the head of the line.

In male-dominated Victorian England, the premiere episode of what would become a wildly popular series featured a woman totally pwning the tale's ingenious male main character. And Sherlock Holmes definitely is the main character of this story, inserting himself into the lives of those in a celebrity love triangle.

Which is odd as well, yet at least makes more sense for a kick-off story. A celebrity love triangle, full of masks, disguises, and a secret marriage, is just the sensational tale you'd want to lead with.

Still, if the average person were to describe a typical Sherlock Holmes story, "A Scandal in Bohemia" is nowhere close to what they'd be describing. Did Doyle eventually settle into a sort of formula, or do our minds just like to group things in a category and let the most common set the model? One wonders what Sherlock Holmes's adventures would have been like, had Doyle continued the sensational, free-wheeling sort of tale we see in "A Scandal in Bohemia."

Perhaps the result might have been something wild enough to make BBC Sherlock's "The Final Problem" seem a little less unusual.

A new year for Sherlock Holmes in Peoria, Illinois.

At 6:30 this Thursday night, at the North Branch of the Peoria Public Library, the Sherlock Holmes discussion begins again. I love the "again" part of that sentence, because the discussion of Sherlock Holmes has never really ended since the great detective showed up in the 1800s, but since there's only sixty stories to discuss, it can begin again, and again, and again . . . .

The "Sherlock Holmes Story Society" as the library will be calling it, will feature discussion of a short story per month, starting with "A Scandal in Bohemia" this Thursday, and as any Sherlock Holmes fan knows, you can get as much discussion out of a Conan Doyle short story as many a book club novel . . . with much less homework!

Irene Adler, the King of Bohemia, "the well-remembered door, which must always be associated in my mind with my wooing," Sherlock Holmes's acting company, that curious way Sherlock says "Goodnight," the disguises, Holmes being beaten . . . so many things to talk about in "A Scandal in Bohemia," and you'll probably be seeing some thoughts on it coming out here this week before and after the library meet-up.

But it's a good time to start discussing the story cycle of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson again, with a new year and a new season of Sherlock just done. Sixty stories covering the twenty-three year career of the world's first consulting detective . . . which done monthly and successfully makes for a five year run in itself, which many a Sherlock Holmes society has done (sometimes multiple times). How far will we go this time? One never knows.

But it's always a good time getting there. Thursday night, 6:30 at Peoria's North Branch library.