The Forgotten Clue

Published on 2024-04-06 by Emma Juettner

If you are familiar with NaNoGenMo, you may be thinking: "Wasn't the last one of those in November? And isn't it April now (at time of posting)?" You would be right, but I never got around to posting about my entry when I first finished it, so better late than never! If you're not familiar with NaNoGenMo, it is an annual challenge to write some code that generates a novel (defined as at least 50,000 words) within the month of November. This was my second year participating; my previous attempt was An Expanded Meditation.

Before I talk about my entry, though, I want to point out a few of the other 2023 entries that I thought were particularly interesting or impressive:

• Whalequest, a reordering of Moby Dick where the least whaley sentences come first and the whaliest sentences are at the end.
• Il nome della zebra, a novel inspired by The Name of the Rose and structured using a logic puzzle.
• The Library of Sir Herbert Quain, a collection of intriguing pamphlets and publications.
• The Bottish Play, a rendition of Macbeth performed entirely by various text-to-speech software. This one might be my favorite, it is truly eerie to hear The TikTok Voice playing the role of a witch in Macbeth.

My entry for NaNoGenMo 2023, The Forgotten Clue, was inspired by the board game Clue (or Cluedo). I wrote some code that approximates the mechanics of Clue (characters take turns moving from room to room, and accusing one another of the murder). The variation in language comes from a Tracery grammar which draws heavily on phrases from Putnam's Phrase Book, a 1919 book which compiles "Over 100 Model Social Letters and 6000 of the World’s Best English Phrases". It is a fascinating resource, and if you are interested in generative writing, I recommend checking it out as I bet you could do a lot of other really neat stuff with it.

The output of my code is a series of scenes that each read something like this:

With remarkable equanimity, Mr Green stepped into the billiard room.

The room was empty.

Mr Green called Miss Scarlett into the billiard room.

Mr Green said, "Miss Scarlett, the results are everywhere apparent: it was Mrs White in the billiard room with the wrench!"

Irritably self-conscious, Miss Scarlett answered, "You are certainly not making a reputation for accuracy by some of your statements. Obviously the murder weapon isn't the wrench. The cause of death was not a blunt object."

"Oh," Mr Green said. "Owing to a foolish error, I was mistaken."

I had one serious challenge in meeting the 50,000 word count: I couldn't get anywhere near 50,000 words if the detectives played the game skillfully. If they actually made sensible choices about what to suggest, using what they had already learned about which possibilities had been eliminated, the novel couldn't get much past 10,000 words before someone would figure out the solution. So as a cheap trick to meet the word count, I gave each detective an 80% chance of forgetting each clue the moment they hear it. Hence the title, "The Forgotten Clue." Despite this handicap, one detective does eventually manage to recall enough clues to solve the mystery, fortunately after the 50,000 word count has been safely met. I won't spoil the ending for you here, though!