Guessing Post

[holmesticemods]

Thank you so much for another wonderful round of Holmestice! The mods want to say THANK YOU to all the creators who joined us this round -- especially given how tumultuous this year has been. Being in this community with you is a joy and an honour.

Reveals and the Master List go up on December 21st. Until then, please enjoy and comment on all the lovely fanworks. Creators, please do NOT respond to Dreamwidth comments or post your works elsewhere on the Internet until reveals go up in the community. You may of course reply to comments on AO3, which preserves your anonymity.

In the meanwhile, stay tuned: treats are coming up! For anyone thinking of making a treat, we will accept treats right through until reveals, so if there's a prompt that inspires you, please have at it! Just use the regular submission guidelines and send your headers to holmesticemods@gmail.com.

If you'd like to guess who created what in this round, here's a list of all the contributors for the main gifts. (You'll have to put in some extra work to guess the treat-makers!) Go ahead and take a guess! It's all in good fun.


a_different_equation
alexcat
Biscia / two-nipples-maybe-more.tumblr
book7brokemybrain
colebaltblue
Cruria
discordantwords
dryadinthegrove
FleetSparrow
FredTheDinosaur
fridaythegowerstreetcat
Galadriel1010
gardnerhill
graycardinal
happyeverafter72
Inamac
Iwantthatcoat
language_escapes
Merinda / merindab
monkiainen
Mysterydeer
navaan
Noob
pagimag
PhoenixFalls
pipmer1
rachelindeed
Ragna/pennywaltzy
Ranowa
Redpenrevolution
sanguinity
Simplyclockwork
starfishstar
Strampunch
tepidspongebath
tinawiththeglasses
trobadora
VTsuion
vulgarweed
write_out
Yakichou


Go forth and leave love for your fellow Holmestice authors, artists, podficcers, and vidders! See you again on the 21st, when we reveal who made what!

Comments

an ode to our most mysterious and secret commenter, in this, a secret exchange of mystery stories

[(Anonymous)]

Celebrate, jubilate:
Holmesian poetry!
No mere haiku nor a
limerick here!

Unvillanellelike and
antisestinaesque,
Poet T. Rhymer has
wowed us this year.

-- an admirer

[pipmer1]

First of all, thank you mods for continuing this tradition and giving us all a delightful distraction during this most challenging of years.

My first guess (and probably only one since I am horrible at it) is the author of 'never trust to general impressions'. I'm going to go with discordantwords. The style is reminiscent of that author, plus the title reminds me of a similar one for a previous fic of theirs.

[write_out]

Thank you all for another amazing round! Given what a year it's been, it's been fantastic to see Holmestice going strong.

Guessing is not my strong suit, but I'll start off with:

- language_escapes for The Hunting Dogs, which I find so hauntingly beautiful

- strampunch for Whispering soft nothings, receiving hard somethings in exchange, a seriously fantastic piece of art

- simplyclockwork for Making History, my super fun Holmestice treat

I am still catching up, so I might attempt more guesses! For the most part, I've not commented or kudos'd BBC fic (except for a couple that I didn't write as I didn't offer those pairings in my sign-up). So, fellow BBC authors, I will catch up on yours once reveals are up!

[iwantthatcoat]

I am quite confident about Vulgarweed’s contribution, but I have beta’d for her so I kinda feel it’s an unfair advantage. Some of the writing styles are familiar to me, but I am so out of practice. I wish I had more time to devote to guessing! But thank you everyone, and especially to our mods. This really helps pull me through what is usually a pretty miserable time of year for me. Love to you all! Can’t wait for the guesses to really get going!

[starfishstar]

iwantthatcoat, I hear you offered a prize to folks on Twitter if someone can guess your work... I'm not on Twitter, but do I get a prize if I guess correctly???

(Although, I'm already more than halfway to thinking that I guessed wrong and scfrankles guessed right... In which case, I want scfrankles to get a prize.) :D :D

[starfishstar]

Hurrah! What a delight Holmestice is. :D

I am:

1. Inordinately pleased with myself, because I had a full slate of guesses, except for ONE person who was among the sign-ups but I just couldn't attach to any of the works. And then the list of creators was posted...and the person I couldn't match is indeed not, after all, on the final list of creators. Aha! How validating. :-)

2. But also, turns out there are two pinch hitters, one of whom I hadn't guessed about at all. Meaning, I assigned someone to a work when that person had not, in fact, created a work. Whoops! So I have a little re-examining to do, before I can share my guesses.

3. But far more importantly: a huge thank you to our hardworking mods, who make this such a fun community to be part of, every time.

Bears!

[graycardinal]

Not forgetting about this, but am wrestling Yuletide bears just now. There WILL be guesses, once the bears have been defeated....

[oldshrewsburyian]

I just wanted to jump in to add my thanks to the creators (and especially to the mods!) I'm sorry I wasn't able to participate in this round, 2020 being what it was, but I have been delighted by all the Holmestice creations.

[vulgarweed]

Huge thanks to the mods and all the participants. This was my first time participating, and I enjoyed it so much.

[796116311389]

First of all, let me just say thank you to the mods for a) hosting this event once again! You put in so much work and it is so appreciated. Holmestice is an absolute delight of my year! And b) for letting me have multiple extensions to finish my work. 😅

Second! Everyone's works were AMAZING this year! I always love reading the stuff from other versions of Holmes that aren't BBC! It's also the only time of the year I try to read outside of Johnlock and wow! So much great stuff this year! Thank you to everyone for sharing! 😊❤

Now for my guesses! I'm awful at guessing. I don't think I've been on the mark or even on the target, but! This year I am 100% confident in saying that the beautiful piece of Enola Holmes work titled "With time a changin'" is by the wonderfully talented two-nipples-maybe-more.

As for the fics asdfghjkl Idk. I recognize the feel of a ton of them but for the life of me I could never guess who wrote what. Here have some random stabs lol:

EXECUTE - Maybe vulgarweed? It's the overall questionably ambiguous happy ending that has me leaning towards that.

Actually it's pronounced Ha-meesh - I know I've read something else by this author. The writing is very familiar but Idk.

Also iwantthatcoat offered a prize on twitter for guessing their story so to cover all bases I'm going to guess they wrote all the stories and we're all just them in a trench coat lol

[starfishstar]

LOL! "We're all just them in a trench coat" is such an apt description of iwantthatcoat's ability to slip by unnoticed and be plausibly guessable as the creator of any number of works. :D

[scfrankles]

I must admit I haven’t read much this time, but I’ll chuck in a few guesses, if I may.

The Greater Game: Naturally the first thing I noticed about this was iwantthatcoat’s trademark numerous ellipses, with not all of them having only three dots…

Nice try, sweetheart, but I don’t believe this is by iwantthatcoat. Now, the fic is based on a fic by graycardinal - this is a situation that came up in an earlier round. I noted then it was an unusual choice - one person writing a gift fic for another person, based on a fic by a third party. And indeed on that occasion, there was no third party - the writer had written both fics. So is this a case of graycardinal thanking himself for the use of his own universe? Possibly. But when reading the story I came across this line: “...but his writers gave him such a load of baggage in the scripts.” And I was startled to hear someone’s voice. Not their writing fic voice - their voice for DW and Tumblr posts. And this person was the recipient for the original fic. so… I’m going to say this fic is by sanguinity.


Vid: beyond your peripheral vision: One participant is of course a natural choice for creator. But I think I do see their style, and the choice of music seems very them. I think this is by rachelindeed.


Peas in a Pod: I’m absolutely certain of this one - I’ve known the author far too long ^__^ The ‘verse, the round number of words, underlining for emphasis - and the creator’s voice in the replies to comments is just unmistakable. This is by gardnerhill.


The Reichenbach Truce: The style, the ship… This has to be by trobadora.


Actually, It’s Pronounced ‘ha-Meesh’: The ‘verse, gen, it’s a very delicate subject - I think there’s maybe three or four people who would have chosen to write this and would be able to write it well. One thing I did notice about the fic is that it’s written by a non-Briton, and probably an American. Doesn’t exactly narrow things down, of course. But looking at it another way - the fic has been written by someone who is skilled in writing British English and using British spelling, but who doesn’t use a Britpicker to catch anything that slips through. Thinking back to previous Holmestice fics, I think this information fits one writer on my shortlist more than the others. I think this is by iwantthatcoat.

[rachelindeed]

Oh yay! I am SO far behind in reading this round I really didn't feel qualified to offer guesses, but I thought to myself that Actually, It's Pronounced 'ha-Meesh' did feel like iwantthatcoat's work to me! Very glad to see that my vague sense is backed up by a more accurate guesser. One detail in that story I did notice was that there was a small typo where the writer referred to Scotland Yard as "New Scotland Yard," thus hinting that they spend a lot of time in BBC Sherlock fandom. That knocked Sanguinity, Graycardinal, and Starfishstar off my suspect list, and it wasn't a very long suspect list to begin with :)

I'll also add that I think the lovely podfic given as a treat for me this round is from starfishstar <33333333333

Oh, P.S., I'll say Strait-Laced is sanspatronymic's :)

starfishstar guesses! part 1!

[starfishstar]

IT BEGINS.

Once again, I have a full slate of guesses.

No, I did not intend to do this. (I remember a whole exchange with rachelindeed in the comments section last round, about how I'd achieved my perfect guessing score, and should probably retire on that high note and take a more relaxing approach next time around!)

But here's what I realized, as I attempted not to go all in, taking notes and making a guess for every work: I enjoy this. I mean, duh. But this time I was struck by the similarity between this (41 works, 41 creators, there's only one correct match, but you can find it if you pay attention to all the details!) and the type of logic/math puzzles I tend to enjoy. (e.g., 8x8 kenken, which I recently learned to do!) Odd as it sounds, there's something relaxing about this type of puzzle. And sometimes in life, a fiendishly complex puzzle that requires the mind's whole attention is quite a soothing thing.

And so we begin... (Works are presented in the order of their posting, but of course!)


The Case of the Queer Booksellers (ACD, Holmes/Watson) – fleetsparrow
Based on the fact that FleetSparrow matches with recipient tinawiththeglasses on a rare fandom, the Horowitz books, which the matching mod seems likely to have prioritized, as well as various formatting things, style of summary, etc.

ART: Merry Holmestice, Navaan!!! (Ritchie, ACD/Arsene Lupin, Elementary) – cruria
Once again, I did a way too detailed search for examples of participants’ past artworks… Art is generally considered easy to guess, since each artist’s style is so personal, but I am surprisingly bad at this! However, cruria’s sign-up said “I’m open to draw crossover between any Holmes canons I offered, or with Arsene Lupin or Raffles”…which matches both navaan’s sign-up, and this work. :-)

A Study in Scheming (BBC, Irene/Mary) – galadriel1010
It’s always harder to make guesses about creators whose work I don’t already know, but I’m going to say galadriel1010, who matches on recipient vulgarweed on several pairings, but more importantly, offered some ships including women, and even one femslash pairing that includes Irene! (Irene/Anthea.) Also, though, with a chance of tepidspongebath (who said “I’d be happy to write other characters and pairings”) or even language_escapes. (I know Lang isn’t usually a BBC person, but Lang and Galadriel match on several fandoms – including the rare Watson and Holmes comic – and I see language_escapes has previously written a femslash BBC fic in a similar vein, a “Women Being Awesome” canon fix-it.)

The Greater Game (Star Trek: TNG / Kurland – Moriarty series crossover, James Moriarty & Sherlock Holmes) – graycardinal
Okay, so..... I was VERY certain about this guess. My notes read: “Crossover? Star Trek and Kurland? Trying to pass itself off as not graycardinal’s, by pretending to have gotten graycardinal’s permission to build on a previous work? 100% graycardinal!” graycardinal is also the only one whose sign-up referred to the fandom as “Star Trek: TNG”, rather than “Star Trek: Next Generation” as others wrote. However, scfrankles makes a convincing case that this is sanguinity. And once I looked at it, yeah, that’s quite a good possibility as well. Sang might well have matched herself to recipient inamac – they share many fandoms – then deliberately written this to seem like graycardinal. The fact that this leans quite a bit into Moriarty as a mathematician only strengthens the case for Sang. So I’ll stick to my original guess, but with a hefty nod toward the possibility that scfrankles may be right.

How Scotland Yard Seduced the British Government (BBC, Mycroft/Lestrade) – pipmer1
One I’m quite sure about! Oh, hurrah! I somehow hadn’t expected to find pipmer1 over in the Mystrade wing of things, but this is a total match on tags, style of notes (including the care taken with content warnings, a lovely thing!) and formatting (+ + + as section break, and so on). pipmer1 and recipient monkiainen match only on Mystrade (despite both having interests in various other directions) but perhaps the matching mod did that deliberately, to promote variety of pairings in the fest.

to be continued...

Re: starfishstar guesses! part 1!

[write_out]

Yay! I love that you're doing this again!

Guessing by the bot

[vtsuion]

So, like starfishstar, I was struck between the similarity between this guessing game and puzzles like sudoku, and being a bit of a computer programmer, I just had to try my hand at creating a program to do some guessing for me. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to train a neural network on everyone's styles (maybe next time), but I have managed to pull something together akin to a sudoku solver.

Since I also used a computer program to gather all the information about everyone's sign-ups and submissions, I only used information that was easy for me to access on dreamwidth (the tags provided for the gifts and what type of gift, for which sources, pairings, and characters people volunteered to make). I admit, most of the time so far has been spent trying to figure out how to get the data into a usable form so I could finally run the algorithm on it, and I don't have too much to show just yet because as it is now everything has to match perfectly and it will only come to a conclusion if, based on the information provided, that's the only gift that creator could have possibly made (or vice-versa), but so far my bot has concluded that:

trobadora made The Reichenbach Truce

natrix_natrix/two-nipples-maybe-more probably made With Times A-Changin'.

yakichoufd and strampunch made "Whispering soft nothings, receiving hard somethings in exchange." and Soft moments (but it can't tell which of the two made which piece)

It also outputs a table of all the possible creators for the gifts it wasn't able to guess, but I don't have that in an uploadable form just yet.
If anyone has any questions about the code, I'd be more than happy to go into it a bit more!

Re: Guessing by the bot

[trobadora]

OMG, that is amazing.

I ... am not surprised by the bot's conclusion about me. *g*

starfishstar guesses! part 2!

[starfishstar]

Strait-Laced (Ritchie, Holmes/Watson) – phoenixfalls
Another one I’m reasonably sure about. Repicient yakichou only requested ACD, Granada and Ritchie, and expressed a preference for Ritchie, so the matching mod would likely have tried to match on that if possible. PhoenixFalls looks like a good match on that front, and also in terms of formatting etc., and also as someone who offered only high-rated fic (3 or 5) and thus is likely to have written something explicit.

Magical Rain (BBC, gen) – Noob / 0archangel0
Formatting matches, but also the author of this fic thanks their beta and friend luneofmeadow …and I was actually able to get one google hit by searching “0archangel0” and “luneofmeadow” together, so they do seem to be friends!

ART: Someone Old, Someone New, Someone Borrowed and Someone Violet (Granada/ACD, Holmes/Watson and Violet Hunter/Mary Morstan) – fredthedinosaur
This appears to be an artist new to Holmestice and, again, I am bad at guessing art... This piece has a distinctive style, one that I didn’t think I recognized (for what that’s worth), so I looked around for examples of work by the new artists who signed up this round (yay, new artists!) and tried to find anything that might match. The sum total of my notes on this read: “I think FredTheDinosaur may be a match? Seems to have the same assured pencil lines.”

Fairy Lights (ACD, Holmes/Watson) – vtsuion
Oooooh, I had fun wrestling with this thorny one! Right off the bat I thought it might be someone new to Holmestice, just from the tone of the author’s notes. (“As you requested both retirement era fluff and fairy tale, I found I just had to do both.” – somehow that just sounded like a first-time Holmesticer to me? That enthusiasm and delight at receiving a great bunch of prompts and wanting to do all of it!) But of course it’s not safe to assume anything, so I didn’t rule anyone out. Looking at who might have matched on what, VTsuion and sanspatronymic emerged as the top contenders, with further possibilities of iwantthatcoat or sanguinity. So then I was down to fine-tooth details like scouring the tags on previous works to see if anything characteristic stood out that matched this fic... And I found that, arggh, VTsuion and sanspatronymic BOTH have previously used the fairly niche tag “Sherlock Holmes's Retirement”. What are the chances? (It’s also been used by okapi, which started me wondering whether okapi was secretly in the mix as a pinch hitter…) Eventually, VTsuion ended up as my guess here, but there was a question mark next to that almost to the end. Only much later, as I was trying to confirm whether I’d made the right guess on something else (Her Left Hand Woman) by eliminating all other possibilities, did I stumble across the key piece of evidence: VTsuion has a very specific punctuation fingerprint: not always using punctuation before end quotes, especially if that dialogue is immediately followed by a dash and then a descriptive phrase. So I checked back to Fairy Lights and it has that formatting! It’s a match!

The Hunting Dogs (A Study in Emerald, Holmes/Watson) – sanguinity
Heh. Okay. Here we go. This was another tough one! (You should see my page and a half of notes about it…) I did the usual, assessing not just who offered this fandom, but also who offered other fandoms that match recipient VTsuion’s requests. No one who offered A Study in Emerald really seemed like a match in terms of style. No one else seemed like a match either. At some point in the process I noted literally this: “Could it perhaps be sanguinity? It’s certainly very assured! (And she’s made a point of doing unexpected things the last couple of rounds, e.g. puns or a Moriarty-centric ‘verse).” I went around and around, with nothing else fitting, and kept coming back to this thought. It’s a bit of a leap, but sanguinity definitely could have matched herself to someone who requested A Study in Emerald as a deliberate challenge/something new. And it’s actually a good match in a bunch of ways. Wily sanguinity uses mod prerogative and no longer actually says in her sign-ups what she’s offering, but she does fit with VTsuion’s requests in a number of ways: offering vids and podfic as well as fic; writing ACD as well as being up for a rare ‘verse challenge, and the fact that this fic features an established relationship, and isn’t explicit, for a recipient who requested only low ratings (1 or 4). The tags seem like they could be sanguinity; the formatting is hard to say one way of the other, but of course Sang knows better than to do anything identifiably characteristic in a Holmestice fic! And Sang does occasionally write a summary this way (excerpt from the fic in italics, then description of the fic below). In the end I wrote: “Okay, I’m going with my instinct, even if I can’t 100% back it up with evidence. sanguinity!” And I was so pleased with myself for having made this match, which is very non-obvious, and Sang surely thought she was going to sneak by us all, and so on. But now scfrankles has me doubting myself, having made a very strong case for sanguinity as the author of The Greater Game. So if scfrankles is right about that, then I think inamac wrote The Hunting Dogs instead.

Fever Dream (BBC, Sherlock/John) – book7brokemybrain
I have VERY little evidence for this, aside from the fact that I’d already assigned everyone else by the time Book7BrokeMyBrain was revealed as a pinch hitter. We’ll see if I managed to accidentally get it right!

VID: beyond your peripheral vision (Granada, gen) – rachelindeed
It seems almost too obvious a guess, since rachelindeed is our most frequent vidder these days, and there was only one vid this round. (And it couldn’t have been by sanguinity, because it’s for sanguinity. pagimag also offered vids, of course, but only for BBC.) However, this does seem like Rachel (the warmth and compassion for the characters…though this vid does have a shocking dearth of Watson, if it’s rachelindeed!) I also noticed – when I went back to check previous master lists, to see who’d created for sanguinity too recently to be in the running this time – that rachelindeed hasn’t been matched to sanguinity, at least any time recently, despite being our two main vidders. High time!

ART: With Times A-Changin’ (Enola Holmes, Enola/Cecily) – natrix_natrix / two-nipples-maybe-more
Very characteristic style! Even I could tell. ;-) This is so reminiscent of
natrix_natrix’s work last round, which was also a bucolic countryside portrait. And natrix_natrix also sounded very enthusiastic about Enola in sign-ups. :-)

Never Trust to General Impressions (BBC, Sherlock/John) – write_out
This was a very late addition. I had completely convinced myself that I had write_out placed elsewhere (we’ll get to that) and I had Galadriel1010, tentatively, for this fic (a good match in some ways, but not a match on formatting). When I finally realized that write_out couldn’t have written what I thought, and had to go back to the drawing board to find anything else that could possibly be write_out’s work, I finally realized this fic was a formatting match, as well as a match on things like starting with a quote, and thanking a beta, and some specific tags as well. By the end, I was quite confident about it. (I think I dismissed write_out out of hand initially, because they’d already created for recipient dryadinthegrove a few rounds ago. Just goes to show, that rule isn’t hard and fast!)

Peas in a Pod (Without a Clue, gen) – gardnerhill
Another one I’m very confident about (unless someone here is an extremely good mimic). It’s the underlining; it’s the addition of a strong female character, when one wasn’t necessarily requested. It’s the perfectly round word count, which scfrankles has previously mentioned is a gardnerhill telltale sign. It’s the disparaging reference to BBC Sherlock in the author’s reply to a comment on this fic. :D And, of course, it’s that gardnerhill is a very good match to recipient iwantthatcoat (four fandoms and two fanwork forms); no, gardnerhill didn’t actually offer this fandom (Without a Clue) but they’ve expressed love for it elsewhere and have written previous works for it.

starfishstar guesses! part 3!

[starfishstar]

(With apologies, because I think these write-ups get wordier and less well wrangled, the later/tireder I get...)


unlikely (BBC, Sherlock/John) – simplyclockwork
I learned my lesson last Holmestice, when I almost guessed simplyclockwork wrong, despite them having a very obvious fingerprint. So, this round, my first and only guessing note about this fic reads: “note that this is the only one so far with a lower-case title…any chance it could be simplyclockwork? oh, hey, and it even has a graphic at the start like they always do! hey, and tags and formatting of summary and notes match too! Yay, I think it’s simplyclockwork!”

Treasure for the Senses (ACD/Granada, Holmes/Watson) – happyeverafter72
From a glance at happyeverafter72’s works, this looks like a match on content (especially in writing Holmes as an autistic character), formatting, plus some tags that match – as well as often writing fics that are classified as both ACD and Granada! i.e., a very good match.

A BRIEF DIGRESSION: Here I’ll note the one work I won’t be guessing this round: I accidentally stumbled on an identifying bit of information that I did not want or intend to see, concerning my own gift: the beautiful podfic of “The Glorious Disguise”. (Seriously, it’s such a beautiful reading, please go listen to it! Yes, I’m biased because it’s a gift to me…but also, it’s beautiful. And I don’t think you need to know the fandom to enjoy the warmth and tenderness of this.) So anyway, all that is to say that I WON’T be making a guess about the authorship of this podfic (wouldn’t be sporting, obviously!) and I may (OR MAY NOT?) deliberately throw one (OR MORE?) of my other guesses as well, and hopefully that will offset my accidental knowledge!

Contented (BBC, Mycroft/Lestrade) – merindab / Janto321
Recipient Mysterydeer requested only Mycroft/Lestrade, so the creator of this fic has to be someone who offered that (or at least said “any”) – otherwise, the matching mod wouldn’t have matched them. By elimination, I landed on merindab or monkiainen. And the tags do seem to match merindab, as well as a bit of formatting (two asterisks for section breaks). It’s a match!

Amongst Friends (Enola Holmes, gen, “Enola/the feeling of being cherished by a parental figure for once in her life”) – iwantthatcoat, with a chance of language_escapes (or, if scfrankles is right about various other things, then graycardinal)
OH, BOY. HERE WE GO. Both language_escapes and iwantthatcoat are extremely good matches here. language_escapes most of all – surely the matching mod wouldn’t have passed up the chance to match an offer and request of extremely rare fandom Test of the Professionals? However: natrix_natrix is the recipient here, and I’m 99% sure that natrix_natrix made language_escapes’ gift this round (With Times A-Changin’). Though of course it happens sometimes, it seemed a bit unlikely that the mod would have matched them both on each other, when there are so many other options to go with. So then I looked harder at the possibility of iwantthatcoat and: hey, the punctuation fits! I was very pleased with this match, but this now comes with a postscript,… If scfrankles is right that iwantthatcoat wrote Actually, It’s Pronounced ‘ha-Meesh’, and that sanguinity wrote The Greater Game, then things shuffle around in such a way that graycardinal most likely wrote this.

The Defence of Progress (ACD, Holmes/Watson) – gowerstreet
Format and tags seem to match! (Sorry that I’m boring on this one… Sometimes that’s all I’ve got to go on, which leaves me not much to describe.)

Fraternity (BBC, Mycroft & John) – initially I was sure this was write_out! but now: galadriel1010, if not matched above
The first thing I noted is that this is probably someone who expressed an interest in gen, since that wasn’t the first or main thing that recipient pagimag requested. The obvious choice would be dryadinthegrove, who offered Mycroft & John, and John & Harry – a perfect match for this fic. But dryadinthegrove left kudos! Next most likely would be write_out, who offered gen, and specifically said “I'm a sucker for fics that delve into Sherlock and Mycroft's relationship. Anything featuring Sherlock, Mycroft, and John working together (or not so much) would be great” – i.e., exactly this fic. Other possibilities: Galadriel1010 (mentioned “Mycroft & Sherlock brotherly feelings”, “friendships across the board”), Mysterydeer (offered Mycroft & Sherlock), iwantthatcoat (offered “Holmes Brothers relationship dynamics”) or tepidspongebath (who didn’t offer those things, but sounded particularly open to trying new characters or pairings). I put write_out in tentatively, but grew more certain about it as everything else around it slotted into place. This lasted all the way up until the final list of participants posted, and even until write_out mentioned in a comment on this very guessing post, “For the most part, I've not commented or kudos'd BBC fic (except for a couple that I didn't write as I didn't offer those pairings in my sign-up).” It was at that point that I noticed: write_out had left kudos on this fic, Fraternity! Which is definitely something write_out had offered and was in the running for, having offered not just gen, but specifically Mycroft & Sherlock gen. Was the comment a deliberate misdirection? Had write_out pulled an iwantthatcoat and orchestrated a way to leave kudos on their own fic? Why else would they be so careful not to leave kudos on anything that could potentially be attributed to them…but then so conspicuously leave kudos on one attributable fic…and make such a point of point that out? I went in circles about this for a WHILE. But finally I settled down enough to remember that there’s probably a simpler explanation. Such as: I’d been wrong about my guess in the first place. (A guess I’d originally considered only tentative anyway!) So, I went back and thoroughly scoured all the fics that could possibly be write_out’s. And, indeed, found one that was a much better match: Never Trust to General Impressions, as described above. I wondered if it could be as simple as a straight switch, putting Galadriel1010 here and write_out there. A few tags here do match Galadriel1010, and a bit of formatting (using a space after an ellipsis). It’s not much to go on, but at least it can be a match. It’s totally still possible that Galadriel1010 belongs elsewhere, though. This is more of a “could be” match than a “100% definite, bot-proof” match. ;-)

The Reichenbach Truce (ACD, Holmes/Moriarty) – trobadora
Yeah, yeah, I know, it would be easy to make this guess by mere kneejerk reaction. But I considered it closely! The most obvious fact is that this has to be someone who really loves Moriarty – because recipient gowerstreet didn’t even request that. (The closest in gowerstreet’s sign-up is “Holmes/Other”.) The usual obvious suspect, trobadora, only matched with gowerstreet on ACD and BBC (and the matching mod does tend to match on rarer fandoms, where possible). Rather, navaan emerged as the most obvious choice here, having offered Holmes/Moriarty (listing it first, in fact, and as the only pairing offered for ACD). However, although navaan matches to gowerstreet on both ACD and Ritchie, they don’t really match on pairings, aside from that “Holmes/Other”. Then, in an interesting new spoiler this round, we’ve also got Mysterydeer, who offered not only Holmes/Moriarty, but other Moriarty pairings a well. Mysterydeer doesn’t look like a style match here, though. vulgarweed, too, offered “Holmes/Moriarty in some canons”…but left kudos here! Meanwhile, the tags seemed like they could maybe be navaan…but the formatting seemed much more like trobadora (lots of hyphens, and a distinctive pattern of a space both before and after an ellipsis). What’s more, it felt like trobadora to me. I’m not great at recognizing people’s writing style (which is why I go for all this finicky formatting stuff, rather than trusting instinct to tell me whose prose I’ve just read!) but in this case, the guess seemed right. “Polished and assured” is what I had in my notes, and that seemed to match trobadora.

ART: Soft moments (Granada, Holmes/Watson) – yakichou
Say, have I mentioned yet that I’m not good at recognizing artistic style? Literally my first note here says that Yakichou doesn’t look like a style match. But I looked at all the other artists, and they definitely didn’t look like a style match either. Um? But I did eventually find Yakichou’s tumblr, which has works that seemed like more of a match. (Watercolor with lines drawn over it…or whatever the artist words for that would be.) ;-) So I put this down as a match, but I wasn’t sure about until I’d confirmed that I indeed had all the other artists placed elsewhere.

In Out of the Rain (BBC, Sherlock & John) – ranowa
This has a distinctive bit of formatting (double dashes with space after), as well as other aspects of formatting and tagging that fit. And Ranowa did offer gen – “Sherlock & Just About Anyone” – which matches this!

Her Left Hand Woman (Enola Holmes, Enola & Sherlock, Enola/Cecily) – navaan
I doubted myself about this one enough that I ran through the entire deduction process a second time…but I still came to the same conclusion. There were much more obvious possibilities to have matched on recipient graycardinal: e.g., iwantthatcoat is an extremely good match, sharing a bunch of obscure-ish fandoms; and Coat’s sign-up even mentioned “Holmes Brothers relationship dynamics”, which this basically is, if we consider Enola to fall under that heading. language_escapes is also a great match: shares multiple fandoms with graycardinal, mentioned Enola/Cecily, offered gen (which graycardinal prefers), etc. And natrix_natrix of course is an obvious match on Enola, but I’d already placed them elsewhere. However: navaan and graycardinal match on a very rare fandom, the Moriarty episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and it seemed to me that the matching mod would have jumped at the opportunity to match on that. Which meant either navaan or VTsuion! And between those two, the formatting and tagging seemed to match navaan. There was the small fact, though, that navaan hadn’t actually offered Enola Holmes… It was among their requests, though. And it’s certainly possible that someone matches on one fandom, but then gets inspired to write a different one once they see their recipient’s prompts. Also, a very small thing, but I spotted a tiny „Germanismus“ (oder eigentlich eher: eine deutsche Schreibweise eines englischen Worts!) and… well, now I’m no longer sure why I was so certain navaan is German? Is that just a mistaken assumption by association with trobadora?? Now I’ve gone and confused myself. But I think this fic was written by a German speaker, and I think(?) navaan is German, so that additional small factor helped to underscore my existing guess. Long story short: I kept doubting myself, since navaan hadn’t even offered this fandom, but ultimately the rest of the evidence compelled me. (Also, now I have a weird craving to discuss fandom in German, which I’ve never really had a chance to do.)


(to be continued... though not until tomorrow at the earliest...)

Re: starfishstar guesses! part 3!

[(Anonymous)]

Chuckling at the thought of navaan being unkind to their verbs.
Well done, Starfishstar!
Regarding me...no comment, of course! Except that I am thrilled to be part of potential wrench-throwing, and that the question now becomes am I stubborn enough to continue my punctuation tells, with full knowledge that they are tells?

[796116311389]

Oh watching all this guessing (especially the attempts to get Coat pinned to a work!) Is so exciting!

Also loving the reasoning behind why someone wrote something! That's fun to read!

[write_out]

Okay, I'm calling it: discordantwords wrote the astounding EXECUTE for me. There is something about the tone and the writing style, even the author responses to comments, that makes me think it's DW.

[starfishstar]

I'm with you on that!! (coming soon, in the next batch of guesses...)

[a_different_equation]

A big thank you to the mods for running the gift exchange. It has been great to participate once more. I’m still catching up on all the amazing works, not alone fan fiction but also fan art and podfic.

Another highlight is to discover new universes, which proved “Execute” for me. I’ve never heard of King’s story before, and now I cannot get this thrilling and dark fix-it (?) of Reichenbach out of my mind. Stunning!

Lastly, the guessing game is once more a great source of fun!

To sum it up: I love it! Thanks to everyone to bring a bit of light into 2020. Fandom is a wonderful place!

[write_out]

King's story is fantastic!! The collection it's from (Skeleton Crew) is full of great stories. Taking that story and twisting it into a Reichenbach fic is genius. Dark, but daring!

[rachelindeed]

All right, I'll blunder into this careful investigation and throw around a few impressionistic assertions, rather like a good Watson should!

Regarding Sanguinity: our two best guessers have come to different conclusions this round, with SCFrankles voting for "The Greater Game" and starfishstar arguing for "The Hunting Dogs." They are both excellent and very plausible guesses, and ones I doubt I would have come to on my own.

However, I can't quite convince myself that Sang wrote "The Hunting Dogs," for several reasons. I follow Sang's tumblr, and though she is extremely cagey about Holmestice because she loves her anonymity so much, this round whilst commiserating with some other participants who were joking about how far behind they were, she made a comment to the effect of: "will I finish my canon review by the deadline? hard to say." And...the canon review for A Study in Emerald is one PDF of less than 10 pages. It's a very short story. I mean, maybe if she also wanted to look at the comic it would add extra time to the review process? But still, if we're looking for a canon review that requires a bit of time, I think "The Greater Game" is a better fit. For ST: TNG, she would need to watch the two Moriarty episodes, possibly catch up on other AI episodes (the story mentions Nomad from TOS, Laal from early seasons TNG, etc.) as well as perhaps re-read some of the Kurland Moriarty book series.

Also, it occurs to me that we all talk every round about the possibility of deliberately imitating someone else's punctuation and style, but...would any of us really feel comfortable doing that without the permission of the person we're imitating? I don't know, but it seems like we've all stopped short of actually going for that next-level of disguise up until now, perhaps out of politeness. The only exception I can recall is when Colebaltblue wrote a Hornblower crossover deliberately designed to encourage readers to guess Sang as the author, but of course that was a joint project hatched with Sang and done with her permission. It occurs to me that requesting to write a sequel to someone else's story would offer the perfect opportunity to deliberately style oneself after their writing tics with the added benefit of having their permission to match their style as closely as possible. And, should the match be particularly good, guessers would naturally assume that the original story writer was doing the sequel writing and only pretending to have gotten their own permission for it (as HAS happened in previous rounds). Diabolical!

...And yet, all that being said...there are just a few details in "The Greater Game" that don't feel quite Sang-like to me? The writer calls Cumberbatch 'by far the most handsome' Holmes and I cannot imagine Sang saying that. It also took me several reads to understand that Cumberbatch was the one being referred to in that line because BBC Sherlock was given the identifying feature of wearing blue jeans, which BBC Sherlock basically never does outside of the unaired pilot episode...could this writer be someone who hasn't watched BBC Sherlock in ages and perhaps relied on a quick google image search to refresh their memory?

All this is quite vague, as usual for my guesses, but I must admit I remain unconvinced that either of these stories are Sang's. I can certainly see how they could be! Our champion guessers may well be right! But my own gut instinct is to say that "The Hunting Dogs" is vulgarweed's and that "The Greater Game" is in fact graycardinal's.

And as long as I'm going with my emotional intuitions, what the hell, I'll say that language_escapes wrote "Amongst Friends." I disagree with Starfishstar's instinct that the matching mod would avoid matching two people with each other -- my impression is that she does that fairly often, even with sign-ups that aren't all that hard to find alternatives for (certainly I remember two pairs of BBC folks being matched with each other as gifter/giftee on recent rounds).

*throws confetti in the air and vanishes dramatically*

[pipmer1]

Very interesting! I was under the impression that the handsome blue jean wearing Holmes was Jonny of Elementary (not saying I agree or disagree with the handsome designation, hee)

More guesses

[iwantthatcoat]

Ok, don’t ask me why on these, as they are more or less gut guesses with a bit of themes I think they’d choose to address thrown in and absolutely no research whatsoever because I am low on time and need to turn in grades and such.

I am going with a_different_ equation for Queer Booksellers, PipMer for Seducing the British Government, Merindab for EXECUTE, and Vulgarweed for Pearls.
This is subject to change, but I thought I’d throw some more guesses out there before I’m swallowed in a sea of paperwork.

Re: More guesses

[pipmer1]

Coat, I just have to say I love your abbreviated titles for these :D

starfishstar guesses! part 4!

[starfishstar]

The Resurrection of the Beekeeper and his Assistant (The Case of Death and Honey – Neil Gaiman, Holmes/Watson) – a_different_equation
This was such a wildcard! This is not only an extremely rare fandom, but one that colebaltblue didn’t even request. So the creator must have known this gift would be well received – either by knowing colebaltblue directly, or by asking e.g. sanguinity for guidance. I looked at the possible matches, and somehow kept coming back to a_different_equation (who really likes rare fandoms!). There are various formatting things that match, but also I vaguely have the impression that these folks (a_different_equation, colebaltblue, sanguinity) all know each other over on tumblr, and probably talk about rare ‘verse stuff I don’t know about over there? Anyway, that’s my guess!

EXECUTE (BBC, Sherlock/John) – discordantwords
I am very confident about this guess! The first thing was that I just absolutely could not find a match for this fic among the participants who signed up this round. I considered tepidspongebath, but the formatting didn’t really match. One formatting thing matched vulgarweed, but nothing else. This fic uses a fairly uncommon format for ellipses, so I even wondered if it could be iwantthatcoat, deliberately disguising the usual telltale formatting quirks… But in the end, the punctuation just seemed too consistent for Coat. ;-) I came back after I’d narrowed things down by finalizing guesses for most of the other works, and of the few creators who remained unassigned…still none of them matched. My notes at this point read: “Is this a pinch-hitter?? I think I need to wait until I have all the data (i.e., the list of all participants is released) before I can decide this one.” I felt SO vindicated when the list of participants came out! Indeed, sanspatronymic (who I hadn’t been able to place anywhere) was not on the list after all. And indeed, there was a pinchhitter on the list who matched this fic very well: discordantwords. Yay!

The Adventure of Sir Peacock’s Household (ACD, Holmes/Watson) – tinawiththeglasses
tinawiththeglasses and FleetSparrow are the only ones who match to recipient cruria on rare fandom Horowitz. And once I looked, FleetSparrow wasn’t a match on formatting, but tinawiththeglasses was! (And has previously written Victor Trevor, who appears in this fic.) Sometimes it really is that straightforward. :-)

ART: Art Inspired By "So Many Ways To Tell Me You Care" and "This Is A Terrible Idea" (BBC, Mycroft/Lestrade) – penaltywaltz / afteriwake / pennywaltzy
It’s graphics, and seems like afteriwake’s style. (To the extent that I can tell the style of graphics…which I probably can’t…) It also seemed like afteriwake to do both graphics and a fic (mentioned as still to come, as a treat). (Isn’t afteriwake the one who did a whole bunch of additional treats for their recipient one round?)

The Case of the Mauled Ringmaster (Elementary, Sherlock/Joan) – alexcat
This was more a process of elimination: I looked at who had offered Elementary (since Elementary tends to be its own distinctive subgrouping of participants – people either are Elementary people or they aren’t) and it didn’t match anyone else, but it did seem to match alexcat on formatting.

Auxin (BBC, Sherlock/John) – dryadinthegrove
This one was a bit tricky, but in the end it matched dryadinthegrove on certain formatting; the tagging also matches well enough (not enough to make the match on that alone, but certainly nothing that would cancel out the match); and it seemed enough like dryad in a way that’s hard to quantify, but seemed to satisfy the match.

Pearls Beyond Price (ACD, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson/Mary Watson) – vulgarweed
Yay, another one I’m quite sure about! Recipient happyeverafter72 only requested ACD and Granada, so the matching mod has to have matched on one or both of those (and likely on the threesome, since that’s the only rare-ish part of this request). Only three people offered this particular threesome: gardnerhill, vulgarweed and natrix_natrix. vulgarweed looked like a particularly good match: expressed an interest in writing something explicit, tags seem to match, and the formatting is a very good match. I did consider moving vulgarweed to EXECUTE, when I was struggling with that, and moving sanspatronymic here (they’ve written Holmes/Watson/Mary Morstan before, and offered all ratings in their sign-up). But I just couldn’t get the formatting to match ¬– though I was trying very hard! I also considered colebaltblue, but the formatting and style didn’t match at all. In the end, once I had EXECUTE sorted out with discordantwords, I felt confident about vulgarweed here.

ART: Whispering soft nothings, receiving hard somethings in exchange (ACD/Granada, Holmes/Watson) – strampunch
I’d been getting a bit worried, because we were nearing the end of Holmestice and I still hadn’t identified anything as strampunch’s work. I was pretty shaky on some of my guesses for the other artworks that had been revealed so far, so maybe I could have reassigned one of those to strampunch, but there really, really wasn’t anything that looked like their work. So I was strongly anticipating an artwork from strampunch to be posted late in the game – and it was! Even so, I wasn’t totally sure on style; it was content that convinced me: going straight to Granada when given a range of options, and doing something “naughty” – Holmes making Watson blush over the phone somehow did seem reminiscent of last round’s intricate artwork of Holmes and Watson undressing each other.

The Time Cat (BBC, Sherlock/John) – Redpenrevolution / 796116311389
796116311389 quickly seemed to more or less match on formatting, summaries and tags. It could still have been someone else who offered BBC and/or ACD/Granada and/or the rare fandom in recipient merindab’s requests, Great Mouse Detective. But in the end, as I narrowed down other things, this match continued to work, so I kept it! With a fun postscript: I’d already finalized my guesses, but 796116311389 did offer a couple of pieces of confirming evidence here in the guessing post. ;-) 1. By thanking the mods “for letting me have multiple extensions to finish my work” – and I see The Time Cat was posted on AO3 on December 14, significantly after the deadline. 2. And when iwantthatcoat guessed 796116311389 as creator of In Out of the Rain, 796116311389 replied, “And true cat!lock is something I would write. But... ;-)” And this fic is one of the two others this round that feature a cat. :-)

Actually, It’s Pronounced ‘ha-Meesh’ (Without a Clue, Watson & Kincaid) – inamac (although, yes, if scfrankles is right here and elsewhere, then there’s a possibility this is iwantthatcoat instead)
Aha! This was a tricky one. No question about it, iwantthatcoat is the most obvious person to have matched to recipient sanspatronymic – the only two participants who offered Without a Clue! (The two of them match on various other obscure-ish fandoms, too.) iwantthatcoat is a strong matching possibility in many places, though, simply thanks to offering so many fandoms. Which is to say, there are lots of works where my initial data-gathering brought up iwantthatcoat as the best potential match for that recipient. But ultimately, the matching mod can only match iwantthatcoat to one recipient, not all of them! (…unless, indeed, we’re all Coat in a trenchcoat…) So I needed to cast a wider net for possibilities, both here and on other works where Coat came up as a good match. My gut reaction also said this fic was more likely to be from a new participant – since this highly specific and highly intriguing prompt has been bouncing around Holmestice for a while now, but no one tackled it until now. (That reasoning could be faulty, of course. It could merely be that this creator hadn’t happened to match to this prompter until now!) Anyway, as I continued to make matches elsewhere, and since I felt pretty confident about putting iwantthatcoat elsewhere, from my dwindling pool of possible suspects I thought inamac seemed like a possibility here, especially thanks to some specifically British formatting. And more importantly, inamac not only offered gen, but specifically prefers it, and mentioned Holmes & Watson. (Which Watson & Kincaid essentially is, with a twist.) Of course, there’s the little fact that inamac didn’t offer or even mention Without a Clue. But they were a good match to sanspatronymic otherwise (ACD, Granada, Ritchie, and even mentioned “also happy to spin off ACD Holmes references in other TV canon”). So it’s not much of a stretch to think inamac might have matched on sanspatronymic, then been intrigued enough by the prompt to go look up Without a Clue. inamac also seemed very likely to have written genfic, of which there were only a handful, many of them already clearly attributed to other people. (And many of them BBC, which inamac definitely didn’t offer.) So inamac ended up also looking like a very probable match here, albeit for an entirely different set of reasons than iwantthatcoat! Now, though, scfrankles has me halfway convinced it’s Coat after all – and it does feel like a topic that Coat would be willing to tackle. On the other hand, if I rearrange things to fit scfrankles’ guesses concerning sanguinity, graycardinal, iwantthatcoat, etc., then I end up with inamac on The Hunting Dogs, and inamac seems far more likely to have written gen. Oh, I don’t know! But inamac was my official guess before I started incorporating other people’s theories, so I’ll stick with that. :-)

Re: starfishstar guesses! part 4!

[scfrankles]

*jumps excitedly up and down* I've just been doing a bit of actual detection work - not sure if this is going to help or be an annoyance :P

I went to check what inamac's nationality is on their DW profile. They seem to be British, and I am certain - 100% certain - a non-Briton wrote Actually, It’s Pronounced ‘ha-Meesh’. There's "plow" - and as Holmes himself points out in 3GAR, it's spelt somewhat differently on this side of the pond. There's also "throw him to the kerb" - kudos to the author for going with the correct homophone (we curb our enthusiasm but our pavements have kerbs) but it doesn't stop the expression from sounding rather American.

But also, when I clicked on inamac's name on the header for their gift fic, it took me to a post in which they mention Holmestice. Only "Holmestice" has a typo - "Holmstice", and I knew I had seen that particular typo already elsewhere in an author's notes.

I think The Mystery of the Missing Changeling is by inamac.

And I am resolutely sticking to my theory that Actually, It’s Pronounced ‘ha-Meesh’ is by iwantthatcoat. They have been trying to talk me out of this guess, which I think is significant ^_^

[iwantthatcoat]

I am worried I messed up my guess. I simply wrote “cat” next to Redpen. And now, reading this, I am realizing there are two cat stories. Oh dear. Well, back to the drawing board for me. I am more than a bit off my game.
Impressive work, Starfishstar!

starfishstar guesses! part 5, the FINAL (almost…) part!

[starfishstar]

One Way Journey (ACD, Holmes/Watson) – monkiainen
Honestly, this was largely by process of elimination, after I’d placed most creators elsewhere. My only proof is a very small formatting thing that matches, the comma being outside the quotation marks. :-)

Strike a Match (Watch it Burn) (BBC, Sherlock Holmes/Jim Moriarty) – mysterydeer
Similarly, by this point in the guessing I’d pretty much only left myself Mysterydeer as a possibility (offered BBC, offered Moriarty pairings). And indeed, Mysterydeer matches on formatting! Style of tagging also seems similar. It’s a match!

The Mystery of the Missing Changeling (ACD, Holmes & Mrs Hudson) – tepidspongebath
WELL. All this is about to change, because the ground has been shifting under my feet even as I’ve been writing up these explication posts. But for now I’ll stick to what my original, official guesses were, before scfrankles started adding brilliant deductions all over the place. :D This was mostly a process of elimination thing, too, since I hadn’t been able to place tepidspongebath anywhere with any certainty, and this seemed like at least a possible match. (However: I noted both that the author seems to be either British or at least very familiar with British conventions, and that it’s likely someone who offered gen. Interesting, then, that I ended up choosing tepidspongebath, who appears to be American and didn’t offer gen...) I now have an updated guess for this – but again, it’s based on legwork by scfrankles, so I don’t feel I can claim it officially! So that will be in a separate addendum post.

The Adventure of the Cardboard Hoax (BBC, Sherlock/John) – pagimag
Much like I was waiting to see artwork that was identifiably strampunch, and getting a little concerned that I hadn’t seen one yet, so I was also waiting to see a vid from pagimag. I was certain there was going to be a vid on the final day of posting! I was honestly surprised when there wasn’t. But…there was this fic, which seemed very much like pagimag, in terms of length and formatting. A small but telling further bit of evidence: Right away, this fic had kudos from a name that was unfamiliar to me, Darkrivertempest. This is a long fic that was revealed near the end of posting, so most people reading along with Holmestice hadn’t had a chance to get to it yet. (I know I haven’t!) And due to the nature of fests where participants submit works at one point, but the works aren’t revealed until a later point, this fic would already have been pretty far down in the listing of recently posted fics on AO3. (Meaning it was unlikely someone not-Holmestice-connected would have chanced across it so quickly.) That gave me a hunch that Darkrivertempest might be a friend, perhaps even beta, of the author’s. So I checked – and Darkrivertempest was a beta on pagimag’s previous fic. :D

The Haunting of Garton Hall (Enola Holmes (2020), Enola Holmes & Sherlock Holmes) – colebaltblue
This was also mostly based on elimination, since I’d been putting together guesses all the way through the posting period. So by the time this final fic posted, I already had a lot of matches made elsewhere. (I know, I know, one shouldn’t theorize before one has all the data… It was so much fun, though!) And colebaltblue was the only person to mention the Enola film (not books) in sign-ups. Formatting looks like a match, too!


And there we have it.

Not quite the end, though, because I think tomorrow I’ll try to post my few corrections, now that I’ve improved on a small subset of the guesses above. Also: treats!

Re: starfishstar guesses! part 5, the FINAL (almost…) part!

[graycardinal]

Congratulations on completing another full slate of detailed deductive guesswork! Right or wrong, you've definitely surpassed anything my own Spreadsheets of Doom™ have managed over time.

Now we both need to borrow vtsuion's guessing program, and see whether we can turn it to our own ends....

[inamac]

I wouldn't presume to guess (if only because I am way behind in reading, and have only just put together a spreadsheet to keep track of things!), and am saving some for post-xmas), but have to thank everyone for some superb stories, and the mods for wrangling.

[write_out]

Bravo on all of the guesses, starfishstar! I can't wait to see how on the mark you are!

I am still clinging to my guess that language_escapes wrote The Hunting Dogs. I can't tell you why, exactly, just feelings!

[starfishstar]

Thank you! Honestly, I can't wait to see, either... At first I was feeling pretty confident in my guesses, then I saw scfrankles' work and felt sure I'd gotten a lot wrong, but now I've made a few adjustments and am feeling comparatively confident again. But could still be entirely wrong. It's been such an intriguing round!

Speaking of which, I'm so intrigued by your guess of language_escapes for The Hunting Dogs! Especially since I'd originally guessed sanguinity for that, and Sang and Lang are frequently mistaken for each other – so now I'm wondering if there may be something to that after all, even though I've since relocated my guess elsewhere. language_escapes is also emerging as quite the mysterious contender this round!

Inductomancy™ Replaces Doom, Film At Eleven

[graycardinal]

The clock is ticking, the bears have been corralled, and it's time to play Guess The Author, Holmestice Edition. While I have indeed built a Spreadsheet of Doom™ this round, I have to observe that (a) it's a little bit incomplete due to time constraints and last-minute signups, and (b), I have now clearly been outclassed in this aspect of the guessing process by the comprehensiveness of starfishstar and the technical prowess of vtsuion.

So let us apply the Crystal Ball Of Inductomancy™ instead, and see where it gets me.

Vid

• "Beyond Your Peripheral Vision" - rachelindeed

Sometimes the simple answer is the right answer, and I think that's true here. One eligible offer, one vid, with a theme squarely in the ballpark of both offerer and recipient...let's not complicate matters.

Podfic

• "The Glorious Disguise" - language_escapes

Again, the simplest answer seems the likeliest. It's not rachelindeed (because she gave us a vid, and neither math nor logistics support the premise of anyone this round creating multiple works). It's not starfishstar (because recipient). And I know it's not sanguinity, because I have now heard enough of that voice to recognize it when I hear it.

• "Stormy Petrels" - sanguinity

See above. This is the advantage of having one's fellow creator relatively close at hand geographically; there are opportunities that would not otherwise exist.

Art

I am going to piggyback shamelessly on other folks' guesses here, mostly starfishstar's; their research appears impeccable, and the countdown clock is ticking. I am abbreviating titles in the interests of conserving space....

• "Old, New, Borrowed & Violet" - fredthedinosaur
• "Merry Holmestice" - cruria
• "With Times A'Changin'" -natrix_natrix
• "Soft Moments" - yakichoufd
• "Whispering Soft Nothings..." - strampunch
• "Art for 'So Many Ways...' and '...Terrible Idea'" - penaltywaltz

Fic - Enola Holmes

Three excellent stories, including the one written for me, and three offers. You'd think that would be a simple equation...but one of those offers comes from Holmestice's greatest resident chameleon (punctuation tells notwithstanding), one comes from a player several of us think created art rather than prose, and that leaves language_escapes as the most likely candidate for all three Enola tales...except that I just guessed them for podfic. Which means all three are from stealth creators.

I'm going to start with "The Haunting of Garton Hall" - and dangerous as this is, I'm going to disagree with both the Supreme Commander of Guessing and the master guesser from last round. I look at "Garton Hall" - and I think in this round, the one player most likely to have written Enola as a witch of sorts is that mistress of versatility,gardnerhill. In that light I think it's notable that "Garton" is explicitly tagged as movie-Enola rather than book-Enola.

As to "Left Hand Woman" - what's interesting to me about that one is that I don't immediately recognize the prose style, and that leads me to suspect that the author is a newer player among us. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that my gift may actually have been a pinch hit (in part because my gut says Enola wasn't the fandom on which I was initially matched).

Now, what to do about "Amongst Friends"? Assuming I'm right about podfics, it's not language_escapes. It could be sanguinity - but I distrust that particular guess for a couple of reasons. For one, I have a different work in mind for her; for another, as she pointed out a round or so back, I have a near-perfect track record of mistaking her work and gardnerhill's for one another's - and she is in fact my next-best candidate for "Garton Hall" if I'm wrong about that one. I'd like to break that streak this round, if I can. That leads me to suspect another of our number who frequently slips under the collective radar. So:

• "Amongst Friends" - colebaltblue
• "Her Left Hand Woman" - book7brokemybrain
• "The Haunting of Garton Hall" - gardnerhill

More to come....

Re: Inductomancy™ Replaces Doom, Film At Eleven

[vtsuion]

Your mention of pulling it together into a spreadsheet during last year's guessing is actually part of what inspired me to try it with a bot, so you can claim at least partial credit (and I'm sure your spreadsheet is much more accurate and thorough than the bot's).