This Week on Mystery Theatre:A Challenge to the Listener

It’s really a simple matter. I maintain that at this point […] you have all the facts in your possession essential to a clear solution of the mystery.

The mystery writing team Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee (writing under the pseudonym Ellery Queen) used to include the above statement toward the end of their books. The idea was to give the reader time to consider the story’s clues and come up with a solution before moving on to the reveal in the final pages.

The gimmick was so popula...