An X To Mark Your Spots: Bingo!!!!! #AtoZChallenge Mystery Tropes

Welcome to my 2019 Mystery Tropes #AtoZChallenge! For most of this month, I have been presenting my own personal list of Golden Age mystery tropes. But not today. Today, I am not doing a particular trope. Instead, I have a fancy Bingo card for you! Huzzah! It is all the tropes (sort of) that I’ve mentioned so far, and the goal is to get Bingo in as few books as possible. Extra bonus points, worth absolutely nothing, for getting Bingo in one single, solitary, trope-ridden book. Here it is:

Golden Age Murder Mystery Bingo Card

A couple of notes! I have slightly altered some of the tropes to make ’em a bit more general. What it says on the card is what I mean (for the purposes of Bingo), not what I say in the corresponding post. For example, I have “(Secret) Mother” on the card. Any secret mother qualifies, even if she isn’t a murderess. That goes for all of the things on the card. Oh! And for “X,” I mean any reference to “X,” either as “marking the spot” or as “X, the unknown killer.” Or, I suppose, any other reference like that.

Right! Bingo away! Good luck! And happy A to Zing!

Oh, and leave a comment! Especially leave a comment if you get bingo, and include, in that case, the titles of the books you’ve gotten bingo with, and the squares that you’ve marked off. But also leave a comment if you haven’t got bingo. You know, just to be friendly.

Bookmark the permalink.

4 Comments

  1. I will claim Brain Fatigue at this present time. This is a GREAT use of the letter X. I loved the game from last year, which had to take a lot of time to construct so well.

    I got a chuckle out of MURDER being the “free” bingo spot.

  2. Looks like a fun game to play if you read a lot of mysteries 🙂

    Ronel visiting with the A-Z Challenge music and writing: Covers of My Favourites

  3. What fun! I’m going to try it with short stories, since that will be quicker than entire novels. I confess, though, that every time you mention a trope I think, “Oh yes, exactly! I’ve read that a million times!” and then I can’t really come up with an actual example. It makes me feel dreadfully dull — but instead I will just claim that the phenomenon itself is a mystery.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *