Puzzler Scoreboard

Congratulations to the winners of the “literary debates” challenge:

1. Jane Austen and D. H. Lawrence on personal discretion:

Austen: Come now, Mr. Lawrence, surely you think it best to speak of personal matters in only the most discreet and delicate of terms?

Lawrence: Not exactly, dear, sweet Jane. Body and soul must rise from the smoldering ashes to soar, phoenixlike, into the bloody depths of night.

—J. G. Krantz

2. Ernest Hemingway and Herman Melville on the sport of deep-sea fishing:

Melville: Whaling is the ultimate deep-sea fishing experience because your quarry is longer than your boat, weighs a hundred times more than you do, and has rammed and sunk whaling ships—I said ships, not boats.

Hemingway: My esteemed opponent forgets we are debating the sport of deep-sea fishing, and chasing down a mammal with a crew of ten or more men and harpooning the poor animal with a line thicker than his wrist hardly compares with the sport of single-handedly catching a thousand-pound marlin with a simple hand line from a boat less than fifteen feet long.

—Thomas Mitchell

3. Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare on provenance:

Marlowe: Is this the face that launched a thousand imitations?

Shakespeare: To err is human, to forgive divine.

Marlowe: Forsooth, to pillage an author before he’s even born!

Shakespeare: Aye, there’s the rub.

—Faraz Maqsood Hamidi

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Puzzler Scoreboard

Welcome to the Puzzler Scoreboard, a running tally of Puzzler winners. We will award cash prizes to the three highest scorers at the end of the year, with winners announced in April and prizes awarded in May.

Scoreboard Rules:

• Each week, three points will be awarded to the first-place winner, two points will be awarded to the second-place winner, and one point to the third-place winner.
• In the case of a tie, each winner will be awarded the allotted points.
• In tournaments, the points will be cumulative throughout the weeks. For instance, in a four-week tournament, the first-place winner will receive twelve points, the second-place winner will receive eight points, and the third-place winner will receive four points.
• Creators of user-submitted Puzzlers are awarded five points one week after their Puzzler is featured.

Puzzler Scoreboard Rankings

We invite you to send us your suggestions for Puzzler questions. If your suggestion is chosen, you will be credited as the author of the questions and receive five points toward your Puzzler Scoreboard ranking.

A question submitted for consideration must be accompanied by the answer as well as by a citation or source material to verify the accuracy of the question and answer.

We welcome Puzzler ideas and questions pertaining to the art, lore, personalities, events, characters, agents, intermediaries, and publishers of literature, past and present. We especially want questions and ideas that cannot be answered by a quick Internet search and that are multifaceted, amusing, and add to our store of knowledge. Please send your suggestions to Puzzler.