Encyclopedia Brown logic

Comments

  • imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    so for those of us who didn't grow up with these stories, was his name actually Encyclopedia?
  • edited 2014-01-11 14:51:03
    You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
    His name was actually Leroy Brown (the baddest man in the whole damn town), but people called him Encyclopedia because he knew lots of stuff.
  • imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    makes sense
  • First one: Slip of the tongue
    Second one: ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
  • ...And even when your hope is gone
    move along, move along, just to make it through
    (2015 self)
    Second one:  Yeah, sourkraut on top of mustard is palatable, but the other way around, it's gag-worthy.  Like, it's a useful ipecac.  I thought I was the only one who felt that way.

    First one: You know how sometimes on Friday you say, "I've got to turn this in tomorrow" about a school assignment that's due Monday?  You accidentally talk about the next school day as if it was the next day?  Yeah.

    Still, it works for me.  THe pedant in me is satisfied.  Better than the "it's physically impossible to get a knife out of your left trouser pocket with your right hand while running".
  • My dreams exceed my real life
    Velma Dinkly is perhaps the most controversial of the investigators of Mystery Inc. To start with her name is not Velma Dinkly as is generally thought, this was a creation of the television show which thought that the name Velma Brown was too "ethnic". They had good reason to think this, considering that Velma was in fact multi-racial. The television show was of course made during the early seventies and minorities were just starting to be portrayed on television, in mostly stereotypical roles. The producers that it was much too absurd to believe in a nerdy, super-intelligent girl who also not a Caucasian. (This was of course years before Steve Urkel came on the scene.)

    Velma Brown was the younger sister of Leroy Brown. Leroy Brown was more widely known as Encyclopedia Brown, the accounts of his exploits suffered from the same near sightedness as his sister and the details of his family were whitewashed. (16) Velma was never mentioned in the series primarily because the author and publisher thought that having a younger sister would detract the focus off of Leroy. Their father was the chief of police in "Idaville" a small Southern Florida Coastal town with a mixed population of mostly African-American, Hispanic and Caucasian with a smattering of Asian peoples. It was mostly a peaceful town, although human nature being what it is, it did have a moderate amount of crime.

    Young Leroy Brown, who traced his lineage back to the Claytons, was one of those rare individuals who was a page at a glance reader with a photographic memory. When this was coupled with logical and intuitive deductive reasoning, he was a force to be reckoned with so far as solving crimes was concerned. Although the claim that no crime went unsolved in Idaville was a bit of hyperbole, he did have a rather astonishing success rate.

    Velma had the same abilities as Leroy although to a lesser extent, while her memory was very good it was not photographic. Both Leroy and she studied Judo at the Idaville Judo Center.

    Their father was Herman Brown whose father Cosmo Brown had been a song and dance man working in the waning days of vaudeville and in the early days of motion pictures.(17) Herman also had an older half sister whom he seldom saw, Mary Kay Brown, she was one of the girl fridays of the A-1 Detective Agency. (18) Herman barely knew his father and grew up fairly independent. Herman became interested in law enforcement while studying at Colombia University in New York. It was here that he met Lillian Finn, a young journalism student. Lillian went out with Herman only reluctantly. On her first date she took him to meet her parents. James Finn was a New York police officer stationed in Harlem, he was also most definitely African-American. His wife was Vivian Archer, the sister of Harlem's prominent physician, Dr. John Archer. (19) Vivian was a nurse at the hospital most frequented by African-Americans. Lillian was light enough to pass for white but tanned enough to look slightly Hispanic. She was often accused of trying to pass, but felt that she should not have to advertise her ethnicity, if people chose to make certain assumptions based on her skin color then that was their fault not hers.

    Herman Brown was more shocked at James Finn's family history than by his skin color. James and so Lillian was a descendent of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, the slave Jim, John Henry, Uncle Tom and it was rumored the pirate Laffitte.(20)

    Lillian Finn and Herman Brown were married in New York City in late 1948. He took a job with the New York City Police Department. He inherited a small piece of property from his mother in Idaville in 1950. They decided to move to the small town, feeling that it would be a better place to raise a family. Herman took a job with the Idaville police department. Their son Leroy b. 1949. was like his mother, from all appearances Caucasian. Their daughter Velma on the other hand was a shade darker than her mother and had features which if examined very closely had distinct African-American characteristics. Had Idaville not been as racially mixed this might have done more than raise a few eyebrows. It may in fact have prevented Herman from rising through the ranks of the small police force to become Chief of Police.

    Leroy Brown had been recruited by a CIA think tank in 1974. Despite being nearly killed by a rogue assassination team, (21) Leroy Brown's analysis of reading materials from around the world, allowed him to pinpoint and predict various geo-political crises which when properly manipulated did more to end the cold war than diplomacy and military threats.
  • Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.
    I thought they called him "Encyclopedia Brown" because he was given an encyclopedia set for his birthday and then like an asshole went around town telling people random goddamn things.
  • THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS
    Sally Kimball was one of my first crushes. #yntkt
  • what kind of hot dog place serves sauerkraut these days anyway
  • You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
    Some of these stories really haven't aged well.

    There's one where the solution involves telephone keypads omitting Q and Z. This was true as late as the '90s, but as soon as SMS text messaging became a thing, most phones started putting Q on 7 and Z on 9, so I doubt most kids today would even realize those weren't originally there.

    More uncomfortably, though, there's one where Encyclopedia knows a criminal is heading for cities in Texas with international names...and he knows this because one of the listed places was Palestine, and clearly Palestine isn't a country anymore, so obviously if he were actually going to go there he'd write "Israel". Awkward...
  • kill living beings
    i did not know this sauerkraut ordering factoid. good info
  • imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    the placement of q and z always kinda bugged me

    like i guess they had to do it that way, the alphabet isn't divisible by 3

    just feels awkward, s is a letter you use a lot
  • You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
    Tachyon said:

    the placement of q and z always kinda bugged me

    like i guess they had to do it that way, the alphabet isn't divisible by 3

    just feels awkward, s is a letter you use a lot

    The original point of the letters, at least on American telephones, was so they could give each exchange a name. So instead of giving your phone number as 867-5309, you'd tell people to dial "TOwnsend 7-5309" or some such thing.

    They wanted three letters on each number, and Q was an obvious one to leave out because there aren't many combinations that aren't followed by U. I dunno why they kept X instead of Z, but they did.

    Later when people started typing on keypads they added Q and Z on the places where they'd fit alphabetically, because how else are you gonna do it?
  • imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    yeah, it makes sense why it turned out that way, they didn't come up with it with texting in mind

    idk, just one of life's little irritations, for me
  • You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
    Honestly, I can't stand texting on a numeric keypad to begin with. Even before I had a touchscreen smartphone, I used one of those ones with the little slide-out QWERTY keyboard.
  • imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    oh lol, this isn't an issue for people with smartphones, is it?

    that never even occurred to me
  • i finally got a smartphone again for Christmas after like 4 years of having to put up with this rinkydink knockoff blackberry
  • Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.
    Man, I want hot dogs again.
  • BeeBee
    edited 2016-01-04 07:20:31
    I think what bugged me most about Encyclopedia Brown is that the first person who told even the smallest untruth was obviously guilty.

    Like, innocent people have minor slips of the tongue and exaggerate their alibis all the time, even in court while under oath.  It's a common side effect of pressure, such as being intimidated by an interrogation.

    Also how the fuck did Bugs Meany go that long without landing his ass in juvie
  • You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
    It's especially silly because 90% of the time the contradiction Encyclopedia points out is something that's irrelevant to the overall story. Bugs Meany could easily say "well, I misremembered that minute detail, but the rest of what I said is true."

    Instead, he always confesses when Encyclopedia calls him out on something that has no bearing on anything. :P
  • A ruffian such as Bugs Meany would never use the phrase "minute detail", you're under arrest for stealing the Mona Lisa
  • TreTre
    edited 2016-01-04 23:05:50
    image
    MachSpeed said:

    I thought they called him "Encyclopedia Brown" because he was given an encyclopedia set for his birthday and then like an asshole went around town telling people random goddamn things.

    by this logic I ought to be called Wikipedia LaBleep
  • Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.
    Whatever you say, Wikipedia.
  • THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS
    MachSpeed said:

    I thought they called him "Encyclopedia Brown" because he was given an encyclopedia set for his birthday and then like an asshole went around town telling people random goddamn things.

    "I just saw a baby chick choke on a worm. They both died! Isn't that great?" Well, okay, that's Strong Sad and not Encyclopedia Brown, but still.

    ;_;
Sign In or Register to comment.