Clue Simpsons? Really?- A response

A response to (Miss Scarlet's Weak Alibi)

Consumer Affairs: Att: Jennifer DaSilva

Hasbro

1027 Newport Ave

Pawtucket, RI 02861

Dear Ms. DaSilva,

Recently, I sent your company a letter with many helpful suggestions regarding the board game Clue. Make no mistake, my letter was both a tribute to many a snowed-in winter’s night occupied by the mild intrigue of a murder mystery board game and a proposal that would revolutionize Clue and align it better with the real circumstances that a detective would face in investigating a crime.

For that reason, I was highly disappointed to receive your reply stating, “Hasbro, Inc. does not manufacture this particular product.” First, I would like to point out your poor writing form. You used the word “this” without any reference whatsoever to what “this” was. You cannot expect your readers to simply guess as to your meaning, not even I, who, luckily for you, have saved a copy of the original letter. A nice way of introducing your topic would be to quote briefly from my letter as I have done yours.

Colonel Mustard and Sergeant Ketchup

Hasbro, Inc.

Consumer Affairs

P.O. Box 200

Dept. C-847

Pawtucket, RI, 02862-0200.

Dear Hasbro,

Recently I watched the 1985 film “Clue”, based off of the classic board game. It’s the masterpiece of the genre of board game films. Certainly its competition, “Candyland: Great Lollipop Adventure”, “Death by Scrabble”, and “Guess Who?” offered little. The third had almost nothing to do with flipping faces on tiles, though Ashton Kutcher was fairly two-dimensional.

            “Clue” (the movie) reminded me of Clue (the game). For reference purposes, I will refer to “Clue” (the movie) as “Clue” and Clue (the game) as Clue for the duration of this letter. The instructions to Clue (“Clue” doesn’t have any instructions) say,

Mr. Boddy—apparently the victim of foul play—is found in one of the rooms of

his mansion. To win, you must determine the answers to these three questions: Who done it? Where? and with What Weapon?”

Even if we take the grammatical errors above to be a clever use of colloquialisms designed to pique the interest of the aspiring detective, it is easy to pick out some of the fallacies that make the mystery far easier to solve than the game’s forced trial-and-error method would imply.