Brain Games, the TV show

Our niece and her family are visiting for a few days. That's the best thing about living in a vacation destination, or at least within easy driving distance. (In our case, metro Denver, home to umpteen microbreweries and just minutes from breathtaking scenic wonders and fresh spring powder for skiing.) We get to see friends and relatives without having to make the hours-long journeys to their towns.

And those friends and relatives always bring gifts.  You know. That particular brand of hot sauce or syrup or coffee that you can't buy here. The chance to see babies live and in person -- babies that you usually only see on Facebook. New ways of doing things. Books and movies and TV shows they think you'll like because they like them.

This visit, I've learned a much less labor intensive way to cook bacon; our cat likes baby toys almost as much as he likes aluminum foil balls and infinitely better than he likes babies; and there's a really fun TV show available on Netflix -- Brain Games.

Brain Games explores how our brain works and what its limitations are. It's still in production and available on the National Geographic Channel, if you have the right cable package. We don't.

Last night we watched the second episode (first season) of Brain Games. It spotlighted the natural human susceptibilities to misdirection and arrogance. As a mystery writer, I find those proclivities most useful. Not that I want readers to see them in themselves, but in my characters. Of course my readers are too smart to be misdirected into suspecting the butler or Colonel Mustard with a candle stick in the library.

In this episode, Brain Games invites us to try several exercises that test our ability to attend to more than one thing at a time -- multitask. Something most of us think we're good at.

My favorite one tasked us to count the number of times dancers in blue stepped into the spotlit areas.

Four of the eight dancers wore blue and there were two spotlit areas. Simple, right? We could do that. We watched, each of us counting -- silently, of course. This was a competition. Yup, we're that kind of a family.

And at the end, the host asked if we'd seen the penguin. The penguin? What penguin? None of us saw any penguin. Until the instant replay. (He never did tell us how many times the dancers in blue entered the spotlit areas.)

That penguin, dear friends, is why humans in the real world make unreliable eye witnesses.

And coincidences? Yes, things completely unrelated to a story (like the penguin) do just happen to occur at the same time and in the same place but we may not notice them. In fact, probably won't.

And don't need to, unless we're watching , Brain Games.

The Art of Misdirection

image from  ite.org

"The cat made a mess on the floor," my husband announces in disgust.

I am half asleep and, truth be told, I don't want to wake up. The bed is warm and I am snuggled into that perfect place where the pillow fits your head just right, the blankets are swaddled close so there are no drafts anywhere. And nothing aches. This early in the morning, any morning, having no aches is a miracle and I don't want to tempt fate by moving.

As you may know, I write murder mysteries -- Murder on Ceres. To begin the mystery, there must be a murder, or at least a dastardly deed. In this case a catastrophe. So I, the reader, am on the hook wondering exactly what has happened. And the misdirection is a simple lack of information. I'm allowed, nay encouraged, to imagine my own misdirections.

A mess? Without moving a muscle, my mind races through the possibilities -- in descending order the worst possibilities first.

Diarrhea. Cat diarrhea would surely be the worst. Kocka has never had diarrhea. (Kocka, pronounced kotch-ka with a long o. It means cat in Czech.) I know he hasn't had access to anything unusual to eat. Though I did see him toying with a small jumping spider. Would that upset his digestive system?

A hairball. The damned cat has long hair. Ooooh, I hate stepping on a fresh hairball, barefooted. No wonder my husband sounded disgusted.

I don't open my eyes. I don't ask what kind of mess. I just hope my dear, sweet, kind husband will clean it up and let me go back to sleep.

I read murder mysteries -- John Lescroart is my favorite. I watch murder mysteries on television -- Midsomer Murders, which my husband refers to as the Gilligan's Island of cop shows. Mysteries use misdirection.

To make a good story, misdirection must be done properly. Like the picture at the top of this post. The misdirections must let the reader imagine several directions, gradually moving through the possibilities.

The best misdirections do not seem contrived. They don't flash like neon No Vacancy signs. They just offer a nod toward the husband as the killer. If the misdirection were too obvious, we Americans would be convinced it was a red herring.

(Having been raised on Oklahoma Prairie and now living at the foot of the Rocky Mountain foothills, I don't have a clue what a herring is -- red or otherwise. I do know it's a fish of some kind. Not a trout or a farm-raised catfish, both of which are tasty, tasty.)

Maybe I should write a murder mystery involving a husband who not only is the most obvious killer -- BUT who, in fact, done the dirty deed. Oooooh. Then the misdirections would have to be tasty, tasty. He'd be so aggrieved -- mostly. And solicitous of his poor, dead wife's family -- maybe a little too solicitous of his wife's younger, blonder sister.

"He's shredded paper," my husband declares, merely disapproving.

That's not so bad, I think.

Maybe this is the most devious misdirection of all. A possibility that it's not a crime. Maybe an accident. Suicide. I can relax a bit. Have some sympathy for the poor widower -- errrr, cat.

And then the mystery writer drops the hammer. Our hero is about to be bludgeoned in the dark, dank basement.

Did I leave one of those checks from the insurance company where Kocka could get it? Or is it the latest iteration of  my last short story. Have I backed that up? What changes had I made? God, I hope it's not really my "last" short story. Surely I can write more.

In the end, the solution to the mystery must be congruent with the general direction of the story. Nothing out of the blue.

"It's toilet paper," my husband says.

Toilet paper? But my husband is discussing a mess the cat made at the door into the hall. Our bathroom is all the way across the bedroom. Kocka is famous for unrolling the toilet paper beside the toilet, but how could he get toilet paper from the bathroom unrolled all the way to the hallway door?

I can't lay in bed any longer.

Indeed, my husband is standing over a mostly shredded, one-quarter-full roll of mangled, only slightly damp, toilet paper.

Oh, I see.

A couple of days before I'd discovered that same partial roll of toilet paper in the toilet in the main bathroom. No doubt knocked into the toilet by a certain long haired cat. I'd fished it out (the toilet paper not the cat) and dropped it into a plastic basin on the counter beside the sink, intending to return soon and dispose of it properly. (What is it they say about the road to hell?)

The main bathroom door is a scant two feet down the hall from our bedroom door. Figure maybe four more feet to where the basin in question -- now empty -- rested upside down on the floor. Kocka carries things in his mouth. (Maybe he was a dog in one of his last lives.)

No more misdirection. Mystery solved. In fact, two mysteries. We'd heard a muted crash in the night, my husband and I. We both said, "The cat." Rolled over and went back to sleep.