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Here's the latest instalment in our quarterly best-post collections, the purpose of which is to gather some particularly good Literature Q&A in order to get some easily available links to showcase our site.

One use for this post could be to gather links for promotion on Literature's community-run X account. But it's also useful for any kind of site promotion - if we want to show off the site to literary friends, it'll be much easier if we have a list of particularly great posts to point to.

Please nominate some exemplary Q&A from the first quarter (Jan/Feb/Mar) of 2025.

(Also, if you find anything from previous months, feel free to go and post answers on any of the older posts linked above. The date of the meta answer doesn't matter - late entries are still more than welcome! - only the date of the post on the main site that's being nominated.)

  • When choosing nominations, please remember the primary purpose: to showcase our site to people elsewhere in the hope of maybe tempting them to come here. Let's try to focus mainly on great questions with great answers, and perhaps also great unanswered questions (which we can advertise as "hey, why not come and answer this") - not anything with subpar answers, which will tend to give a bad impression and defeat the purpose.
  • Remember that votes don't necessarily reflect quality, and the purpose of this is to promote quality over score. Highly-voted posts are easy to find, underappreciated gems less so.
  • Getting a wide range of different stories represented in our list here would also be nice, but not strictly necessary - feel free to nominate a bunch of Q&A about the same book, if you think they're all outstanding. But don't nominate questions just because they're about your favourite book.
  • Multiple nominated posts per answer here is fine.
  • Feel free to nominate either some of your own posts which you're particularly proud of, or posts from other people which really impressed you.
  • Ideally, some explanation of why the nominated questions and answers are so good would be useful - constructive feedback might give people ideas about what to aim for in the future.
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I have not crunched the statistics, but I have the impression that this quarter corresponded to a bit of a downturn in the number of questions asked. As a consequence, much of the Q&A which caught my eye consisted of new answers to old questions. Among the freshly-asked questions I would like to call attention to Homoerotic account of King Minos and Theseus which concerns a classical reference ("King Minos of Crete invented homosexuality") that I have heard about before, and was answered thoroughly and in pain-staking detail by Gareth Rees. Another excellent answer was given by Verbose in reply to What is the meaning of the word casino in Wallace Stevens' poem Academic Discourse at Havana?, giving an in-depth explanation of a seemingly simple phrase containing a high-density of word-play.

Of the older questions, I was happy to see the successful identification of the historical six-fingered person referred to by R.A. Lafferty by kimchi lover, after the question had resisted solution for more than three years. Verbose (again) deserves plaudits for their well-researched answer to Did William Somerset Maugham's uncle treat his nephew in an emotionally-cruel way?.

On a personal note, it was great fun to go on a deep dive into Vargas Llosa's La fiesta del Chivo to try and elucidate Why does Samson the parrot figure so prominently in the climax?, an answer which subsequently inspired a follow-up question from Rand al'Thor. And finally I would like to mention my investigation of How did the Cutty Wren come to be the national anthem of Tristan da Cunha? (spoiler: it didn't), which led to me discovering a more authentic candidate for the anthem, and fearlessly performing it on the piano.

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I really liked Gareth Rees's answer to the question "Pull it away and slide mine out" in Wuthering Heights, which illuminates a rather morbid aspect of that novel, which I completely missed when I read it.

I also liked Gareth's question Does Penelope secretly recognize Odysseus? I'm not sure that this question can ever have a satisfactory answer, because as pointed out in the comments, there are events in the Odyssey that point to both answers "yes" and "no", but I still think it's an excellent question.

Finally, I really liked verbose's question What fairy tale is Nathan remembering? Here, Cunningham refers to three fairy tales in his book Day. Identifying the first and third of these is really easy, but there doesn't seem to be an existent fairy tale that corresponds to the middle one. I suspect that Cunningham made up the second fairy tale. Gareth's answer to What accident in The Mill on the Floss is Robbie referencing in Cunningham's Day suggests he may have similarly made up an edition of The Mill on the Floss with an alternate ending. These fabrications seem rather strange occurring in literary fiction, but there doesn't seem to be any explanation other than Cunningham's having made them up.

I also would put some of the questions and answers that Clara Diaz Sanchez identified on my "best of the quarter" list. In particular, I was really gratified when kimchi lover found an answer to my three-year-old question Who are these historical people alluded to by R.A. Lafferty?. And Clara Díaz Sanchez gave a very detailed and enlightening answer to the question about Samson the Parrot in Vargas Llosa's book.

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