Where do you think these actually came from?
(No googling—that would be cheating.)
P.S. Anyone who wants to know the answer can google it. But there were some great guesses in the comments. My favorite, from Frank:
I’ve got to go with “before the colon” in questionable social science papers, e.g:
“Don’t make me laugh: the effect of late-night comedy on fatal traffic accidents”
or
“Out of the jaws of victory: evidence of a hot hand in shark fishing”
My guess would be Elmore Leonard books
Some mix of Film Noir and Detective Fiction Novels. Much older than Elmore Leonard I’d think. The heyday of Hard Boiled (1940’s trailing into the 50’s and 60’s).
I’d say Batman episodes (Riddle Me This, Harlequinade), but it does sound like Western books.
Rejected Secret Service code names for Trump.
Two and half man
TV show/Movie titles? They all kinda look like potential Bond movies.
I could picture them as names for chess moves. (In case that’s correct, I didn’t Google them!)
They looks suspiciously like TV episodes from a long-running serial. Perhaps Twilight Zone? Too many for Breaking Bad; too few for Dr. Who…
The contents of your bookshelf?
Shakespeare
I’ve got to go with “before the colon” in questionable social science papers, e.g:
“Don’t make me laugh: the effect of late-night comedy on fatal traffic accidents”
or
“Out of the jaws of victory: evidence of a hot hand in shark fishing”
CIA operations or something of that ilk?
I’m pleased someone else said Bond movies, because that was my initial impression. Given that there are only about a dozen Bond stories, I think there are too many titles here, though.
Drink menu?
I read too much old school detective novels, these sound like titles that Frank Kane, Raymond Chandler, or Donald Westlake would use.
I am extremely familiar with [and own the entire canon of] Frank Kane, and I don’t see a single one of his on here, so down to Chandler or Westlake.
Chandler has a high propensity to use “The” in his titles and not many here have that.
So I am going to go with these are Westlake novel titles? Haven’t read enough to notice the titles on sight, but I will go with that as my guess.
I think you are on it with Westlake. I recall a book of assorted Westlake short stories that included a list of considered titles.
Mickey Spillane book titles? Raymond Chandler?
Start of papers’ titles ?
Why is “Dead of Night” struck through? Aside from it being a screen cap, this makes it look like a list of titles that have been contemplated but not used. Except perhaps for “Dead of Night.” Beyond that, I second Dan’s suspicions of film noir detective or perhaps crime novels…
Social psychology article titles.
Annoyingly familiar, but nothing really well known. Possibly short story titles from Black Mask or Black Lizard.
They all read like subtitles to me.
Electric six songs!
race horse names?
+1
I’m going with this!
Names of Race Horses?
Good guess, except that “Sanyo Music Centre” was not among them.
West-Wing episodes
No one else so far has commented on the groupings. So perhaps they are story or book titles grouped by author? Or TV series episodes grouped by title?
Oops — the last should have been “TV series episodes grouped by series.”
I guess they aren’t the names of chess moves (or someone would probably have seconded the suggestion). I like the idea of CIA operations. They also sound like they could be songs by Johnny Cash.
Here are a few more for your consideration.. ;)
The Tower Treasure
The House on the Cliff
The Secret of the Old Mill
The Missing Chums
Hunting for Hidden Gold
The Shore Road Mystery
The Secret of the Caves
The Mystery of Cabin Island
The Great Airport Mystery
What Happened at Midnight
While the Clock Ticked
Footprints Under the Window
The Mark on the Door
…
Brad:
No, the list of yours doesn’t fit at all.
OH, so sorry to be off-key! I see what you mean now: yours are very succinct expressions, with more open-ended applicability.
Andrew is too “edgy” for the Hardy Boys ???? His titles smack of those 15 cent pulp fiction titles stacked in th corner of the barbershop.
Yess! “Hardy Boys” or “The Three Investigators” or “Nancy Drew” or something in that genre.
You need to add underscores, but I’m pretty sure these are R packages.
– “The Fifth Down” – reference to American Football? “Man Here Has a Gun” – sounds more like American vernacular? “Seamster” – pun on “Teamster”, again US English. “Fair Dame” – more likely US 1930s vernacular for “woman” than the UK honorific?
– The language has got a few pre-war hints.
– The one I’m really pondering is “All of Life is 6 to 5 Against”. I can’t imagine this as a movie or a book title. But it could work as a chapter title or short story in a magazine? Titles for some kind of pulp serial?
– The sequences also lend themselves to chapter titles. There’s clearly a relationship between successive entries, and a kind of narrative flow from “Never Say Die” to “Beyond the Night” (and maybe even to “Out of the Night”).
So I guess chapter titles, or maybe short stories, from a book or serialized story published in the US in the 1930s.
I wonder how to find other objects of the class of things to which this list belongs.
I know using google is cheating in this case, but this reminded me of a very useful tool Google used to have where one could list a few members of a set & google would complete the set.
Too bad it doesn’t seem around any more.
I miss Google Sets, too
I found the class by googling, but it took a while to be sure I got it right. (But of course, I’m not telling the answer.)
To clarify, I’m interested in other lists, made by different entities, analogous to the one above.
And what is a list of entities likely to have created such a list, and for us to know about it? Just brainstorming, I’ll say O. Henry, Steven King, and the band New Order. Or actually Spinal Tap, for some meanings of actually. This is no longer looking good: now I guess Rod McKuen. Joanne Fluke and many others like her, but those shouldn’t count.
Aging is brutal. I missed the most obvious one: Andrew Gelman. And, suddenly, it is the same list!
Terms used in political commentary on tv or news media (e.g., a show like “Crossfire”).
James Bond fan fiction?
Never-realized titles by either Alan Marshall or Richard Stark.
What an interesting guess…
I recognize many of them as song titles.
Comic books. Issue titles.
Old pulp detective novels/stories?
A lot of “night” in the titles.
Westlake is great (though I disagree with his opinions about Sherlock Holmes). Some of the comic crime mystery titles from his other list might be useful blog titles as well.
Movie lines?