conan doyle oracle (not quite)

When in Taiwan and reading my Wordsworth facsimiles of Sherlock Holmes stories (1992, 1996 eds.), I’d use the old newspaper illustrations and “quoted captions!” as an oracle on unsuspecting Americans.  Think of a Question!  Then call out a number between 1 and 450! I’d say, and they would.  The book had abt 450 p.  So I’d thumb through and stop on a page near the number they’d called out that had a captioned illustration.  They’d have thought of their question, and the newspaper artists from 1890 would answer them like this, but with a caption like “On the double, Watson! He’s shimmied up the chimney!”:

So their private questions would be answered with he’s shimmied up the chimney, and they’d have to make sense of that.

Little oracles everywhere.