howdunit

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English[edit]

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Noun[edit]

howdunit (plural howdunits)

  1. A type of detective story in which the focus is not on who committed the crime, but how they have done so.
    • 1969, Ellery Queen, In the Queens' Parlor, and Other Leaves from the Editors' Notebook, page 72:
      After half a century, the whodunit was joined by the howdunit, in which the emphasis swung from the identity of the murderer to the method by which the murder was committed.

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