Ah, yes, I see you made your guess about "Police of Penzance" below. :-) (I'd just wondered if you were guessing graycardinal for that since you mentioned both in the same paragraph... but I hadn't checked the comments and kudos on it so, right, never mind!) I wonder if graycardinal could have written the Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles fic, only because, who else would have written it? (Nobody offered that in their sign-up.)

The three who made clear that they can write in many more 'verses than what they offered are sanguinity, gardnerhill and graycardinal; gardnerhill seems to be clearly accounted for elsewhere, and sanguinity left a comment on the Professor Moriarty fic, leaving graycardinal as a contender...

Then again, anyone could theoretically have read up on the source material *after* receiving their recipient and seeing their requests. And graycardinal doesn't seem like an obvious writer to have been matched to pocketbookangel (recipient of that fic). The two of them only match on ACD canon, nothing else. Would seem more likely the mods would have put graycardinal with someone who requested Mary Russell, say – since they like to encourage diversity of works by matching people on small fandoms. ...Unless...ooh...unless the mods mistook graycardinal's offer of the Professor Moriarty series by Kurland as being the same thing as pocketbookangel's request for the Professor Moriarty book by Kim Newman and matched them on that?? I can't imagine that slip-up of our careful mods, but Sanguinity did say she was under the weather while doing the matching, right...?

Okay, seriously, I'll stop talking now.

gardnerhill could have written 2 fics, certainly, but neither of the two in question here (big multi-verse crossover or very obscure verse) seem particularly likely to be pinch-hits, for whatever that's worth. And I'm guessing you didn't write a pinch-hit because you seem very busy with other things like Yuletide, but I admit that's getting onto flimsy logical ground. :-)

Yeah, I think the matching works very differently... I've never participated in Yuletide (I've tried a couple times to parse the labyrinthine instructions but failed!) but I get the sense that since Yuletide is for *very* obscure fandoms, you could end up with literally no one who matches your requested fandoms at all, and have to be put on a pinch-hit list for that reason?

Whereas here, almost everyone requests multiple Holmesian 'verses, at a range of obscurity levels, so any given participant will *almost* always match with someone. And the mods have said in that past that they match the smaller fandoms first (even if someone also requested, say, BBC, they'll match them on the basis of other, smaller fandoms if they offered them as well), in the hope of encouraging a wider range of gifts.

(And if I were assigned a pinch-hit, depending how late in the process it came up, I would probably go for whatever was easiest to write, which would probably not be the most obscure fandom – but I suppose that all depends on how early or late a pinch-hitter gets to start.)

I'm just intrigued by that Newman!Moriarty fic, because *no one* offered that in sign-ups. Which leads me to suspect someone who's known to be ultra-well-read in the smaller 'verses. Like...you. (Still not conclusive, though, because anyone could have matched on pocketbookangel for something else, and then decided to write in that 'verse instead.)

Aw, thank you! I'll make a note for myself for next year to maybe contact you and ask for a tiny bit of help. :-)

Yes! I know it's one of those things where it looks impenetrable, and then once you've done it the first time it turns out not to be difficult at all...but I haven't managed to get past that "this is impenetrable, how do I do it even a first time?" stage. Which is a pity, because yeah, what cool small fandoms are on offer there!