[Oliver]

Originally Posted by Laserworm

So some people if anyone figured out the answer shouldn't be surprised.

Naturally! However, the achievement of the writer would be measured by surprising the most possible people while still providing fitting, logical clues.

Notice that Battler never actually looks for a single culprit, and in his attacks against Beatrice always leaves the possibility of an undefined person doing it whenever possible. This is because he doesn't want to suspect anyone. However, if he suspects anyone, he would prefer it to be a single person -- sacrifice one to save everybody else from damnation, so to speak. This is why for every episode we end up with a 'most likely singular culprit' which is then exonerated or re-evaluated later or just dies early in the next episode. But murders still happen!

I am not advocating completely abandoning the idea of slimming down suspects, but I am insisting that no single episode has all the murders committed by one singular person or even faction, and so far, most of our theories concentrate on only exposing a single one, even when we're assuming more than one is present.

That would be the best way to surprise the most of us while we're trying to save the most people by sacrificing one, like Battler does.

Originally Posted by Laserworm

Then again maybe Umineko will try to break all normal mystery rules... I wouldn't put it past Kinzo.. uhem.. I mean Ryukishi.

Considering that Umineko pretty much uses the list of Van Dine 'thou shalt not' rules as a checklist of cool things to try, oh yes I wouldn't put it past Ryukishi.