To enter, just send your complete list by tonight, Sunday, April 5th, at 8pm EDT to chad.post [at] rochester [dot] edu. I’ll let you know how close you came.

First things first: I just got the poetry longlist, and this year’s judges decided that, based on the number of eligible titles this year (almost 100), they would have an expanded longlist. So this year’s list has 17 titles on it. Good luck guessing them all!

• There are twelve different places of origin represented on the poetry longlist. One country is represented with four different titles. Two others have two books each, and everyone else has one.

• Only nine languages made the poetry longlist this year. One of them has five books on the list.

• Fifteen different presses have a book on the list—two of which have two books each.

• Five presses have at least one book on both the fiction and poetry longlists.

To enter, just send your complete list by Sunday, April 5th at 8pm EDT to chad.post [at] rochester [dot] edu. I’ll let you know how close you came.

I’m running out of good clues about the fiction list . . . so, I’ll make this first one all about me:

• I’ve read—and rated on GoodReads—seven of the books that made the list. Six of them I gave 5-stars, one got 4 stars. (Although probably deserved 5. I have no idea what I was thinking at the time.)

• There is one author with two books on the list, and one previous BTBA winning author also made it.

• Five different presses have had a fiction book win the award. Only two of them have a book on this year’s fiction longlist.

Check back this weekend for clues about the poetry longlist . . .

To enter, just send your complete list by Sunday, April 5th at 8pm EDT to chad.post [at] rochester [dot] edu. I’ll let you know how close you came.

OK, at least one more day of fiction longlist clues. (Should have the poetry list by the weekend, so I can post some poetry-specific clues on Saturday and Sunday.)

The big clue yesterday was: “There is only one female writer from Mexico on the list.” Just to clarify a bit, according to the Translation Database, there are three women writers from Mexico who had a work of fiction come out in English last year: Guadalupe Nettel, Valeria Luiselli, and Carmen Boullosa. All three are stellar writers; all three books deserve to be on this list. So, when you’re submitting your guesses, this is the first choice you’ll have to make.

Here are a couple more clues to help you fill out your guess:

• The UK equivalent of the BTBA is the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, which recently There is only one title that made both the IFFP and BTBA fiction longlists.

• There are two books on the longlist that also made the BTBA.

• Five of the books on the BTBA fiction longlist have one-word titles.

To enter, just send your complete list by Sunday, April 5th at 8pm EDT to chad.post [at] rochester [dot] edu. I’ll let you know how close you came.

Here’s a recap of the clues so far: nine languages and sixteen places or origin are represented on the fiction longlist; nine of the twenty-five fiction titles are by women and fifteen of the twenty-seven translators who made it (one translator made it twice) are women; and twenty different presses are on the fiction longlist, with no press receiving more than two nominations.

I’m still stuck in a sort of bean-counter mode, since coming up with clues for specific books seems like it would only help you in very small ways, and I haven’t been able to find any major trends that would be interesting and useful . . . That said, here’s what I got:

• Six of the books on the fiction longlist contain more than one story/novella.

• Three of the books are longer than 400 pages. (All of these are novels.)

And, because you deserve something a bit more:

• There is only one female writer from Mexico on the list.

To enter, just send your complete list by Sunday, April 5th at 8pm EDT to chad.post [at] rochester [dot] edu. I’ll let you know how close you came.

Following on yesterday’s statistics about the number of languages (9) and places of origin (16) represented on the list, I thought I’d give you some clues about the gender and publisher breakdowns on the fiction list. (Tomorrow I’ll start getting a bit more creative and less obsessed with counting beans.)

• Of the twenty-five titles on the fiction longlist, nine of them are by women. By contrast, of the twenty-seven translators on the list (one of whom made it with two different books), fifteen are women.

• There are twenty different presses with a book on the fiction longlist, and no single press had more than two books make it.

Stay tuned for more clues tomorrow!

As in years past, we’ll be highlighting all of the titles with special “Why This Book Should Win” posts, giving judges and readers a chance to cheer on particular titles, and explain what it was about these individual books that makes them so special. These are some of my favorite posts of the year, so personally, I’m really looking forward to that.

But, also as in years past, I want to make a game out of all of this . . . Over the next five days, I’ll provide a series of clues about the two longlists (mostly the fiction one), and if you’re able to guess—on your first try, with no mulligans or reversals of opinion—all of the books on one of the two lists (25 for fiction, 10 for poetry), then I’ll give you a life-long subscription to Open Letter. Only one person can win this, and all you have to do is send your complete set of guesses to chad.post [at] rochester [dot] edu before Sunday, April 5th at 8pm EDT, and I’ll respond by telling you how many you have correct. First one to get all 25/10 wins.

(Next Monday I’ll post a list of “Honorable Mention” titles, which is why you have to get your guesses in by Sunday. And before 8pm because that’s when Opening Night kicks off for the St. Louis Cardinals and I have priorities.)

So, here’s your first set of clues. Really basic information:

• There are nine languages represented in the list of twenty-five longlisted fiction titles. The top three languages made up seventeen of the total books.

• There are sixteen different places of origin with a book on the list. The top three locations make up eleven of the total titles.

More clues tomorrow.