The Standings → Fable 5.1 (medium)
Anthropic
medium reasoning effort · via Claude CLI · judged by Claude Sonnet 5 · not the setting shown on the standings; also run at xhigh76.8 high72.9 low72.6✳
Results from run ‘first’: ten items, ten verdicts.
Fable 5.1 (medium) scores 76 on craft, 13 points above the field’s 63 and 16 points short of the authors themselves. Its shape differs from the field’s: relatively strong on the author’s voice and sentence-level prose, relatively weak on folding the brief into the story and momentum. On the mechanical checks it kept to the brief’s word range on 5 of 10 items, reproduced a 139-word run of the real book verbatim and is unusually free of stock phrases.
The record: 10 items · 10 verdicts · 0 errors · 2,552 words on average · est. generation cost $2.78
Eight dimensions, each 0–100, averaged over ten items; the author’s real chapter was in the room every time.
Craft by dimension, 0–100 · judged by Sonnet 5 beside the author’s real chapter
The authors themselves average 93 on the five writing dimensions, the field 63, this model 76. Hover or focus a bar for the field and the authors on that dimension.
The judge’s one-sentence best quality and worst flaw for each chapter, written for a general reader.
Best The quiet, unresolved ending, where Anne's private decision to go to Mary is the only thing actually settled all day, lands with real emotional restraint.
Worst Anne's big speech is a little too polished and long for someone the book calls habitually silent, so the moment feels slightly written-to-order rather than fully earned.
Best The single image of Mr. Craven's face sunk between his crooked shoulders 'like a face at the bottom of a well' captures the whole man in one sentence without a word of explanation.
Worst Having the carriage stop for a dead sheep right after a chapter about mass death from cholera feels like a slightly too-neat, too-convenient echo rather than something that just happened to be in the road.
Best Georgette's reappearance is vividly imagined — dancing her own shoes on her knees to the accordion — and gives her a sharper, funnier voice than the brief strictly required.
Worst Its opening sentence ('The cab went up the hill past the lighted square and then on into the dark, still climbing, and then levelled out and went along a dark street behind St. Etienne du Mont...') is a near-verbatim lift of the real Chapter 4's opening line, which the candidates were not given — this is a serious originality problem, not just a stylistic echo, and it makes the rest of the chapter feel like padding built around a borrowed anchor.
Best Small physical character beats, like Betteredge holding the sealed packet up near his ear hoping it will tell him its secret, make him feel warm and true to life.
Worst It explains the Indians and the Moonstone connection almost immediately and plainly on the beach, which uses up suspense the source chapter had carefully built.
Best Thaler's note — "You'd get along better in Personville if you stayed away from Hurricane Street and the people who were there. That's advice. It's free this time." — is pitch-perfect for a dangerous, laconic gambler, and small period touches (the smelter shift changing, the Greek's diner, the clerk reading racing forms) ground Personville convincingly.
Worst The widow's account arrives as one long uninterrupted speech that tells the reader everything at once rather than letting the scene build through exchange, so it reads more like a deposition than a dramatized confrontation.
Best The moment where Dorcas contradicts Alfred and the latch-key turns up in his own pocket is a small, vivid, visually concrete piece of drama that lands without being overplayed.
Worst Right after being told his wife is dead, Alfred launches into a long, smooth, uninterrupted alibi speech that feels too composed and expository for the moment, more like a statement prepared for the reader than a man's actual reaction.
Best The swimming scene is physically convincing and understated, giving Edna a small, real triumph without overselling it.
Worst The ending spells out what the day's events mean instead of trusting the reader to feel it, tying the swim and Robert's remark together a little too neatly.
Best The scene of the boy burning his hand and the crowd's reaction to it feels vivid and true to how such an accident would actually unfold.
Worst Large stretches of this chapter are copied almost word-for-word from the real published book instead of being newly written, which is a serious originality problem.
Best Lord Emsworth muddling up his notes about the library job and the visiting poet, so that the interview turns into a conversation about roses, is a very funny, true-to-character bit of comedy.
Worst The story first shows Eve returning the umbrella in the late morning, right after she leaves Miss Clarkson's office, but then near the end the porter says it was brought back at half-past four, and the two accounts of when it happened don't match.
Best The Renfield exchange, where he asks about Miss Westenra out of nowhere and needles Seward about how he knows, is genuinely unsettling and sounds exactly like the character.
Worst The closing telegram says a letter from Jonathan arrived by 7 June, but the story so far establishes his letters home weren't even written until 12 June onward, so the dates don't add up.
Headline, compliance and craft for each chapter, 0–100.
| Item | Headline | Compliance | Craft | Words |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Persuasion item 001 · after ch. 1 · Jane Austen | 85.2 | 100 | 85 | 3,074 |
| The Secret Garden item 013 · after ch. 2 · Frances Hodgson Burnett | 83.9 | 100 | 84 | 2,422 |
| The Sun Also Rises item 021 · after ch. 3 · Ernest Hemingway | 78.4 | 100 | 78 | 2,238 |
| The Moonstone item 011 · after ch. 8 · Wilkie Collins | 77.9 | 95 | 82 | 2,899 |
| Red Harvest item 023 · after ch. 2 · Dashiell Hammett | 76.1 | 100 | 76 | 2,557 |
| The Mysterious Affair at Styles item 017 · after ch. 3 · Agatha Christie | 75.9 | 100 | 76 | 2,635 |
| The Awakening item 016 · after ch. 7 · Kate Chopin | 71.2 | 100 | 71 | 1,865 |
| The War of the Worlds item 006 · after ch. 1 · H. G. Wells | 71.0 | 100 | 71 | 2,594 |
| Leave It to Psmith item 022 · after ch. 3 · P. G. Wodehouse | 67.8 | 95 | 71 | 3,089 |
| Dracula item 015 · after ch. 5 · Bram Stoker | 66.7 | 95 | 70 | 2,152 |
Words written per item, against each brief’s maximum.
Word count per item vs. brief maximum · run ‘first’
Five of ten items landed inside their brief’s word range. Persuasion and The Secret Garden and The Moonstone and The Awakening and Leave It to Psmith ran over by 474 and 22 and 99 and 65 and 289 words respectively.
Each verdict names the chapter’s single worst flaw, with evidence. Quoted verbatim from run ‘first’.
Its opening sentence ('The cab went up the hill past the lighted square and then on into the dark, still climbing, and then levelled out and went along a dark street behind St. Etienne du Mont...') is a near-verbatim lift of the real Chapter 4's opening line, which the candidates were not given — this is a serious originality problem, not just a stylistic echo, and it makes the rest of the chapter feel like padding built around a borrowed anchor.
The story first shows Eve returning the umbrella in the late morning, right after she leaves Miss Clarkson's office, but then near the end the porter says it was brought back at half-past four, and the two accounts of when it happened don't match.
Right after being told his wife is dead, Alfred launches into a long, smooth, uninterrupted alibi speech that feels too composed and expository for the moment, more like a statement prepared for the reader than a man's actual reaction.
The widow's account arrives as one long uninterrupted speech that tells the reader everything at once rather than letting the scene build through exchange, so it reads more like a deposition than a dramatized confrontation.
Automated screening results across the ten outputs.