Author Usurpation: Originally known only as an illustrator, Raskin went on to write several quite simplistic children's books; however, she blew everyone's minds with this one, to the point that other than The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel), very few readers would ever know she had written anything else. Sadly, it was also her last book due to her untimely death from a connective tissue disease, so that whether or not any later works might have equaled it in popularity, this novel remains her defining work.
Technology Marches On: Westing's game simply wouldn't have been workable in the internet era. Most teams' sets of clues would cough up the right connection on page one of a Google search.
"You must turn off your phones" would be a simple solution to that.
Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: According to Ann Durell's introduction, this is how Raskin wrote all her books: "As always, I didn't know what it [The Westing Game] would be about, because Ellen didn't know herself. She said that if she knew what was going to happen in a book, she would be too bored to write it. The carrot for her was watching the plot unfold. And, yes, she invented that incredibly complex plot of clues within clues as she went along. What a mind she had!"
Technology Marches On: Chris' main hobby has changed from birdwatching to computing. He and Turtle have a special program for compiling out the clues they collect, and some of the book's Chess Motifs become incorporated in a virtual chess game between Chris and Sam Westing. Many of these updated details have themselves become dated since the movie was made.
