Most contemporary theories of creativity recognize originality and some kind of appropriateness (e.g. fit or practicality). The present investigation was conducted to assess the contributions of originality and appropriateness to judgments of creativity. Three different collections of ideas, or “ideational pools” were organized on stimulus cards, with the number of original and appropriate ideas systematically manipulated in each. The ideas were responses from two different Instances divergent thinking tasks. Judges (71 college students) were asked to sort the pools according to three different criteria: originality, appropriateness, and creativity. Trend analyses were used to assess the degree to which the subjective ratings were associated with the objective levels of originality and appropriateness. Regression analyses were also conducted with the subjective ratings of originality and appropriateness (and their interaction) as predictors of subjective creativity ratings. In general, the subjective ratings of originality and appropriateness followed the objective levels, but an inverse relation between originality and appropriateness was apparent, with the lowest originality ratings occuring for the ideational pools with the highest number of appropriate ideas and vice versa. Furthermore, only subjective originality ratings were associated with creativity ratings. When all ideas were unoriginal, creativity ratings decreased (though not significantly) with increasing numbers of appropriate ideas within the pools. However, when objective levels of both originality and appropriateness increased, creativity ratings increased significantly. These results suggest that although it is not necessary for an original idea to be appropriate to be viewed as creative, original ideas are not valued less by being appropriate. However, with unoriginal ideas, appropriateness may inhibit judgments of creativity