I think it is a good idea to have dedicated thread to ask about suspicious content of the book which might be of some importance and to give away everything that made us laugh. Who knows? Maybe this will end up as the Guide to T4thB that - no hard feelings - PSD most certainly will not write.

So, ScarletBea asked about the names of the cucumberists. Here is what I have found:

Harold Katzenberg: He is from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, one of the party guests that get visited by Death.

Hardy Fuchsia is the name of a flower.

A MacGuffin is a plot device, invented by Alfred Hitchcock. What he is about you can find out - for example - here.

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I thought that Hardy Fuschia was a play on the fact that plants are sometimes described as being 'hardy'.

And I know that this isn't an obscure thing, but anyway; Thermocuclear power made me smile.

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There's a hole in my creativity bucket and it's all leaked out.

You are probably right (and I did not know the word "hardy" had a special botanical meaning), but the way the expression is used on a lot of gardening sites, you can easily come to another conclusion.

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Thanks!
(and yes, I know....)

I knew about there being a flower named Fuchsia, was just wondering if it had another meaning.

By the way, after writing that I read on another thread that they were all characters from Gilbert & Sullivan. Is this true? Not being familiar at all with their work I couldn't confirm...

I love the MacGuffin being a plot device :D

PrinzHilde Wrote:
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>
> A MacGuffin is a plot device, invented by Alfred
> Hitchcock.

Hi PrinzHilde,

"Psycho" provides a good example of a MacGuffin.
Marion Crane has stolen money from her employer which leads her to go to the motel and later causes her sister and boyfriend to suspect Norman Bates of murdering her for the money.
Eventually it is revealed that Bates did not even know that the money existed. The money was simply a convenient reason for her to go to the Bates' Motel.

With lesser directors the macGuffin can be highlighted. For example, your attention is drawn to some object on a table. It's sole purpose for existing being so that the heroine can later throw it at someone!

Hope this expansion helps!

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My computer beat me at chess, but I won at kickboxing

Sometimes you get a small mention of something early on, and it doesn't seem important at the time, but at the end it suddenly becomes the vital clue or you see that it really was important but everyone (audience included) overlooked it.
I always thought that was a MacGuffin. If it's not, what is it?

The description I have read are just the other way round: the object/person takes a central role, but is basically interchangable. It just dosn't matter, for example, wich secret information a bunch of spies are hunting, since the plot is about the intriciacies of the hunt.

Nonetheless, Jasper seems to use his MacGuffin slightly different: his main quality is that he is absent, for the most part of the book presumed to be dead, and never appearing in person. The closest he comes to the reader is when Mary tells about her beeing abducted together with him.

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As far as I was aware a MacGuffin is something vital to motivating the characters to action, without necessarilly being important in itself. The classic example is the Maltese Falcon in the film of the same name. It is in itself the point of the whole film, yet it is only briefly featured, and is something of a disappointment when it is.

So, PrinzHilde, the MacGuffin in the fourth bear is pretty much a classic MacGuffin. He motivates the actions of the characters without having to be present.

Of course, this could be entirely wrong...

Dibs stole the words right out of my mouth - even the example of the Maltese Falcon I was going to cite.
You can still a MacGuffin down to simply being a "motivation."
In silent films (before Hitchcock became so well known) they called MacGuffins the "weenie." I like Hitchcock's (or rather, his screenwriter's) term much better.
btw - The cash in psycho is doing double duty as both a MacGuffin and a red herring.

Robert - you are describing the opposite of a MacGuffin - I think that's a Plot Device #1, the oldest trick in the book.

What Robert describes reminded me of the first time I saw "Signs" and the bat on the wall was in the background but the camera angle gave it just enough importance that I remember thinking "That bat's going to come into play (so to speak) later in the movie."
Yeah, what Robert described also just sounds like a version of foreshadowing.

The MacGuffin is a plot device that's important to the characters in the story, but is not of importance to the narrator (writer/director) in terms of moving the plot along. Still, the MacGuffin is often the motivating force for the characters, almost a "red herring".

Examples? The Maltese Falcon itself. The $40,000 in Psycho. The uranium in the wine bottles in Notorious. The bomb in Stage Fright. The diamond in Family Plot. The love letter in Dial M for Murder.

So was Keyser Soze the MacGuffin in The Usual Suspects?

Has anyone considered that the Gingerbread Man is neither biscuit or cake, but bread?


Is it just me?

Hmmm…I know it's called gingerbread, but is it really bread? I would think the term "bread" applies to things that rise due to yeast. Other kinds of "breads", banana bread for example, would also not really be bread but cake.

Neither wheaten bread nor soda bread use yeast. I believe that unleavened bread has no raising agent but expect someone will know.

i would say that the gingerbreadman was definately NOT cake, its too thin...whether he is biscuit or bread, or both....maybe a biscuit is a type of bread...? i would agree with MuseSusan on that one though. cause i think bananabread isnt really bread, its more like cake. but its still called bread..

i would say that the gingerbreadman was definately NOT cake, its too thin...whether he is biscuit or bread, or both....maybe a biscuit is a type of bread...? i would agree with MuseSusan on that one though. cause i think bananabread isnt really bread, its more like cake. but its still called bread..

i would say that the gingerbreadman was definately NOT cake, its too thin...whether he is biscuit or bread, or both....maybe a biscuit is a type of bread...? i would agree with MuseSusan on that one though. cause i think bananabread isnt really bread, its more like cake. but its still called bread..

Hi Page,

actually, I believe gingerbread to be a biscuit, I was just pointing out that yeast is not an essential ingredient of bread. (According to the dictionary, both biscuits and cake are technically types of bread.)

Don't forget that the British definition of a biscuit is very different to the U.S. one.
U.K. (and Australian?) biscuits are harder than U.S. cookies, but closer to them than the U.S. biscuit, which we Brits, would probably call a scone.

Useless trivia time
Interestingly McVities (United Biscuits),had to go to court in the U.K. to prove that Jaffa Cakes were cakes and not biscuits. Their defence was that cakes go hard when stale, biscuits go soft.
This was important, as while both cake and biscuits are zero rated for V.A.T. chocolate covered biscuits have 17.5% V.A.T. added to their price!

Can the cheese tax be far behind?