>> [...] a dose of the clue-by-four! > Häh? What's that "clue-by-four!" ? :-)
The :-) makes it look as though you actually know what it is, but your asking for native-anglophone help makes me think perhaps not. So I'm going to treat this as the request for idiom explanation it looks like on the surface, with no insult intended if you did indeed already know the idiom. There may well be people here who don't but just haven't spoken up. It's an English computer-geek idiom. It's playing on the common term "two-by-four" for a size of wood such as is used in building houses (which originally was two inches by four inches in cross-section but these days is significantly smaller, more like 13/8 by 7/2). Cross "clue" (as in "get a clue") with the notion of thwacking someone with a two-by-four to get an idea into an idea-resistant victim, and out comes the "clue-by-four", the notional object with which one whacks someone to impart a clue. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mo...@rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
