Cafe Einstein - LPTPW 17 - animal, vegetable, and/or a minerally type chemically thing, and maybe some other things as well, yes :)

That was good wasn't it, einsteinians? Very interesting crash course on the history of canning food. Thank you, David.

Perhaps if you've finished, we can get back to why we are here...? :) *pause to wave at Mikey* :)

Yes... that is Louis XVI.

No, that is not Greenland, but you're doing a lot better than that street poll where people who'd answered "yes" to whether Iran should be nuked - then pointed to it on a map.

I did worry for Mike's safety for almost a whole hour that day...

Yes, well I get bouts of megalomania too :) Unless... you are the supreme ruler of the Earth and all her minions? :)

It would depend a lot on where you were travelling from to get to it, I think... Either way, if you were a citizen of this Island then you would have something resembling this

on your passport, unless you lived in the north, when you would have a picture denoting hereditarily priveleged upper limbs - which is precisely what got Louis into so much trouble elsewhere...

Let me see if I can point you all in several directions at once.

Beneath the clue expansion there was an enlargement of its top left section. This, the timeline, shows four different time measurement devices... five if you include the doomsday clock, which at this rate, could well bong it's last bong before we even get to know what vegetable I'm banging on about. Four. That's all the non-opposable wiggly bits you will find on a standard hand.

There are also three transportation vehicles. Four if you count the guinea-pig, which you shouldn't. They all have one thing in common. How that got near to Longyearbyen, is not shown, but it's probably how the proactive art above it (see below) got there too.

This next bit is a sad bit :(((

and it's timeline position is -12

It's not a direct clue, but it might help with deductions.

edit: tomorrow, if I can be bothered, I will tell you everything I know about reverse psycholgy... *glare at typo* ... and I might even spell it right too...

another edit: Did enjoy your deductive reasoning a lot, David. Thank you for giving the puzzle some thought - as wrong as it was, it was appreciated :)

Hi, Uli :) I'm so glad you can still post! I was thinking of cementing the tardis into that corner over there *point to the middle of the room* in the hope it would keep TL engaged a little here, and now I'm having other thoughts too...

Oh. Here... let me hold that for you... just while you rest... *lunge at rolling pin*

:)

Yes... and it was first posted nearly a month ago second only to its native relative, the eggplant aubergine teapot. It even appeared in the wordjumble thread (incarnation 6) although it did look a lot less happy than it does now...

I know! *SNORT* anyone would think those people who drew them had never seen a map before! :)

That was the topic of our very first chat wasn't it, Gary :) Back when I was ALL SHINY and new :) My first chat here on the other hand, was of a highly technical nature and should have been enough to warn all einsteinians that one day... their cafe too would need a doomsday vault :)

But no. Nothing to do with climate change. And the time period is pre-the infamous famine.

Just to fill in some gaps: The potato was the first vegetable grown in space, on the space shuttle Columbia, and from those beginnings ... all hail the quantum tuber... *pause for intruding thought* ooh... sounds almost as grand as The Last Onion Emir... on the International Space Station.

In the shuttle tragedy :(( ... no vegetables came to any harm whatsoever as far as I have been able to ascertain, but some people, silkworms, spiders, ants and bees did :(

*blink* It was years later, people... so you can't blame potatoes for THAT! And recently, Peru deposited the potato (amongst other vegetables indigenous to their country) in their black box at the doomsday vault*.

The fourth time measuring device was the pot. Time was measured in the potato's place of origin (hence the guinea pig) by how long it took a pot of them to cook. Erm... Potatoes... not guinea-pigs. They did eat those, but didn't tell the time with them.

Yes, Chris, it would. And it's where the Irish invented the pothole*. The hot pot of potatoes would be placed on the ground to facilitate the mashing of its contents, and over time, a hole would form.

So well done! We have the vegetable... and a component part for the historical event (sort of) that I'm looking for...

* erm... their seeds... not the whole vegetables...
*which I did not know :) funny how we just take words for granted...