[blackshoe]

Pretty soon now I'm gonna take all these extraneous posts and move them… somewhere.

[lamford]

gordontd, on 2012-October-02, 02:48, said:

I want to know where these people are getting their cherries. I tried to buy some yesterday and they seem to have suddenly gone out of season.

The problem is that some people are only taking two bites out of them and moving on to the next cherry, discarding the rest of the first cherry. Not enough people are taking third and fourth bites from the same cherry, hence the increased consumption and resultant shortage.

[gwnn]

lamford, on 2012-October-02, 08:27, said:

The problem is that some people are only taking two bites out of them and moving on to the next cherry, discarding the rest of the first cherry. Not enough people are taking third and fourth bites from the same cherry, hence the increased consumption and resultant shortage.

As mentioned above, these people are probably concerned about their dental health: after two bites of a normal cherry there is scarcely more left than the stone.

[RMB1]

In the South-West there is a saying - don't take three bites a cherry once september is out - but I can't do the accent

I think the answer to the original questions is "bites at the cherry subsequent to the first"

If there was bridge question somewhere - sorry - no idea

[Trinidad]

gwnn, on 2012-October-02, 08:29, said:

As mentioned above, these people are probably concerned about their dental health: after two bites of a normal cherry there is scarcely more left than the stone.

If you first take one bite at the cherry, just avoiding the stone (that would be the obvious reason to bite a cherry) and then bite the other side -again just avoiding the stone- there is still quite a bit of cherry left "in the shadow of the stone".

When I eat cherries there won't be a second bite. But when someone does take bites at a cherry, then it follows from the geometry of the cherry as well as the circular bite movement that after the first bite there will be a second one as well as a third.

Rik

[Trinidad]

blackshoe, on 2012-October-02, 08:09, said:

Pretty soon now I'm gonna take all these extraneous posts and move them… somewhere.

I agree. All these posts about bridge laws are disturbing the fascinating discussion about the linguistics and mathematics of eating cherries.

Rik

[gwnn]

Trinidad, on 2012-October-02, 12:55, said:

If you first take one bite at the cherry, just avoiding the stone (that would be the obvious reason to bite a cherry) and then bite the other side -again just avoiding the stone- there is still quite a bit of cherry left "in the shadow of the stone".

When I eat cherries there won't be a second bite. But when someone does take bites at a cherry, then it follows from the geometry of the cherry as well as the circular bite movement that after the first bite there will be a second one as well as a third.

Rik

I think if you consider geometric bites (for example, a bite takes off only a section that is above a certain plane, tangent to the stone; or worse yet, a bite is modelled by a tangent sphere, probably with a much larger radius than the cherry), in most models it would follow that you need an infinite number of bites to actually eat the cherry. In fact, this is quite close to truth, I've never seen clean cherry stones obtained purely by biting (I will not go into other techniques out of fear of unwanted double entendres).

[bluejak]

blackshoe, on 2012-October-02, 08:09, said:

Pretty soon now I'm gonna take all these extraneous posts and move them… somewhere.

I tried to split them - and the software would not let me!

[barmar]

bluejak, on 2012-October-03, 08:47, said:

I tried to split them - and the software would not let me!

I guess you can't take two bites of the cherry discussion.

[Cascade]

Trinidad, on 2012-October-01, 03:01, said:

"second, third and fourth bite of the cherry"

Rik

"multiple bites of the cherry"

[blackshoe]

I split off the rulings oriented posts into a second topic (UI ruling - is pass an LA?) leaving the "cherry" posts - and a couple of posts pertinent to both topics - here. I think this worked because there were fewer posts to split off this way than trying to split off the "cherry" posts. If David wants to move the "cherry" topic to the Water Cooler, that's fine with me, although perhaps the topic title should be edited (again) first to remove the comment about pertinence to "Laws and Rulings".

[bluejak]

No, I was going to leave it here. I just thought it an uneasy mix. I worried about the posts [3 altogether] which were mixed. I also worry, considerably, as to why I could not split. But since today I have had other funny effects in this forum I shall not worry too much.

[semeai]

Two points:

1) The phrase is more commonly second bite at the apple

2) I prefer "second bites at the apple" if it's the same (metaphorical or not) apple. I can have my second bite and you can have your second bite at the same (metaphorical or not) apple.

[Vampyr]

semeai, on 2012-October-03, 10:14, said:

1) The phrase is more commonly second bite at the apple

I have never heard this phrase with apple substituted for cherry.

[lamford]

Vampyr, on 2012-October-03, 10:36, said:

I have never heard this phrase with apple substituted for cherry.

There are quite a few on the net. One from the New York Times, from a supreme court ruling:

"Mr. Blueford’s lawyers also argued that the trial judge should not have declared a mistrial without first asking the jury whether, in the end, the defendant had been found not guilty of some charges. Chief Justice Roberts said the judge had acted appropriately, as “the jury’s options in this case were limited to two: either convict on one of the offenses, or acquit on all.”

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the majority had improperly given prosecutors “the proverbial second bite at the apple.”

[semeai]

Vampyr, on 2012-October-03, 10:36, said:

I have never heard this phrase with apple substituted for cherry.

Here's a dictionary suggesting "second bite at the cherry" is British, so perhaps that's the distinction.

[pran]

semeai, on 2012-October-03, 14:19, said:

Here's a dictionary suggesting "second bite at the cherry" is British, so perhaps that's the distinction.

In my "V.H.Collins: A Book of English Idioms" (1956) I find:

two bites of or (at a) cherry, two attempts to do something that ought to be done in one. In French a figurative use of the phrase 'three bites of a cherry' that goes as far back as Rabelais (1548) appeared in an English translation by P.A.-Motteux, completing Sir Thomas Urquhart's, in 1693-1694. The earliest record of two bites at a cherry is its use in a forgotten novel of 1850.

[Vampyr]

This thread is making me hungry for some pie.

[Cascade]

Vampyr, on 2012-October-03, 15:42, said:

This thread is making me hungry for some pie.

Apple or cherry

[Vampyr]

It may be that all of this discussion about how many bites comprise the typical cherry is off the mark. I think that you didn't succeed at actually biting the cherry the first time; that is why you need a second bite at it.