Eight jet engines
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The JC gets all figurative
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“The nuts”, when engaged in a game of Top Trumps military planes edition.
There's no way anyone can beat the engine count on a Boeing B-52 Stratocruiser, as there is not an aircraft designer in history foolish enough to try to fit nine engines on the same plane — these days, four is considered profligate — and even in the giddy heights of the Cold War, Boeing only tried it once. Thus the B-52 stands alone, quite impeachable.
“Eight jet engines” is its own kind of knee-slide, and legal eagles of a certain vintage (mine) may happily squawk it, as they dispatche that exquisitely-times comment, wry rejoinder, devastating provuso, or potentially game-changing industry initiative.
But careful: it is easy to confuse a real eight jet engines situation with the much less edifying “two Wankel engines” scenario — so named for the Mazda RX-3’s curious double rotary configuration, as featured in Top Trumps supercars edition.
The rotary Mazda is basically sui generis, and in the context of the game, just confusing, and you wonder what the manufacturers had in mind by including it.
The player opting for the “Wankel gambit” quickly discovers what he thought would be a triumphal master stroke was nothing of the kind: his fellow players are momentarily baffled, then irritated, and quickly form a consensus that the 370 bhp V12 Lamborghini wins, and move on.
The sensible “Wankeler” accepts his peers’ judgment, surrenders his card and carries on; the foolhardy one stamps his feet, insists hotly he has been mistreated, and storms off to stew in righteous dudgeon about the cruelty of the world.
But enough about me.