Ah, it's this issue again.

Not every word with the ending -us is of Latin origin, and though most that are of Latin origin are second declension nouns (for which -i would be a correct plural ending), there are exceptions. Such as domus, which is an irregular fourth declension noun.

But words such as octopus and platypus are actually derived from Greek, not Latin, roots, and the declensional rules for Greek nouns are much more complicated than for Latin. Though Greek has technically three, rather than five, noun declensions, Greek second declension nouns are divided into three subsystems, and third declension nouns into no less than eight subsystems. That's before you discover the delights of irregular nouns, and the weird foibles that attach themselves to the use of various neuter nouns (which vary yet again when you move from Attic Greek to Doric, Ionic and Homeric poetic Greek).

From those Greek origins, the correct plurals (pedant hat on!) would be octopodes and platypodes (a consequence of the declension of the Greek word πους, "foot"), and similar rules would apply to other Greek derived nouns according to the root words and their (frequently intricate) declensional details.

You can bet I'm a star at parties with this

Given that the commodity in question is available in Aldi stores right across the developed world, I'm minded to suggest that the word should be ranked as common. In my local branch, it's near the pesto, and if memory serves, isn't pesto ranked as a common word in the Chi lexicon?

Did you have cheese for supper Pat? I suspect that's another old wives tale 

There's a sound reason for considering cheese to be a driver for weird dreams.

Cheeses of numerous varieties are rich in the amino acid phenylalanine. This is a known, and relatively potent, neurotransmitter. One that, with some appropriate lab chemistry, can be used as the basis for synthesis of an entire class of psychotropic drugs in the phenylethylamine class, such as the various amphetamines.

Yes, that's right, one of the amino acids in your food is chemically related to an entire family of Class A drugs (as defined in UK law under the Misuse of Drugs Act). There's even a book on the subject, PiKHAL, by Alexander Shulgin, which delves into the details of phenylethylamine chemistry to an extent that will possibly earn you prison time in numerous jurisdictions if you repeat some of the experiments cited therein.

Indeed, while on the subject, a related tangential diversion notes how a vast range of, er, 'recreational pharmaceuticals', are chemically related to a host of natural brain endorphins and neurotransmitters.

We have natural opioids controlling functions as diverse as pain modulation and bowel control (yes, the anti-diarrhoea medication Loperamide is an opioid, that stops you crapping yourself when you have salmonella or dysentery). Anandamide is a natural brain endorphin with striking chemical similarity to cannabinoid drugs.

Several alkaloids also mimic the action of neurotransmitters via relevant chemical similarity - nicotine being a potent example, along with atropine and scopolamine. Yes, you have analogues of these alkaloids occurring naturally in your brain, whose action is to couple with certain receptors for serotonin and melatonin. Nicotine and other alkaloids couple to the same receptors, and powerfully at that. The fun part being that synthesis of serotonin, melatonin, and various alkaloids, all start biochemically with another amino acid, namely tryptophan. Which again you can find in fair abundance in cheeses.

Here endeth today's lesson in biochemistry.

When I’ve failed to earn a rosette I simultaneously look forward to and dread the turnover moment for the solution to see what I’ve missed. If it’s something like BUSBIES in last night’s ten letter Grubbiness puzzle I don’t mind because I don’t think I would have ever found that!

Heh, I live in the UK, where the Busby is a celebrated piece of headgear worn by the Coldstream Guards ringing Buckingham Palace, and I would have probably missed this too ...

Won't spoil it for the two hours or so remaining (at least here in the UK anyway), but upon finally finding the ten letter word, my reaction was precisely that  - er, WHAT?

I pride myself on having a better than average knowledge of Classical Greek, but this one made me wonder who else is going to uncover this one, especially if they don't possess my educational benefits.

When the puzzle closes, I suspect several here may have something to say about this one ...

I like to change my profile photo with the seasons and enjoy taking pictures of flowers and gardens and I was wondering if there was a way for the past posts to keep the photo they had at the time of posting? There probably isn’t cause I’m not technically-minded, and it’s not important, it just would be nice to look back at an old post and see what was current then. And be fun for those with photos of the themselves to look back and see then and now!

That would require images to be saved on the server (along with database entries recording when each image was in use). Even if users only change images once per year,, the resource requirements add up substantially over time.

Then you would have all the fun of integrating said database and saved images with the forum software. An in depth examination thereof could very well scupper the idea.

Ok I didn’t know that. Thought it was people trying to be like other people.

If you want, for example, to play games written for old computers or consoles, you can now find emulators for those computers and consoles that will run on Windows or Linux PCs. There's everything out there, from ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, BBC Micro and Dragon 32/64 emulators of old 1980s vintage 8-bit computers, to emulators for later Atari STs and Amigas, through to emulators for older Playstations and earlier Nintendo consoles.

On windows, there's even a multi-emulation system called MAME that will not only emulate old home computers and consoles, but arcade machines from the past as well. It's the only place I could find a silly Japanese game called Moon Cresta, which requires you to engage in space invaders type combat with technicolor space butterflies that make silly noises. Look that one up.

MAME is a bit clunky to use if you're not already somewhat savvy with respect to old computers, but once you've wrestled with it, it does the job fairly nicely, and it's regularly updated to boot.

On a more serious note, emulators are used to allow old software for computers that no longer exist as working physical hardware to be run. Work out the architecture of the old computer, write an emulator for it to run on a PC, and you're good to go. So if you REALLY want to find out what it was like to write software in UCSD Pascal on a 1970s vintage PDP-11 minicomputer, you can now do that, or even run obscure software such as Bradford University's BEDSOCS differential equation solver, which ran on a PDP-11 under UNIX. If you REALLY want to go back in time, there's probably someone out there working on an IBM 360 mainframe emulator allowing you to run (or even write anew!) really ancient FORTRAN or COBOL code, or allow you to savour the rabbit hole that is ALGOL.

Oh, and if you want, you can even design your own custom CPU architecture, write an emulator for it, and get it running. I did this for a comedy CPU of my own devising 3 years ago called "Feculent", as an exercise in developing what's known as a Turing Tarpit. On a more serious note, you could design a proper CPU architecture intended to be rendered in real silicon, test it out and iron out the bugs before committing yourself to expensive manufacturing, and turn out your own general purpose CPU for mobile phones (as has already been done with RISC-V) or your own custom microcontroller for industrial robots etc (see for example STM32 and several other microcontrollers).

I’m from the UK, so have no personal experience with majorettes. But I’d think it was a commonly-known word. It was the second word I got - after marjoram.

What a coincidence - so did I!