CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.
Merriam-Webster traces the first use of the idiom "lose the plot" to 1984. We can do better! The earliest instance we've yet found of having "lost the plot" involves a fisherman's story in E. Boyd Smith's My Village, 1896. Then there's a reference to being "apt to lose the plot" in the New York Times, June 29, 1902. (Our image is from Grave Mood Rings.)