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Public adulation for champion athletes such as those being feted at the Athens Olympiad has a long history. The ancient Greeks had a title, periodonikes, for the supreme athletes of their day. A man could be a periodonikes (the term means one who can be considered to be like Hercules, which was as high a compliment as might be paid in those days) if he was a champion at the four major games of the age. The prizes he had to win:

Olympia: Olive wreath, called a kotynos, symbolising strength and peace. The Athens 2004 games revived this tradition.

Delphi: Laurel wreath and an apple. Laurel wreaths were also given to victors in battle.

Isthmus: Crown of pine or celeriac. Second in popularity to the Olympics; these games at Corinth were dedicated to sea god, Poseidon.

Nemea: Crown of celeriac, or celery root.

Plot: Harvard prof meets French cryptologist. They think hard and uncover sinister centuries-old Vatican plot.

Don’t read if you: Prefer contemplation to chase sequences and conspiracy theories, or feel faith must always trump empirical reasoning.

Rude thing to say: It’s Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist for people who do really read books.

Gabbar Singh will roar again, thanks to the new digital cinemascope version of Sholay. Catch the glitch in this villain’s rap sheet.

A. Gabbar Singh’s father is Hari Singh.

B. Both Amitabh Bachchan and Sanjeev Kumar wanted to play Gabbar Singh’s part.

C. Sholay originally ended with Thakur killing Gabbar Singh but Emergency censorship forced a tamer ending.

D. Gabbar was the first villain to endorse a product—Parle G.

E. The game Gabbar plays with Kaalia and Co with his gun is called Russian Roulette.

Answer D. Britannia Glucose D biscuits were advertised as ‘Gabbar ki asli pasand’

Small medieval bomb; proved untrustworthy, though, with its tendency to blow up its users. Hence Shakespeare’s gift to edit-writers, "hoist with one’s own petard" (Hamlet), meaning to come to grief from one’s own schemes. The word drives from petar, Latin for ‘break wind’.