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mmmmm, mmmmm. that is delicious on so many levels. Sponsored by: Jimmy Dean sausages
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The cynical view would be that it was probably a case of knee-jerk phrase selection, from having heard it before vice actually thinking about what it means (or should mean). It does sound flaky in that context, and not like pie crust. As such it would fall in with the now hackneyed television favorite "amazing". 
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OTOH, it might could have been an automatic spelling correction for a typoed "delicate."
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formerly known as etaoin...
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Welcome aBoard, Don! Thanks for posing this one--I always enjoy good discussion threads.
I'm standing with Ted on this one. Delicious modifies conundrum in this phrase. However, given what the conundrum referred to is, I agree with Faldage that it will be overshadowed by the normal meaning , and therefore am of the opinion that Mr. L. shouldn't have used it.
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> Delicious modifies conundrum in this phrase.
guess I need to read more carefully. I didn't know we were arguing about that.
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Interesting. Very interesting. And you have all of you including me been looking at the wrong word.
The use of conundrum to mean a difficult question is, at best, quite new. Here's from one online dictionary:
1. A kind of riddle based upon some fanciful or fantastic resemblance between things quite unlike; a puzzling question, of which the answer is or involves a pun. 2. A question to which only a conjectural answer can be made.
The phrase delicious conundrum revolves around the sense of delicious I set forth above in conjunction with definition 1 above for conundrum. I have seen this occasionally over the years and had it explained to me by my father when I was a lad of very tender years. I distinctly remember, though it was almost a half century ago, the "discussion" we had about using delicious this way. I do wish I could remember what I was reading that brought the phrase to mind, but it must have been the more "modern" usage because our discussion was about the first word, not the second.
The usage quoted at the start of this thread is incorrect insofar as its use to describe a tough question. That use of the word conundrum is not reflected in my OED Compact Edition (the entire OED in reduced print format), though it is set forth in that fashion in the online Compact OED available through onelook.com.
TEd
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I would say we're looking more at def 2 for conundrum.
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Quote:
Interesting. Very interesting. And you have all of you including me been looking at the wrong word.
The use of conundrum to mean a difficult question is, at best, quite new. Here's from one online dictionary:
1. A kind of riddle based upon some fanciful or fantastic resemblance between things quite unlike; a puzzling question, of which the answer is or involves a pun. 2. A question to which only a conjectural answer can be made.
…
The usage quoted at the start of this thread is incorrect insofar as its use to describe a tough question. That use of the word conundrum is not reflected in my OED Compact Edition (the entire OED in reduced print format), though it is set forth in that fashion in the online Compact OED available through onelook.com.
That section of the brick and mortar edition of the OED was published in May, 1893. Definition 2 in the AHD is appropriate to this usage and, I think, fits quite well. I don't see any problem with the use of the word "conundrum" here. I still don't think "delicious" is a good choice of words.
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I was surprised to see conundrum marked "Origin unknown"; OED comments, "Origin lost", although it has citations going wayback. they've got some updating to do on this one, to capture the more common usages noted here.
but I digress.
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