"Mes" and "Leurs" together are "meilleur", Wordwind, and your French grammar is indeed better than mine. But I couldn't make sense of the phrase without translating it muy libre. (There I go exposing my inadequacies in still another language.) Perhaps wwh will enlighten me on his quote. How does it translate, wwh? As to salt, I am a bit of a selebrity, if only by geographic association. I was born in Windsor, Ontario (across from Detroit), the home of "Windsor Salt". No kidding. We Windsorites are not only famous for our cars. You may have some Windsor Salt in your kitchen, Wordwind, but I suspect Dr. Bill is salt-free. In any case, it is clear I have come down in the world quite drastically. I was born on top of the salt in Windsor and now I find myself sitting below the salt. About YART. I have my cryptologists working on that one and the best they have come up with so far is "Yale Alumni Rarely Tell" ... which doesn't ring true, somehow. So what does YART mean? BTW are you sure about the origins of the phrase "below the salt"? I think the inflection is more low caste than "low income". In medieval times, anyone sitting "below the salt" was of lesser rank. The salt line marked the blood line, so to speak. Costain wrote about this in one of his historical novels as I recall. And I must leave you with one more salt tidbit. They are coming out with a variety of celery which contains its own salt. Its called "selery". How's that for convenience! Now you can have your salt without sprinkling your potatoes. And its all natural too. Its grown in Windsor. (I hope that doesn't make me a laughing stalk or I'm going to end up in the stalkade ... again.)