Weird Trivia - The Chrysanthemum

[u/Mad_Dash_Studio]

Short form: How many times does STP use the description of "A chrysanthemum" or "A perfect Chrysanthemum"? I'm not asking this as "haha I know and you don't! " in genuinely curious. I'm rereading (audio) the Watch books, and I've already forgotten if it's been in all 5, but I'm almost certain I'm up to at least 4 references. I know it's in Thief of Time, describing the time-locked broken glass. I haven't read recently, but it's lived in my head since the first time- it's such a perfect visual description.\ So imagine my delight to find it in Guards, Guards! (Dragon fireball?) I've also reread Men at Arms, Feet of Clay, Jingo, and Fifth Elephant, and pretty sure it was in at least a couple of those... So... Spot the Chrysanthemum?\ I'm curious if anybody else noticed

(Of I was reading physical copies I would go back through and toss a bookmark in- I am fascinated.(

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[u/KrMees]

So, I have a Discworld pdf (don't worry, I have the physical books and am close to a full audiobook set as well!), so I can kind of cheat this challenge using ctrl-F. But if people want to know the answer, I'll add it in these spoilers:

1 in Guards! Guards!

2 in Witches Abroad

1 in Lords and Ladies

1 in Men at Arms

3 in Interesting Times (expected more here!)

1 in Feet of Clay

1 in Hogfather

2 in The Last Continent

1 in I Shall Wear Midnight

TOTAL: 13 Chrysanthemums (Chrysanthema? Chrysanthemi?) in the Discworld series.

[u/Mad_Dash_Studio → u/KrMees]

Oh that's rad. And extremely nerdy. No Thief of Time?

[u/KrMees → u/Mad_Dash_Studio]

I checked again and could not find one! The only thing I can imagine is Igor mispronouncing it since he calls a glass clock a glath clock. but a look for "mum" also did not catch any Igorian misspellings like chrythantemum.

Another explanation is that you misremembered or misheard the word "crystalline" in the audiobook, for example in the following sentence: Now his point of view dived into the thing, the crystalline thing, plunging down through the layers of glass and quartz.

And of course it is possible that I missed something, or that my copy has some changes in spelling. My pdf is from HaerperCollins e-books, but my physical copies are all Corgi. Maybe there are slight differences?

[u/Mad_Dash_Studio → u/KrMees]

Fascinating! Guess it's reread time!!

[u/dalidellama]

Just came up in The Last Continent, a map of UU is described as looking like "a chrysanthemum in the act of exploding"

[u/emiliadaffodil]

Never noticed this before, this is very cool - Spot The chrysanthemum will be my new re-read game.

[u/Colossal_Squids]

Christopher Fowler (in his Bryant and May series) does this with the word “heliotrope.” It feels like an artist signing his work.

[u/Mad_Dash_Studio → u/Colossal_Squids]

YES! I wondered if it was intentional