[MonikaT]

And why's it a $64,000 question? You just using the number cuz it sounded heavy? Hyperbole. Misleading vividness. More false analogy. Appeal to Nature. Must I go on?

I'm showing my age, and hopefully you see this before the thread is gone, but many years a go, there was a game show called The $64,000 Question in which a person claiming expertise in a particular area would answer questions of increasing difficulty with correspondingly increasing dollar amounts. Dr. Joyce Brothers (a psychologist who was popular on talk shows in the 70s and 80s) became famous answering questions about either sports in general, or the specific sport of boxing, I'm not sure which. In the 70s, the show was resurrected as The $128,000 Question. I never saw the original, but I did see that newer version. As I recall, the money doubled with each question, thus $100, $200, $400, etc. on up to $64,000 or some similar progression. Since then, it has become a figure of speech to refer to a difficult question as "the $64,000 question."