Just how common are these thick plates? Well, they’re definitely rarer overall. Some have suggested that the thick plate frequency actually varies greatly based on location, with the stacks of plates by the pizza featuring the highest thick/thin ratio through the LDC. Despite one worker estimating an average of three thick plates to every two thin plates in the LDC stack, evidence suggests that their distribution comes down only to chance, and that there are no specific hotspots of thick-platery. One student, when asked about their thoughts on the frequency of thick plates, responded that “one in five is thick. Or… (A brief pause to stare at shoelaces for a bit) no, one in six. Wait, no, I take it all back, it’s gotta be one in seven.” Students, when asked, seemed to generally suggest a ratio around one heavy plate to six regular plates. But when we asked LDC employees, their suggested ratios were quite a bit larger, hovering mostly in the range of about one heavy plate to four regulars.

Silverware

However, there is far more stealthily diverse silverware than plates. Students insist that there are at the very least two types of fork, two of spoons, and two of knives as well. The spoon divide is the least mysterious – the LDC has soup spoons, rounded and rather shallow, which can easily be found by the soup station. These also appear in the regular cutlery section, in the company of their more slender, elongated, and slightly deeper cousins whose natural range is restricted, seemingly, only to that location. In this case, the two types of spoon have evolved different enough functionalities that there is a strong correlation between location and species. This seems to be a feature unique to spoons.

With forks and knives, it is not so. Every once in a while, the particularly astute and observant LDC-goer will be struck with the sensation that perhaps-perhaps the fork they’re using might just feel a touch heavier than normal. Yep, that’s fact. Unquestionably, there exist at least- at the absolute least- two kinds of fork-one heavier, one lighter. With knives, the situation is exactly the same- there are heavier and lighter breeds of those as well.

The Magenta Cups

These fabled objects I have seen with my own eyes. Accompanying the familiar pink, salmon, baby blue, and seafoam color palette common to LDC cupware, there is at the very least one deep magenta cup. Prominent voices on the subject individually insisted on different names for this cup, including “Harriet,” “Fluttershy,” and “Buzz ‘Barack Hussein’ Lightyear.” It is entirely possible that more than one magenta cup exists at the LDC- but keep your eyes open, because we’ve only seen one with our own eyes.

Awful-tasting chopsticks?

Not an item I was aware could have a flavor until recently, LDC chopsticks have been accused of having something in them that tastes revolting. To my understanding, chopsticks are not exactly something that really have taste, but one correspondent insisted that occasionally, having sat down to eat, his chopsticks would carry an utterly horrific taste even before they touched the Asian Station’s food.

Really Hot Omelette Plates

Much closer to the ‘malevolent conspiracy theory’ type of suspicion, the hearsay is that some plates will, without even being left too long on the hotpad, get “ridiculously hot” and impossible to touch. I know what a too-warm-for-comfort plate feels like, but this seems to be something different. Three separate people raised this as a vague possibility, so I’m willing to publish it as absolute truth, since, you know, I’m a journalist.

The Threek

By far and away the most elusive and mysterious of all the LDC’s cutlerical mysteries is the fabled ‘threek,’ the hypothetical three-pronged fork that, while almost never seen, has a small, yet absolutely adamant group of advocates backing its existence. Backers swear up and down that these things exist, yet in an intensive one-week search of the LDC I found not a single one. Yet people believe.