Andrew's Permuted Index Here's the good news: this collection of rec.kites (http://www.kites.tug.com/Archive) postings goes back 4.5 years, and is probably one of the most complete collections online. Here's the bad news: the collection is indexed only by the words in the title of the each post (not the contents of the posts, as is done on DejaNews), and it can be confusing to use. Here's the trick. Look at the list of posting titles on the main screen. They're organized such that there are two columns. In the right-hand "column"; you'll see an ascending alphanumeric list of words, starting with 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, address, advert, and so forth. Those are the words that mark each section of posts. We'll stick with our Box of Tricks example, and look down this list until we find the first word that alphabetizes after "box", then back up a line. That's our entry point into the index. In the case of the Box of Tricks, we see the lines: Index gallops island kite fly boston harbor Index brian k hirose-nasty garbage so we'll pick the first of these and click "Index" on the line beginning "gallops". The new page contains a similar list of subject titles, but instead of "index" on the left, you see "thread", and you'll notice that the right-hand "column" now only contains words beginning with 'b'. Scroll down the list, and you'll hit pay-dirt! 15 subject lines that contain the words "Box of Tricks"! Now here's the beauty of it: each of these lines leads to a thread of postings containing that subject line. Of course, sometimes there's just one posting under a given subject, but sometimes there's quite a few more. For instance, try clicking Thread on the line: Thread box of tricks question