One of my favorite reference books is The Dictionary Of Clichés, a mass-market volume that I found for a dollar at some store somewhere. It claims that the phrase “hook, line, and sinker” implies gullibility, although I like to think of it implying totality, utter wholeness. This could be because in ninth grade I fell for the old “gullible isn’t in the dictionary” trick, which was perpetrated on me by my biology teacher. Oh, how everyone laughed at me believing in authority. It was a lesson. Either way, the phrase apparently dates all the way back to the mid-19th century, which makes it appropriate for this issue about finding answers in the past.