10:00 Jul 10, 2009 

...around looking for the rogues, therefore the semiliquid (not so hard) yolk can 'move' (dribble) beyond the eggwhite hard walls as you crack (split) the egg. :) Maurizio

09:56 Jul 10, 2009 

I agree with Tony, who I have found to be a very keen interpreter of THE language (that means all languages he talks about), for the second half of his reasoning,
However I believe that somehow there is a sort of "language professionalism", which does not impair ordinary 100-words-using people from being perhaps better than I, Tony M and Richard McDorman (not to mention all the other refined ProZ customary guests) in other respects, but not concerning the language. Any suggestion and opinion welcome, though! TITS (this is to say) that I line up with Richard on his peroration to switch the question to Pro level, because a deeper understanding of metaphorical or figurative language is really a pro feature. Here's my option, for which I must be grateful both to Tony and Armorel: "Please, cook me another one, because suffering the 'yoke' of the cooker (=prison) made my first one (too) hard". Nonetheless, this leaves open the "crimefighter yolk" question. And I propose this: 1) prison yolk is what Armorel defines in her answer, because the yolk being hard is confined to the 'walls' of the hardboiled eggwhite; 2) as a crimefighter is a policeman (policewoman) he (she) must go

17:33 Jul 9, 2009 

My judgment about the difficulty level of the question is based on the KudoZ guidelines. Under those guidelines, an "easy" (i.e., Non-PRO) level question is one that "any bilingual person should be able to answer." Obviously, this is not a bilingual question. However, it would seem to make sense by analogy that an easy (Non-PRO) monolingual question would be one that any native speaker would be able to answer. I do not believe that "any native speaker" could answer this question. I would be shocked if even 50% of native English speakers (that is, considering all of them) could answer this question. Ipso facto, under the KudoZ guidelines, as I understand them, this should be a PRO-level question.

15:48 Jul 9, 2009 

I don't really agree, Richard.

There is nothing inherently difficult or specialized about the term 'yolk', and any interpretation of this figurative use can never be anything more than speculation, short of actually asking the author himself. I don't see why it need take 'professional' answerers to speculate and discuss any more than ordinary mortals — and I don't think 'professionals' are any more likely to be able to come up with the definitive answer (unless one of them happens to have Lord Archer's telephone number, perchance...?)

Just to throw in my five eggs, I couldn't help wondering if this mightn't be a direct or indirect pun on the word 'yoke' — the sort of term that might well be associated with prison and punishment...

15:00 Jul 9, 2009 

In my humble opinion, this is definitely a PRO-Level question. While I haven't a clue as to the answer (I believe that a lot more context will be required to crack this egg, if you will pardon the cheap pun), this is not your run-of-the-mill question. I therefore reommend that the level of this question be changed to PRO.

12:13 Jul 9, 2009 

12:09 Jul 9, 2009 

Not that this answers the question in any way, but I believe this is from Jeffrey Archer's "Prisoner of Birth"

10:57 Jul 9, 2009 

What Tony says is quite right. I wonder if you could tell us what comes prior to this section, and we might be able to make some suggestions. Who are the characters involved? what were they talking about beforehand?

10:24 Jul 9, 2009 

AFAIK, this is not any kind of 'standard' idiom, but just this particular author's quirky use of language in a figurative way.