In ancient Greek stories, Daedalus was a brilliant inventor and craftsman — the man you called when a thing had never been built before. King Minos of Crete asked him to build the Labyrinth, a maze so clever that the Minotaur, a monster half bull and half man, could be shut inside it and never find its way out. But Daedalus knew too much, so the king would not let him leave the island. He made wings out of feathers held together with wax, for himself and his son Icarus, and they flew away. He warned Icarus not to fly too near the sun; the boy did anyway, the wax melted, and he fell into the sea and drowned. Daedalus reached safety alone. In English his name is a shorthand for genius that solves impossible problems and for a father's grief at a warning ignored — and 'daedal', a rare literary adjective, means skilful or intricately made. James Joyce named the hero of his novel Stephen Dedalus after him.