> But isn't it rather complicated to achieve the "first 1" semantics in
> the OP's way using joins?

Not so complicated if you note that original subselects don't have
ORDER BY clause.

> How would you suggest to do that? (Not that I can't see a solution, just
> not a very neat one...)

Use aggregates. Because order is not set, MAX() will work not worse
than MIN().

SY, SD.