A-est N possible [data of the day]

Consider the following sentences:

1. He ordered the strongest drink possible.
2. He ordered the strongest possible drink.

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Observation: the two sentences seem to be semantically equivalent.

Question 1: are the two actually meaningfully equivalent? Are there contexts where one is felicitous and the other isn't? Does one result in an additional implicature/presupposition/piece of meaning that the other doesn't?

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Observation: 'possible' does not seem to modify drink. Notice that when 'possible' would unambiguously modify drink, as in the latter two of the three possible relative clauses, the meaning is changed:

3. the drink that he ordered was the strongest possible drink.
4. ≠ the strongest drink that he ordered was a possible drink.
5. ≠ the possible drink that he ordered was the strongest drink.

(It is not even clear to me what a possible drink is.)

Question 2: What does 'possible' modify? Is it telling us to consider all possible worlds?

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Observation: there seems to be a relationship between '-est' and 'possible'. Removing '-est' renders the sentences ungrammatical.

6. * He ordered the stronger drink possible.
7. * He ordered the stronger possible drink.

Question 3: How do we formalize the relationship between '-est' and 'possible'? And how do we derive the two word orders? It seems to be the case that the word order alternation is dependent on '-est'/'most', given data like the two above.

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Observation: it is not just '-est'; 'most' can also license post-nominal 'possible' (though prenominal 'possible' is far less acceptable to my ear).

8. He ordered the most alcoholic drink possible.
9. *? He ordered the most alcoholic possible drink.

And it is not just superlative adjectives:

10. He tried to get the most money possible (from the ATM).
11. ? He tried to get the most possible money (from the ATM).

The latter of the two sounds less good to my ear, but there are hits in corpora / on Google.

Question 4: How does this affect the formalization between '-est'/'most' and 'possible'? It is not the result of attributive adjective syntax that post-nominal 'possible' is licensed. (Though, I suppose this depends on how you treat 'most' in these examples.)

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Observation: Some other words can occur post-nominally or pre-nominally, only in a superlative context; e.g. 'available':

12. He ordered the strongest (available) drink (available).
13. He ordered the stronger (*available) drink (*available).

Some other words are also restricted to a superlative context, but must occur post-nominally; e.g. 'ever':

14. He ordered the strongest (??ever) drink (ever).
15. He ordered the stronger (*ever) drink (*ever).

Question 5: What determines which words are sensitive to superlative contexts, and what determines where those items can occur in relation to the noun? I have a sneaking suspicion that it's something like movement and the fixed position of adjectives (a la Cinque).

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In summary, we're left with a lot of questions, and not a lot of answers. That's what research (and not morning musing) is for.