Life
The hidden cost of free technology
Back in late 2019 I met someone from Zoom who was visiting London. The company, then as now, offered free…
If all else fails, there’s always basket weaving
The only thing left for me now is to embrace humility and take up basket weaving. In our dog and…
The school that made an American century
New York With the Karamazovian hangover now only a weekly occurrence, the healthy life rules supreme. Well, most of the…
No. 652
White to play and mate in two moves. Composed by Revd Ernest Clement Mortimer, The Problemist, 1942. Answers should be…
Dead brain cells
As round 14 of the Candidates tournament unfolded, I had the feeling of watching an anti-climactic post-exam bender. Ian Nepomniachtchi…
Did I catch Covid from a naked-rumped tomb bat?
Laikipia Until I promised to slaughter a fat-tailed sheep with a goat thrown in for a feast, the farm cowhands…
2505: Endgame
The unclued lights (one hyphened) are of a kind, confirmed in Chambers. Elsewhere, ignore one accent. Across 1 I…
2502: Nay-sayers? - solution
The unclued lights are HORSES. First prize Bob Toland, Ramsey, Cambs Runners-up Gareth Davies, Langstone, Gwent; Catherine Knox, London SW4…
Aussie Life
I’ve travelled to Melbourne several times a year since I was a child and visited last month for the first…
Aussie Language
The expression ‘culture cringe’ was coined in 1950 by literary critic A. A. Phillips to describe the cringing assumption that…
The problem with Equity’s anti-racism guidelines
‘Rouse tempers, goad and lacerate, raise whirlwinds.’ Those were the words that Kenneth Tynan, the most celebrated drama critic of…
Why all the outrage over the European Super League?
Anything been happening in football in the past couple of weeks? No? Moving on then… Hang about though. The doomed…
The dirty truth about ‘sleaze’
‘Sleaze, sleaze, sleaze!’ exclaimed Sir Keir Starmer in Prime Minister’s Questions last week, hoping that a triple serving might stick.…
Dear Mary: How can I stop my sister-in-law pinching food off my plate?
Q. Since the relaxation of lockdown, my brother and his wife have started coming to our garden for takeaway meals.…
The Battle for Britain | 1 May 2021
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Immovable object meets irresistible force
The Candidates tournament resumed on 19 April in Yekaterinburg. Eight players competed for a €500,000 prize fund, but only one…
No. 651
White to play and mate in two moves. Composed by Henry William Butler. Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by…
Bridge | 1 May 2021
It was great to see an England team win the hotly contested World Bridge Tour ‘Survivor Cup’ recently. Many congratulations…
Why the Tories won’t let me display a local election poster
Being told by the Tories not to put a local election poster in my window because it will only remind…
My top tip for the Grand National in 2023
Want to know the winner of the Grand National in 2023? You heard it here first: when the ante-post books…
My clairvoyant GP
‘Willie or bum?’ I said to Catriona on the motorway. Everything in my recent medical career has been introduced via…
Replies from Shakespeare’s dark lady and Frances Cornford’s fat woman
In Competition No. 3196, you were invited to supply a reply to the poet from Frances Cornford’s fat woman or…
2504: Collectors’ items
Clockwise round the peri-meter go two lines of a topical verse, thirteen words altogether. (The barred off square divides the…
The unsavoury truth about American sport
New York What follows has been covered ad nauseam, but I wonder why people were surprised at the planned breakaway…
2501: Delightful - solution
The ‘Transport of Delight’, in the song by Flanders and Swann, was that ‘big six-wheeler, scarlet-painted, diesel-engined, London Transport, ninety-seven…
