Life
Beware cars with National Trust stickers
Always the National Trust sticker. It feels like every time a car parks across the gateway to my horses’ field…
2470: Express route solution
The unclued lights are places served by the Norwegian HURTIGRUTEN ferries from Bergen to Kirkenes. Tromsø (at 4D) overruns into…
Act of God
Man plans, God laughs. Fide, the international federation, organised an Online Olympiad, with 163 teams taking part. We got a…
Remote workers of the world, unite!
A few nights ago on Twitter, I quipped that I was planning to launch a trade union for remote workers.…
Dear Mary: How can we be sure our host gives us clean sheets?
Q. Some friends persist on displaying our email addresses in large address lists when sending out round robins to all…
The best leader we never had
I spent Monday afternoon with The Wake Up Call, a new book by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge that lambasts…
A perfect luncheon wine
I suspect, though this may be romanticising, that if a French lorry driver with hitherto suppressed culinary tastes won France’s…
The hijacking of the Scots language
A teenager in North Carolina has been revealed as the creator of a fifth or even a half of the…
The Battle for Britain | 5 September 2020
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Aussie Life & Language
Tina Faulk There are very few ‘happy ending’ stories in the cruel history of slavery. This may just be one…
How to seduce a Border Force officer
There was only a handful of us arriving at Bristol on flight 6114 from Nice. Oscar and I had the…
Zac Crawley, a cricketing giant
Crowds, Covid and sport: could it get any crazier? I don’t mind about golf: no idiots yelling ‘Get in the…
The BBC’s future is hanging by a thread
Reading the speech Tony Hall gave to the Edinburgh Television Festival, I was struck by his upbeat, confident tone. The…
Dear Mary: How can I hide my lockdown weight gain?
Q. For professional reasons it is important that I am not fat. However I have put on more than a…
The art of being a mistress
Gstaad The jokes about keeping a mistress are old and I’ve yet to hear a truly funny one (‘The difference…
Trust the NHS to take the worst elements of the private sector
After driving around the hospital grounds in concentric circles until I was surely down a wormhole, I found the scanning…
The Battle for Britain | 29 August 2020
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Bridge | 29 August 2020
I have not played a single hand of bridge for about a month, neither have I kibitzed online. Ergo I…
My steak cooking lesson turned into a sitcom
Pandemic has brought many truths, the most minor of which is: I can’t cook steak. I thought I could. I…
2469: Breadth solution
The unclued lights were: 12 CORNI, anagram of Corin (As You Like It); 23 MANDIRA, Miranda (The Tempest); 27 LARDOON,…
Paradise Lost in four lines
In Competition No. 3163 you were invited to submit well-known poems encapsulated in four lines. Now that the internet has…
What a relief it is to be back among level-headed Kenyans
Kenya I stood under huge skies in the open country of our farm in northern Kenya and, after months of…
What’s the difference between ‘reticent’ and ‘reluctant’?
Anna Massey had no dramatic training before appearing on stage in 1955 aged 17 in The Reluctant Debutante by William…
No. 619
Nakamura–Carlsen, August 2020. Carlsen has just advanced 40…g6-g5+, laying a nasty trap. Only one move gives White a fighting chance…
2472: All-inclusive
An 11-word quotation (in ODQ) reads clockwise around the perimeter from square 1. Other unclued lights are names of a…
