Life
Bridge | 15 August 2020
I am frankly repulsed by the latest cheats, exposed after the online invitational Alt and OCBL tournaments. When F2F bridge…
Dear Mary: What can I do about fellow passengers who won’t wear face masks?
Q. On my way to Devon recently I stopped for lunch with an impeccably mannered friend. He produced first crab…
Did Taylor Swift really ‘overthink’ her album release?
Sometimes when I ask my stertorous husband in his armchair whether he is asleep, he replies with a start: ‘Just…
I’ve started a dating site for lockdown sceptics
I started a dating site last Sunday. Not words I ever thought I’d write, but I’ve become a kind of…
The absurd self-pity of Stuart Broad
You are, shall we say, a famous commentator, one of a tiny elite in the British media. You are paid…
A great Dane: Snaps + Rye reviewed
Snaps + Rye is a Nordic-themed restaurant and delicatessen on the Golborne Road, at the shabby and thrilling edges of…
2467: Girl Talk solution
The unclued lights, 3/34, 12/31, 26/1A/33, 35/9, 39 and 18 PEAKE (an anagram of the red highlighted letters), are six…
Spectator competition winners: Keatsian sonnets
In Competition No. 3161 you were invited to supply a sonnet with certain rhyme words to be used in a…
The King’s Gambit
Does Bear Grylls play chess? If he does, I’m sure he would favour the King’s Gambit. As chess openings go,…
Aussie Life
Two friends of mine are being harassed by the government. Both men have criticised the more lurid aspects of LGBTQ+…
The proof that free speech in universities is in peril
About 18 months ago, I attended a debate at Policy Exchange, the think tank founded by Nick Boles, Francis Maude…
The difference between American and French wine-drinkers
Is it safe to visit the continent? On the one hand, abroad is likely to be less crowded this August…
Dear Mary: How do I tell my neighbours I forgot to feed their cat?
Q. We invited two friends to supper in London. As they came in they said they should order their taxi…
Why must we ‘live with’ coronavirus?
T.S. Eliot adopted a method of criticism that I am not aware of any other writer using: he imagined what…
The Battle for Britain | 8 August 2020
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Why our greatest inventors are supreme hucksters
People often tell me I have a strange way of looking at the world. Obviously, it doesn’t seem strange to…
Island life is not for me
Island of Serifos Let’s get one thing straight: island life is not for me. Island life off a boat, jawohl,…
If the office is ‘too dangerous’, why is everyone jetting off on holiday?
The whole of Surrey and south-west London seem to have gone abroad on holiday so I’ve got my sanity back.…
A lament for the foreign correspondent’s house – and his hospitality
Provence-Alpes-Côte D’Azur Until January the foreign correspondent lived in a late-18th-century house with a vineyard, olive grove and vegetable garden…
In a jam: what Goodwood did with 900 punnets of strawberries
It was to have been, if not a glorious return, at least an encouraging one. On the Stewards’ Cup day…
Bridge | 8 August 2020
Stuart Wheeler was a true original. I was lucky enough to be a friend (we met playing bridge), and will…
2469: Breadth
Unclued lights are anagrams of Shakespearean characters. These lights are defined by surplus words in eight clues. Across 1 Recreational…
No. 616
Black to play. Studer–Naiditsch, Biel, July 2020. White intends to meet 1…Bxb5 with 2 Bxe7 Qxe7 3 Qxb5, with an…
2466: Gender bender solution
The author was GEORGE SAND (19/26), whose original name was AMANTINE LUCILE AURORE DUPIN (25/40/5/16). The perimetric works are INDIANA,…
Spectator competition winners: killer short stories
In Competition No. 3160 you were invited to supply a short story whose opening sentence is ‘I have no idea…
