Life
The Battle for Britain | 18 July 2020
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Was there ever any transparency in football?
So all that sound and fury about Manchester City’s sins signified precisely nothing. Well, a €10 million fine isn’t nothing,…
What has ‘deadweight’ got to do with Rishi Sunak’s magic money tree?
I was trying to understand what they meant on the wireless by deadweight costs. These were something to do with…
Returning to what makes us happy: Brasserie Zedel reviewed
Brasserie Zédel is a grand salon under Piccadilly Circus and the only place I desired when lockdown (or lock-in) ceased…
My advice to Johnny Depp
Gstaad Are any of you tired of reading about Ghislaine Maxwell and her sleazy life? Bored by old news repeated…
The beauty of military cemeteries
They are starting to cut the corn. But apart from combine harvesters and tractors, the roads up here on the…
The politics of hair dye
‘What are you going to put on my head to protect me?’ said the man outside the barber’s shop to…
T.S. Eliot goes to Glastonbury
In Competition No. 3157 you were invited to describe a visit to Glastonbury or Glyndebourne in the style of an…
Dear Mary: How can I help the host at a socially-distant dinner party?
Q. As we attend socially distant events, we expect of our hosts a scrupulous accommodation of our preferences around physical…
2463: Tongue Twisters solution
The unclued lights were all languages which are written from right to left, entered in that manner in the grid.…
Bridge | 18 July 2020
The French Online Open, in which 32 teams competed over a marathon two weeks — seven days round robin and…
2466: Gender bender
Clockwise round the grid from 11 run, in chronological order, the titles (7,7,7,9,2,8,2,10) of five works by an author whose…
An ugly duckling problem
The position shown in this week’s main diagram is the starter problem for the Winton British Chess Solving Championship, an…
No. 613
White to play and mate in three moves. A problem composed by grandmaster Jonathan Levitt (British Chess Magazine, 1995). One…
Aussie Life
Jordan Shanks is not your average lefty. This unusual Australian YouTuber, who goes by the name of FriendlyJordies, disdains such…
Aussie life
Like so many of us in these troubled times, I am worried about the family statues. The topple-mob cannot be…
The forgotten victims of communism
I just read a piece by Scott McConnell in the American Conservative, a magazine we co-founded 18 years ago. He…
The Streisand effect
There is no sight so compelling as one that would be hidden. I am fascinated by the Streisand effect, named…
Will Zooming replace real-life socialising?
‘Are you seriously telling me you would rather meet up on Zoom than in reality?’ I asked a friend as…
2465: Definitely amusing
Unclued lights (three of two words, two hyphened) have something in common, verifiable in Brewer. Across 4 Everybody agreed to…
No. 612
White to play. Giri–Nepomniachtchi, Chessable Masters 2020. Giri has sacrificed a knight to lure the black king forward. Which move…
2462: Over and Out? solution
The seventeen entries clued by definition only required removal of the abbreviation BR ( = Britain), in keeping with the…
Poems about schadenfreude
In Competition No. 3156 you were invited to supply a piece of verse or prose on the subject of schadenfreude,…
Aidan O’Brien’s Derby victory was an act of grand larceny
It wasn’t so much a Derby victory this year as an act of grand larceny. Aidan O’Brien isn’t just a…
Bridge | 11 July 2020
What goes through a world-class player’s mind when he or she stops to think for an age during a hand?…
