Life
Lockdown is making a Lib Dem of me
If this lockdown doesn’t end soon we are all going to turn into hairy lefties. I have just cut the…
This lockdown may kill me
I have a new job, which is maintaining a website called Lockdown Sceptics (lockdownsceptics.org). It’s a compendium of evidence that…
Dear Mary: Why don’t my neighbours appreciate my 8 p.m. Thursday firework?
Q. For me the hallmark of a really close friend is someone with whom you feel comfortable enough to bring…
The best New Zealand wine I’ve come across
I was once invited to the Cheltenham races and found the experience underwhelming. Everything was too respectable: not nearly Hibernian…
2454: 17 Across Solution
The thirteen unclued lights are all breads, hence the puzzle’s real title at 17A. First prizeNicholas Grogan, Purley, Surrey Runners-up…
Bridge | 16 May 2020
My entertainment last week was watching the NN-Cup, a ‘Goulash’ tournament normally held in Moscow, now played online for the…
Have you caught the remote-working bug?
One of the few benefits to emerge from this pandemic is that the world’s population has been given a crash…
Do we wrestle coronavirus to the floor – or the ground?
In the game of ‘U’ and ‘Non-U’, begun by Alan S.C. Ross (1907-80) and popularised in Nancy Mitford’s volume Noblesse…
Authors making sneaky appearances in their own novels
In Competition No. 3148 you were asked to imagine what the result might have been had a well-known writer slipped…
2457: Beginning
Unclued lights (including one of two words) suggest a section of a sequence whose final member will appear in the…
Online Nations Cup
Fifty years ago, the USSR faced a ‘Rest of the World’ team in a match in Belgrade, with the likes…
The Battle for Britain | 16 May 2020
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How to get your racing fix under lockdown
There is racing elsewhere in the world. It restarted in France on Monday, la course de chevaux being classed in…
Hope in a takeaway bag: Mackerel Sky reviewed
You don’t dine in the age of pandemic: you scuttle about in the wreckage. If you can afford food, and…
How famous writers do social isolation
In Competition No. 3147 you were invited to submit tips on social isolation in the style of a well-known writer.…
I salute Professor Neil Ferguson
Gstaad Let me begin with a salute to the winner of this year’s Sir Jimmy Goldsmith prize: Professor Neil Ferguson.…
In praise of French doctors
They made a better job of sorting out my waterworks
Professor Lockdown’s spell has been broken
I originally had Neil Ferguson down as a kind of Henry Kissinger figure. The professor of mathematical biology at Imperial…
Dear Mary: What do I say to the neighbour who comments on my daily exercise?
Q To your correspondent with a guest whose table manners offend (2 May), you suggest screening him off with a…
The Battle for Britain | 9 May 2020
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2453: All Right? Solution
Unclued lights were characters in the musical Oklahoma!, 2/20, 4A, 10, 22, 24, 30, 35/15D. They are AUNT ELLER, WILL…
My toilet ultimatum to the builder boyfriend
The rain showers had a strange and wondrous effect. All the cyclists, joggers and dog walkers that were coming from…
Why we’ll all be fleeing to Nigeria
I keep thinking what I’ll do when we regain our liberty — and I picture that beer at the end…
Bridge | 9 May 2020
This weekend should have been the Schapiro Spring Foursomes, sponsored by Helen S., widow of the legendary Boris. Held in…
No. 603
Black to play. Ding–Nakamura, Magnus -Carlsen Invitational, April 2020. The position appears sterile, but Nakamura spotted a clever winning move.…
