Life
Political noir
In Competition No. 3088 you were invited to submit a short story in the style of hard-boiled crime fiction set…
2398: All steamed up
The unclued lights (five of two words, two pairs and a singleton) are of a kind, verifiable in Brewer. …
2395: Concise Crossword
The seven concise clues lead to: heALth centre (3,31), HEARTbreak (9), midrIFf (26), last of alL (40), out of afRIca…
Gone are the days when the middle class could afford to go skiing
It won’t be news to readers of The Spectator that one of the long-term effects of globalisation is the hollowing…
The Battle for Britain
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Meet Chris Gayle, the coolest man in sport
It can’t be a coincidence that two of the coolest sportsmen on the planet are from the same place, Jamaica.…
Dear Mary: what should we do about a possible thief in our school dormitory?
Q. I run a very small mail-order company from home. Recently I received an exceptionally rude email from a disgruntled…
Pale pomp and £100 Beijing duck: Imperial Treasure reviewed
Imperial Treasure is a restaurant in the part of St James’s where Leopold von Hoesch, the German ambassador to George…
‘One fell swoop’ has become a cliche, but where does it come from?
The Sun, reviewing a new laptop from Huawei, mentioned a combined fingerprint sensor and on-switch that lets users ‘power up and…
I’ve contributed greatly to animal welfare, via the casino
A rare British species, a womanising ex-foreign secretary, kissed and told about his brief affair with a yellow-eyed temptress last…
My life as nurse, chief cook and bottle washer for my mother
My fifth week confined to barracks as nurse, chief cook and bottle washer. I drive to the supermarket about twice…
Farmers get treated like terror suspects by the RSPCA
‘What do you mean, you have no ID?’ I asked the farmer, starting to feel dizzy with the mind-boggling convolution…
Why we need to support middle-ranking trainers
Owner Phil Simmonds from Rochdale was 17 when he first went racing, joining a friend’s stag party at Haydock Park.…
Bridge
The winter ‘season’ of terrific bridge competitions came to a close last weekend with the Lederer Trophy held at the…
Playing the blues
This Saturday (2 March) sees the annual varsity match between the teams of Oxford and Cambridge. Oxford are strengthened this…
no. 543
Black to play. This position is from Wagner–-Eckersley-Waites, Varsity Match, London 2008. How did Black make effective use of the…
Haikick
In Competition No. 3087 you were invited to submit haikicks. We already have short-form hybrids such as the clerihaiku (here’s…
2397: Obit V
We recently lost a fine 13, whose legacy includes 10 (two words) and 9 (two words), and four other unclued…
to 2394: Opening time
‘Never eat an oyster unless there’s an R in the month’ (Brewer). Eight unclued lights (in appropriate order) start with abbreviations…
We thought having four kids would be idyllic. What were we thinking?
You’d think the little buggers would be grateful. Caroline and I had just shelled out for our two middle children…
The Battle for Britain
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We put a man on the moon before wheels on suitcases. What else are we missing?
The Romans never invented the stirrup. It took 50 years after the invention of canned food for someone to invent…
Dear Mary: Plastic or wooden loo seats?
Q. Please advise on how I can move on from a social impasse. My best friend of 50 years claims…
Twenty years on, the Walbrook is still an enchantment
Early last century, an impoverished youth emerged from the East End. Able and hard-working, he discovered — as many had…
Where on earth does ‘kibosh’ come from?
‘What is a kibosh?’ asked a German medical friend of my husband’s, when the word cropped up. No one knew,…
