Solution to 2565: 3 X 2
The unclued lights are words (or one phrase) which contain three pairs (3 x 2, in the title) of double…
Portrait of the week
Home Energy bills will be £4,266 for a typical household by January, according to the consultancy Cornwall Insight, which had…
Barometer
Tracing paper FBI agents raided Donald Trump’s estate in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, in search of papers he is accused of removing…
Letters
Injured party Sir: Prue Leith’s short interlude as a Conservative party member and subsequent resignation underlines a feature of the…
Can Truss be trusted?
Liz Truss has taken the lead in the Tory leadership race with an agenda that seems radical and ambitious, whereas…
Solution to 2564: Sea monster
The unclued lights 11 SOLITARY, 8 POOR, 38 NASTY, 36 BRUTISH and 35 SHORT are descriptions of 1 THE LIFE…
Barometer
An idea past its sell-by date Waitrose has announced the removal of ‘best before’ dates from many food products. –…
Portrait of the week
Home BP reported quarterly profits of £6.9 billion, its biggest for 14 years, after oil and gas prices rose steeply.…
Power struggles
During the eurozone crisis, southern European states had to go cap in hand to Germany to stave off national bankruptcy.…
Portrait of the week
Home In a television debate between the two contenders for the leadership of the Conservative party (and hence the prime…
Letters
Get fracking Sir: All credit to The Spectator for grabbing the cancelled Tory leadership debate slot (‘The final three’, 23…
Barometer
The longest heatwave How did the recent heatwave compare with that of 1976? That year, the temperature peaked at 35.9˚C…
Solution to 2563: Areas for development
As suggested by 11 across, the other unclued lights were anagrams of capital cities: 23A Nairobi, 25A Nassau, 29A Lima,…
Portrait of the week
Home In the contest for the leadership of the Conservative party, Jeremy Hunt and Nadhim Zahawi were the first of…
Barometer
Hot topic Last week’s Barometer detailed past UK temperature records. Those were broken by this week’s heatwave. On Monday a…
Letters
Procurement profligacy Sir: In response to Susan Hill’s query ‘Who allows the profligacy in NHS hospital procurement to continue?’ (‘Best…
Solution to 2562: Clear view…
The title resolves into CL RVW which suggests the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ralph Vaughan Williams. The unclued…
Reckless caution
Trains were running even more slowly than usual. Schools were closed again. Offices were empty. No one would deny that…
Barometer
Hot hot hot The Met Office said temperatures may hit 40˚C on Sunday, which would be the highest ever recorded…
Letters
Boris’s legacy Sir: It is grossly unfair to assert that Boris Johnson’s legacy was the lockdown (Leading article, 9 July).…
Big tech’s big failure
A few years ago the Conservatives were excited about the march of the tech giants. Uber was offering an alternative…
Portrait of the week
Home The Conservatives began the process of finding a new leader, which involves balloting MPs and then sending two names…
Solution to 2561: Ports
The unclued entry RECYCLING thematically links six unclued cyclic non-word permutations that appear in the systematic order GCYCLIN, NGCYCLI, INGCYCL,…
Failure to govern
What is the purpose of a Conservative government? It’s a reasonable question for voters to ask. In 2019 Boris Johnson…
Portrait of the week
Home Rishi Sunak resigned as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Sajid Javid as Health Secretary. (Nadhim Zahawi accepted the post…
