Life
The turf
When things went wrong in his days running the Daily Mirror, the scoundrel Robert Maxwell used to shout: ‘Which effing…
At last, a PM I can look down to
Rishi Sunak’s victory is a testament to how much progress we have made on the equalities front. As recently as…
Aussie life
Australian manufacturers have long been obliged to alert consumers to health hazards. As soon as we found out that peanuts…
Language
Richard Littlejohn wrote recently in Britain’s Daily Mail about an 18-page Inclusive Language Guide which has been sent out to…
High life
New York Rodney Dangerfield was the American Benny Hill: lewd, funny and not exactly politically correct where the weaker sex…
Low life
The grandsons are putting two and two together. Grandad is always lying down and groaning when they video call and…
Solution to 2575: Problem XIII
5 (the number of GOLD RINGS, from ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’: 34/22A) x 103 (the number of the PSALM…
Crisis
In his picture from 1932, ‘Derrière la gare Saint-Lazare’, Henri Cartier-Bresson caught the moment when a man in a hat…
All muted
The Piazza is not a piazza – a realisation which is always irritating – but a restaurant in the eaves…
State of the union
Dear oh dear, as exasperated kings are known to murmur – just look at the state of rugby union. But…
Dear Mary
Q. My brother, who lives in southern France, uses unsavoury words to gain my attention, such as ‘infernal swine’, ‘schweinhund’…
My fall from grace
I had a bicycle accident last week. Not terrible, but not great either. Of the five I’ve had since I…
Serial drama
In Competition No. 3271, you were invited to submit a poem about the Oxford comma. Thérèse Coffey’s much-maligned edict about…
Wild life
Laikipia, Kenya No portrait of Boris Johnson hangs in the hall of Balliol, his old Oxford College. Hardly a surprise,…
Real life
‘Excuse me, I’m looking for something to catch a mouse that won’t cause it any distress,’ said the young chap…
The Battle for Britain
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2578: Torture
The same word appears as eight headwords in Chambers. Unclued lights indicate what they mean. The word will appear in…
Puzzle no. 725
White to play. Mamedyarov-J. Polgar, Fide World Blitz, Dubai 2014. Black is lagging in development, and her last move, 10…Nb8-d7,…
Awestruck
‘I can comprehend Alekhine’s combinations well enough; but where he gets his attacking chances from and how he infuses such…
Bridge
High-level online bridge tournaments started almost as soon as lockdown began. It was going to take more than a worldwide…
Aussie life
I have barracked for the Essendon football team since I was a youngster. Amongst the mementos of my childhood days…
Language
Now we tiptoe carefully into the area of the derogatory and offensive – those being the words used by the…
PayPal and my sweet revenge
Dan Schulman, the president and CEO of PayPal, gave an interview earlier this year entitled: ‘The thing that separates good…
Moules mouclade
Mussels were probably the first thing I ate as a child that I knew at the time was ‘an acquired…
Solution to 2574: A Chinese
Each unclued Across light (including the pair at 16/7) is a SWEET and the unclued Down lights can be preceded…
