Life
High life
Gstaad As the great Yogi Berra explained: ‘It’s déjà vu all over again.’ The great one also contributed the following…
Real life
‘If you think about it, Frankie Dettori is to blame,’ said the builder boyfriend, because when things are really bad…
Low life
Finally rain. None for months, then a violent tropical storm lasting two days. It marked the end of high summer…
Wild life
Kenya After two years of no rain, all colour has drained from the landscape on the farm so that by…
Struggling
‘Quicksand!’ yelled my husband, flailing his arms wildly. Since he was sitting in his armchair, his dramatic representation of a…
Hot cakes
Cakeism is offering the voters everything they desire, knowing you will never give it to them because you live in…
Battle for Britain
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Dear Mary: Your problems solved
Q. How can I find out, without making things awkward, whether one of my close male friends fancies one of…
2570: Short story
The unclued entries comprise two authors and a work of fiction, attributed by one author to the other. Each author…
Turf wars
For the past few days I’ve been frantically watering my lawn in anticipation of the London hosepipe ban. True, there…
The return to Flushing Meadow
British tennis fans famously only acknowledge the sport exists for a couple of weeks in the middle of summer in…
Solution to 2567: Stop!
The unclued lights (including the pairs at 2/14 and 12/36) are names of organ stops which Brewer calls ‘music in…
Cosy crime
In Competition No. 3263, you were invited to submit a short story, written in the style of a cosy mystery…
A week in Torquay
Hats off to Harry Grieve, who took clear first place at the Chessable British Championships which concluded in Torquay last…
Aussie life
The Uluru Statement from the Heart is one of those documents, like the ‘Bringing them Home’ report that everybody has…
Language
When radicals want to upend society they often cloak their intentions under kind-sounding words. So, if the plan is to…
Aussie life
‘Why can’t a woman be more like a man? complains Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, a musical whose title…
Language
British journalist Richard Godwin has alerted me to what may be the trendiest word of the moment: ‘namecore’. This is…
Sole Véronique
One of the joys of writing about old-fashioned food is coming across dishes that are new to me, and turn…
High life
Coronis I suppose there’s always a first time, and looking back it was bound to happen. I scrambled off a…
Low life
An isolated Provençal stone farmhouse from the outside; from the inside a comfortable English country house. Sunk into the garriguea…
Bridge
My husband is a writer (John Preston), whose recent books were better received than he had ever dared hope. When…
2569: Anadad
Round the grid from 1 runs a quotation (1,3,4.2,5,3,5,3,2,6) from a play followed by the dramatist’s name (two words). Two…
The first Olympiad
Everyone remembers their first Olympiad. As I boarded the flight to Chennai last month, it struck me that two full…
Puzzle No. 716
Black to play. A variation from McShane-Hamitevici, Chennai 2022. I avoided this position, but lost in a different way. White…
