Life
Low life
The day British media commentators were christening Rishi’s coronation as Britain’s ‘Obama moment’, French ones were calling the particularly horrible…
Real life
By the time I got through to someone at British Gas to complain about them holding £491 of my money…
High life
New York Ms Geniece Draper is a Noo Yawker who has been in the news lately. She is a 40-year-old…
Great British
Sir Keir Starmer told his party conference last month that a Labour government would within a year set up a…
Life of the party
A few days ago, when everything looked black, a small group of us were consoling ourselves over a couple of…
Losing their heads
Chess players tend to fidget while they think. They crack their knuckles, stir their coffee, and bounce their legs. I…
Solution to 2576: After Eleven
The unclued lights are names of the men who followed Armstrong and Aldrin (Apollo 11) in walking on the moon…
Dear Mary: Your problems solved
Q. I have a hatred of paper napkins – eating outside, they blow away; inside, people drop them on the…
Puzzle No. 726
White to play. Salov-Horvath, Groningen 1983. In this treacherous rook and pawn endgame, White found the only winning move. What…
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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