Life
Real life
Trees glorious trees. People can’t get enough of them. They don’t want to take care of trees, they just want…
Idi na khuy
‘This will interest you,’ said my husband, looking up from the smeared screen of his telephone. For once he was…
Fighting talk
In Competition No. 3238, you were invited to submit a poem about a literary feud. Wallace Stevens’s 1936 fisticuffs with…
Monopoly rules
Here’s a useful tip. Go to the Royal Mail websiteand you can ask your postman to collect letters or parcels…
Bridge
Few things in life compare to the joy of playing bridge, but if I rack my brain I can think…
Women’s work
The inhabitants of Tuscany and Umbria can claim to be the most civilised beings on the planet, even exceeding the…
Dear Mary: Your problems solved
Q. Recently I started hanging out with a new friend. We are both in our twenties, single, and usually go…
Mushrooms and missiles
Vladimir Putin’s decision on Sunday to put his ‘deterrence forces’ – code for nuclear weapons – in a high state…
Solution to 2542: Wider II
The unclued lights and COMPOSERS (35A) are RIBBONS/Gibbons (1A), MAILER/Mahler (7), RAMEAN/Rameau (25), WANTON/Walton (26A), DELICES/Delibes (46), RAVENER/Tavener (1D), BELLING/Bellini…
2545: With a twist
41 (four words) suggests the other unclued lights – which are individual examples (not group names) of a kind –…
Puzzle no. 692
White to play and win. A gem discovered by the Ukrainian composer Vladislav Tarasiuk with Israeli composer Amatzia Avni. How…
The Battle for Britain
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The turf
Even when the authorities were refusing Milton Harris the right to renew his training licence after he got his finances…
High life
St Moritz Once upon a time, not that long ago, St Moritz was the world’s greatest resort, an exclusive winter…
Aussie Life
A journalist friend has been writing an advice column rather like The Speccie’s ‘Dear Mary’. He was calling it ‘Ask…
Aussie Language
A small award should be presented to the Australian’s Alice Workman for her new coinage. She has given us a…
Low life
Every Saturday morning Michael rises at four and drives down to the Côte d’Azur to the Magic World car boot…
Puzzle No. 691
Black to play. Maric-Gligoric, Belgrade 1962. White has offered to exchange the rooks on f5 and c3. But Gligoric found…
Similar to
A strange crisis has befallen like. It had long been an object of obloquy and vilification in two functions. The…
Bridge
My friend Nick Sandqvist says that coaching the England juniors is a joy; so great when someone enthusiastic and creative…
The Battle for Britain
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Is hooliganism on the way back?
Forty-odd years ago a friend, a Liverpool supporter, somewhat unwisely took his girlfriend to Elland Road for a Leeds match…
2544: Fives
Clues lead to 5-letter solutions. Each set of ten clues is presented in alphabetical order of the solutions. Correct positioning…
A victim of its own mythology
Langan’s, a brasserie off Piccadilly with curling orange neon signage calling its name, is under new management after it fell…
Dear Mary: Your problems solved
Q. Three weeks ago I banged my head on the lower branch of our near neighbours’ tree, which I couldn’t…
