Life
High life
Gstaad When Gerald Murphy and Cole Porter discovered the French Riviera as a summer resort during the early 1920s, the…
Do go changing
I have been on holiday for two weeks. Well, not quite. You see, a bloke I once met told me…
Wild life
Malindi, Kenya Beneath the Indian Ocean’s surface, I wondered if the pandemic had turned out to be a good thing…
Low life
At Gatwick airport, after an hour and 15 minutes in a snaking queue system apparently purposely designed to infect as…
Real life
The letter arrived in a hand-addressed envelope, inside of which was a handwritten note. After everything we have been through,…
Bridge
So, face-to-face bridge is slowly returning, with EBU’s Summer Meeting in Eastbourne being one of the first to take place.…
Solution to 2518: Make a run for it?
As suggested by 11A, other unclued lights were all anagrams of ducks: 12A drake; 16A teal; 28A redhead; 31A smew; …
Aussie Life
One recent golden morning, as I struggled to corral my customarily disordered senses into working order, I was suddenly hit…
Aussie Language
‘LGAs’. Since when did this ugly piece of bureaucratic jargon become part of everyday English? Because the bureaucrats keep rattling…
Puzzle No. 667
White to play and draw. The conclusion of an endgame study composed by J. Hašek (1951). Black is preparing a…
Containment
‘Exchange chess’ (also known as bughouse) is the chess equivalent of a three-legged race. It is played in teams of…
2520: 5 4 3 2 1
The unclued lights, two of two words and the others as four pairs, are of a kind. Across 6…
The turf
Taking a day off racing to enjoy Joe Root’s regal 180 not out against India on the third day of…
High life
Gstaad It seems to be open season on the royals, starting with Prince Andrew and the charges against him by…
Low life
My two grandsons are staying with us here in Provence for a week. Roman soldier Catriona flew from Marseille to…
Real life
If it’s true that the virus finds your weak spot, it has lodged itself like an evil monkey in my…
Bridge
Live bridge is back. It kicked off two weekends ago with Eastbourne’s Swiss Pairs. I went with my friend Ollie…
Trip adviser
In Competition No. 3212 you were invited to provide a spiel that a well-known character from the field of fact…
The Battle for Britain
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Solution to 2517: Final line-up
The unclued lights are the eleven England footballers who LINED UP at the kick-off of the Euro FINAL on 11…
The Orwell Foundation has let Orwell down
George Orwell would not have been surprised by the brouhaha surrounding Kate Clanchy. Two years ago, Clanchy published Some Kids…
Ode to joylessness
Browns is a famous fashion boutique in deepest Mayfair. It occupies a curved cream townhouse on Brook Street, which seems…
Dear Mary: Your problems solved
Q. We have two very longstanding and generous-hearted (female) friends. Both have always been overweight, but since Covid they have…
Cricket – but not as we know it
‘Fifty years from now Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green…
Aleatory
‘What do they mean, “Guess”?’ asked my husband, staring suspiciously at a page of the Daily Mail that had been…
