Life
Dear Mary
Q. I’ve just completed a six-month paid internship for a hedge fund manager. I was mostly in his private office…
Solution to 2515: Paragon
The name was Margaret, whose various versions are suggested by THE SPECTATOR (1: Mag), BARN OWL (10/36: Madge), LEAD HAMMER…
Alpha to Zulu
In Competition No. 3210, you were invited to provide a poem or a piece of prose containing words from the…
Bridge
To be a killer bridge player, you need to be aggressive. Many of us are hampered by timidity, especially when…
Low life
Although fatigued to the point of catatonia, and sitting there like a 19th-century Fang funeral mask, I am glad to…
High life
Patmos A very long time ago I wrote in these here pages that spending a summer on the Riviera or…
The turf
At last proper racing is back. Through the long days of lockdown horses and jockeys have still given their all…
Real life
The woman pulled up in her flashy 4×4 which was meandering along the farm track in that way people have…
Wash-up
‘They asked me if I wanted to wash up before we even went in to dinner,’ my husband recalled with…
High on the hog
The Pig at Bridge Place is not a pig in possession of a country house, but I would be for…
Aussie Life
For obvious reasons, lockdowns have been much easier to deal with for Australians who live alone. Not for them the…
Aussie Language
Edward de Bono—the inventor of ‘lateral thinking’—died recently. I interviewed him a number of times on my radio show (he…
2517: Final line-up
The unclued lights appeared at the start under the shaded squares reading row by row from top to bottom (two…
The king of no castling
In the body of chess rules, castling is a clumsy protuberance. Once per game, you get to move king and…
Puzzle No. 664
White to play. Greco–NN, 1620. The centre is a dangerous place for the king. Which move does White play to…
Take seven
In Competition No. 3209, you were invited to provide Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of a Tory MP. Inspiration for this challenge…
Solution to 2514: Welcome Back
Unclued lights were stories in The Return of Sherlock Holmes. (The Adventures of the: EMPTY (41) HOUSE (2), DANCING MEN…
The Battle for Britain
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Tried and tested
Rather miraculously, my daughter managed to leave the country last week to go on holiday with a group of friends.…
Dear Mary
Q. Passing Buckingham Palace in a taxi the other day, I saw the ceremonial wing of the Household Division prancing…
Low life
I was shown to a room divided into three cubicles, each with a reclining chair and bed table. In the…
Real life
The doctor’s receptionist was adamant. ‘If you had not had the vaccine you would have been even more ill with…
Wild life
Nairobi Since my father first caught sight of Mombasa from his ship in late 1929, at least some of my…
Holland
The title of the keenly awaited volume of memoirs by John Martin Robinson sounds like a crossword clue: Holland Blind…
A Rhine art
In an apparently benign — almost prelapsarian — setting, the Rhine is an epitome of the human condition. Scenery is…
