Life
How did I end up in Epstein’s black book?
Every time Jeffrey Epstein is in the news, I start getting calls from strangers wanting to scream abuse at me.…
The Battle for Britain
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The ugly side of the beautiful game
So all that sound and fury about Manchester City’s sins signified precisely nothing. Well, a €10 million fine isn’t nothing,…
Deadweight
I was trying to understand what they meant on the wireless by deadweight costs. These were something to do with…
Comfort eating
Brasserie Zédel is a grand salon under Piccadilly Circus and the only place I desired when lockdown (or lock-in) ceased…
High life
Gstaad Are any of you tired of reading about Ghislaine Maxwell and her sleazy life? Bored by old news repeated…
Low life
They are starting to cut the corn. But apart from combine harvesters and tractors, the roads up here on the…
Real life
‘What are you going to put on my head to protect me?’ said the man outside the barber’s shop to…
Glasto and Glynders
In Competition No. 3157 you were invited to describe a visit to Glastonbury or Glyndebourne in the style of an…
Dear Mary
Q. As we attend socially distant events, we expect of our hosts a scrupulous accommodation of our preferences around physical…
Solution to 2463: Tongue Twisters
The unclued lights were all languages which are written from right to left, entered in that manner in the grid.…
Bridge
The French Online Open, in which 32 teams competed over a marathon two weeks — seven days round robin and…
2466: Gender bender
Clockwise round the grid from 11 run, in chronological order, the titles (7,7,7,9,2,8,2,10) of five works by an author whose…
An ugly duckling problem
The position shown in this week’s main diagram is the starter problem for the Winton British Chess Solving Championship, an…
Puzzle no. 613
White to play and mate in three moves. A problem composed by grandmaster Jonathan Levitt (British Chess Magazine, 1995). One…
Aussie Life
Jordan Shanks is not your average lefty. This unusual Australian YouTuber, who goes by the name of FriendlyJordies, disdains such…
Aussie life
Like so many of us in these troubled times, I am worried about the family statues. The topple-mob cannot be…
High life
I just read a piece by Scott McConnell in the American Conservative, a magazine we co-founded 18 years ago. He…
The Streisand effect
There is no sight so compelling as one that would be hidden. I am fascinated by the Streisand effect, named…
Real life
‘Are you seriously telling me you would rather meet up on Zoom than in reality?’ I asked a friend as…
2465: Definitely amusing
Unclued lights (three of two words, two hyphened) have something in common, verifiable in Brewer. Across 4 Everybody agreed to…
Puzzle no. 612
White to play. Giri–Nepomniachtchi, Chessable Masters 2020. Giri has sacrificed a knight to lure the black king forward. Which move…
Solution to 2462: Over and Out?
The seventeen entries clued by definition only required removal of the abbreviation BR ( = Britain), in keeping with the…
Schadenfreude
In Competition No. 3156 you were invited to supply a piece of verse or prose on the subject of schadenfreude,…
The turf
It wasn’t so much a Derby victory this year as an act of grand larceny. Aidan O’Brien isn’t just a…
