Life
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…
Bridge
What goes through a world-class player’s mind when he or she stops to think for an age during a hand?…
Low life
Bernafay Wood B&B, Somme, France I came up on the TGV yesterday from the Midi to northern France and it…
The best wine since incarceration
The woodpecker jinked across the lawn like an especially cunning partridge. Its goal was a skilfully constructed bird table with…
Dear Mary
Q. During lockdown I have done my level best to assist with household chores. Last week, while my wife was…
Love
It is 17 years since we began to hear McDonald’s: ‘I’m lovin’ it.’ This was always annoying, but most of…
Does the curriculum really need ‘decolonising’?
Layla Moran, the Lib Dems’ education spokesman, has written to Gavin Williamson urging him to do something about ‘systemic racism’…
The Battle for Britain
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Now you’re talking
This week’s Wiki Man may read a bit oddly. You see, I haven’t ‘written’ it at all; I’ve dictated it…
Aussie Life
It has been brought to my attention that the rename Victoria suggestion I made in these pages two weeks ago…
