Life
Sacrifice and resurrection
I cannot remember a prettier Easter, or a more frustrating one. This was no time to be in town. But…
Puzzle no. 600
Black to play. Andrew Stone–Martin Jogstad, 4NCL Online, April 2020. The queen is trapped on f4, so 1…Rxg5 looks worth…
Stir crazy
My husband left a copy of The Spectator open on the table by his chair, next to the little cardboard…
To 2450: Titled Men
Alexandre DUMAS père wrote The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, whose eponymous characters were Athos, Porthos, Aramis…
Alphabetical
In Competition No. 3144 you were invited to submit a poem, six lines at most, containing all the letters of…
Introverts, your country needs you
Once we’ve flattened the curve of infection with mass self-isolation, the next debate will concern how to soften the restrictions…
Dear Mary
Q. Each day while working from home, I have at least one hour-long meeting via Zoom. One of my colleagues…
The turf
Sport may well be ‘the great triviality’ as Timeform founder Phil Bull once put it, and racing as trivial as…
Bridge
While chatting on the phone to my friend Alex Hydes a couple of weeks ago, I asked whether he was…
Low Life
In a cave once used as a stable and now abandoned, I found a wooden crate containing a dozen tiny…
Stinky Malinky is growing on me
Since the beginning of the lockdown, Caroline has been congratulating herself for having bought a puppy ‘just in time’. She…
High Life
Gstaad So the days — and months — drift by. This once peaceful Alpine town is packed with rich refugees…
Real Life
The toad who lives at the bottom of the garden in the pile of bricks beneath the potting table was…
The Battle for Britain
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2453: All right?
Unclued lights, five of two words and two pairs, have something in common. Elsewhere, ignore one accent. Across 1 Keep…
Old wine, new bottles
‘Old wine in new bottles’ must be the most protean idiom in the English language. I encountered it a few…
Low life
In France the rule for going for a walk stipulates an hour in duration or a kilometre in distance. We…
Love story
In Competition No. 3143, a nod to García Márquez’s 1985 novel, you were invited to submit a short story entitled…
Puzzle no. 599
A position adapted from Vojtech Plat–Ravi Haria, Hull GM tournament, 2019. The d6-pawn is crucial here, but White needs a…
The Battle for Britain
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Bridge
I think it was Warren Buffett who said: ‘Bridge is such a sensational game that I wouldn’t mind being in…
At your own risk
If there were regulatory oversight of chess openings, some would come with a litany of disclaimers. ‘You may lose more…
Real life
‘Do you want some of the private stuff from out the back?’ said the butcher to the builder boyfriend, leaning…
High life
Aristophanes was a comic genius long before the Marx Brothers, but he also gave good advice to the Athenians: stop…
The bottom line
Compared with every other household chore, progress in bum-wiping has been glacially slow. It’s only in living memory that schools…
