Life
Royal road
The mathematician Euclid once boldly informed King Ptolemy Soter I of Egypt that there was no royal road to geometry.…
no. 520
White to play. This position is from Nakamura-Mamedyarov, St Louis 2018. Unfortunately for Mamedyarov, he has just blundered in a…
Where there’s a Will
In Competition No. 3062 you were invited to submit a Shakespearean-style soliloquy that a contemporary politician might have felt moved…
2373: Susurrus
Unclued lights are three groups of three words of a kind, each group defined by the name of a different…
to 2370: Problem XII
The numbers were linked to titles of classic works of FICTION (12): The Two DROVERS (26) (Walter Scott), The Three MUSKETEERS…
Jamie Oliver’s jerk rice comes with a side serving of insanity
Earlier this week, the Labour MP Dawn Butler ‘called out’ Jamie Oliver for ‘appropriation’. His sin, according to the shadow…
The Battle for Britain
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The baby who could transform English cricket
Alice Cook’s impending third child could turn out to be the perfect delivery for England. Already the expectant father Alastair…
Dear Mary: How do we evict a narcissistic flatmate without starting World War III?
Q. I live in a houseshare with two other people; one of whom I am very fond of and the…
Empty restaurants are becoming a bad habit of mine: Coq d’Argent reviewed
I wouldn’t normally visit Coq d’Argent, which I think means the chicken of money. It is a moderately famous restaurant…
Why would you relish an opportunity?
The Sun gave a sad picture of British loneliness recently in a report about the national yearning to play a…
The case for bringing back feudalism
Gstaad I need it like Boris needs a bleach job. Another birthday, that is. Birthdays tend to make your life…
Why the kindness of strangers trumps a pagan festival
The entire Alpine village, contemptuously dismissed recently in an online tourist guide as a nondescript centre of old peasants and…
Why won’t anyone live with me?
When I placed an advert for a lodger I really did expect potential tenants to want to come and see…
Racing for the app generation
Making racing profitable depends on getting information at the right time. In the Stewards’ Cup at Goodwood two Saturdays ago…
Bridge
When I was first married, there were no satnavs to hold our hands; we relied on maps (if there was…
Luke’s gospel
Perhaps the outstanding clash of the recently concluded British championship in Hull, supported by Capital Developments Waterloo Ltd, was the…
No. 519
White to play. This position is from Fernandez-Pritchett, Hull 2018. White found an extraordinary, problem-like move to finish the game.…
The appliance of science
In Competition No. 3061 you were invited to imagine a well-known author who doesn’t normally write in the genre having…
2372: Spot-on
One unclued light (three words) is a phrase referring to an item whose scientific name is formed by two unclued…
to 2369: Prodigious
WUNDERKIND — given by corrections of misprints in clues — can be read as W UNDER KIND, indicating the unclued…
Vocational schools are not to be sneered at
When I was 16 I failed all my O-levels, bar a grade C in English Literature, and concluded I wasn’t…
The Battle for Britain
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Why data doesn’t always reveal the truth
In late 1973 the graduate admissions department at UC Berkeley discovered that for the forthcoming year it had awarded places…
Dear Mary: What do I say when people want to visit my family’s stately home for free?
Q. My husband and I were among the first to arrive at a recent large house party in Scotland. We…
