Life
2322: In memoriam
A pair of unclued lights (three words in total) give an event. Remaining unclued lights, including a pair (three words…
to 2319: poem III
The poem was Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’. The words from the poem are LEGS (16), TWO (17A), SANDS (26), NOTHING (37), KING…
High life
Greece is jasmine, bougainvillea, mimosa, cypress, olive, pine, oregano and sage, rock, sand, wine, fruit and the bluest and cleanest…
The Battle for Britain
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Low life
My grandson and I are reprising the 1968 film The Swimmer. Burt Lancaster is an advertising executive at a pool…
Real life
Like Steve McQueen gone slightly to seed, the builder boyfriend strode off into the sunset. Nothing becomes him so much…
Don’t like our diversity agenda? You’re fired
Earlier this week, a technology website published an internal memo written by a Google employee called James Damore criticising the…
Sutherland’s Law of Bad Maths
Imagine for a moment a parallel universe in which shops had mostly not yet been invented, and that all commerce…
Quotidian
In Competition No. 3009 you were invited to submit a poem about a domestic object. I set this challenge…
Dear Mary
Q. I’m shortly to host a very large family gathering. Everyone will be related to the same ancestor, so we…
to 2318: Groundwork
SOIL (9) — cryptically indicated by ISLAND IN THE SUN (1A), the title of a SONG (40) recorded by HARRY…
Greenland and India
‘Remember what the fellow said — it’s not a bally bit of use every prospect pleasing if man is vile,’…
2321: Cleaner
One unclued light, defined by the title, is a word that can be divided into three words; each of these…
A menu for the emmets
Tate St Ives is a pale 1980s block, with a fat rounded porte cochère and sea-stained walls. It is the…
High life
I’ve stayed far away from the new barbarians with their choppers, tank-like cars, home theatres on board, and fridge-shaped super…
The Battle for Britain
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Low life
Five and the Red One are a German covers band. It’s probably the most uninspiring name for a rock band…
Real life
‘This situation is Rorke’s Drift,’ said the builder boyfriend, after our proposed renovations were objected to at the parish council’s…
England’s new heroes were real Test Match specials
The weather forecast last Saturday promised 100 per cent likelihood of rain. I like that formulation: it doesn’t leave much…
Parents, not schools, are key to the knowledge gap
The Education Policy Institute (EPI) has just published a report looking at the attainment gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged 16-year-olds…
The turf
Khalid Abdullah, John Gosden and Frankie Dettori — owner, trainer and jockey — already figured among the great names of…
Bridge
Thank heaven I am on holiday! For the past week I have been up until 4 a.m., glued to the…
Classical conundrum
The great Mikhail Botvinnik excoriated chess played at fast time limits. Botvinnik believed that classical chess at time limits of,…
no. 468
Black to play. This is a position from Kramnik–Carlsen, Leuven Blitz 2017. How did the world champion win even more…
Bridge
This is a great time to be a bridge professional — not just for the world’s top players, who have…
