Bridge
Captaining a bridge team in a knock-out competition can be a thankless task. Sometimes, the hardest thing of all is…
Dark lord
A new book, Opening Repertoire: The Nimzo-Indian and Bogo-Indian by Christof Seilecki (Everyman Chess), focuses on the ever popular Nimzo-Indian…
No. 367
Black to play. This is from Spassky-Fischer, World Championship, Reykjavik (Game 5) 1972. This is probably the most famous ‘dark-square’…
Howzat!
In Competition No. 2903 you were invited to supply a poem incorporating a dozen cricketing terms. English poets love cricket:…
2216: Riddle
Two clues are without definitions; their answers form the name of a person with a leading part in four works…
To 2213: Surprising
The unclued Down lights are books, entered in reverse as indicated by the phrase TURN-UP FOR THE BOOKS (1A 27…
The best way to end the ‘poshness test’
Bright working-class children really are missing out – but the problem is at secondary schools, not at top firms
A lightbulb moment at the self-checkout
After years of misery, I’ve finally realised that I was being nudged the wrong way
Your problems solved
Plus: The local landowner’s excessive tree-planting; and when it’s fine to blank someone
Changing seasons
February seems a long time ago. It’s not only the seasons that have changed, so too has the entire political…
Australian notes
It was back in the mists of time but I easily recall the day in September 1961 when I dropped…
Tajikistan diary
Talking politics in Central Asia is often unwise, so I try to bring it up casually. ‘Oh you won’t believe…
Thick as bricks
The intertwined nature of business, media and politics built the corrupt edifice of WA Inc
Culture Buff
Surely the most luxuriously sensual of all operas, Tristan & Isolde makes voyeurs of us all. This opera is being…
Unsettled science
Far from being settled, the science of Climate Change is mired in miscalculations, misinformation and uncertainty.
Beltway Notes
Like Oscar Wilde’s demand that ‘the man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one’…
