Ammon Shea dived head-first into all twenty volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary (so you and I don’t have to.) The masochist spent a year roaming from A to Zyzzogeton (a leaf-hopping bug of Amazonia), selecting words odd and letabund – filled with joy.
Or perverse. Like Leep – to wash with cow-dung and water. Or [...]
Two clues in need of your illumination. Both stem from English puzzles, and neither solved in real time. With answers provided, the first belongs to Pasquale of The Guardian, and the second, a recent Times grid in The Australian:
Snake gets bull = WIND
Fellow satisfactory – not hunky, but a catch! = JOHN DORY
Please, if anyone [...]
Cherry on the cake. Syrup on the pancake.
Saturday was Short & Sweet’s final night, a triple-bunger of Wildcards, Top 20 and the Great Cheque Giveaway to all the winning artists.
My own play, Mercy Kitchen, lapped up the limelight as part of the ten-strong matinee of Wildcard shows. After a rocky dress rehearsal – with lines [...]
Name your genre, and you’ll be got.
The last week of Short & Sweet – Top 20 – is an orgasmic smorgasbord of styles and shades, from gooseflesh drama to chest-hurting humour. Not just the scripts, but the performances and productions are all stronger for the extra weeks, and the punter is the beneficiary.
I love the [...]
Gather round ninjas, and other crossword warriors. I’ve struck a fresh rock in the shape of the London Times (number 8231), a puzzle published a month ago in The Australian, with no solution grid in sight.
The pattern, like most of us over 40, is congested around the midriff. I managed to crack the core, and [...]
Chicago Tribune journo, Steve Johnson – no relation to Geelong’s maverick goal-sneak – has lampooned the latest Bond movie.
Not the car chases, the stunt sequences, the steely M-stare, but the title. Up there with other lousy Hollywood handles (think Minority Report, or WALL-E, or Close Encounters Yada Yada), The Quantum of Solace warranted Johnson’s jokey [...]
Cirque du Soleil would struggle to match the mayhem in a single night. Where else but Short + Sweet could one ticket pitch you into radio drama, burlesque, mime, dance and ad-hoc claymation?
Week Two of the festival sees the lunatics administer the asylum, a cause for celebration and disquiet in the same sharp intake.
Granted the [...]
Can you find two colours using all the letters of OVALTINE?
Or two opposites in STOLICHNAYA?
And why did a Geography teacher called Max open my eyes to a crossword career?
All these answer, plus umpteen others, await the curious reader in the latest edition of Meanjin magazine. I put the essay together – a whirlwind tour of [...]
What say we have a moratorium on the afterlife? Two of the ten Short & Sweet Wildcards – Week One – entail some life beyond the grave, with a dead hippie and Jesus dropping by.
Among the rest, we deal in dreams and two death wishes. Not a criticism, but a quiet plea for ‘other’ stakes [...]
Snuck a preview at the first week of Short and Sweet plays last night, the dress rehearsal open to writers, actors and other festival satellites – and the news is upbeat.
Of course, teething pains are part of the fun, like a wayward spot, a duffed word or a set-up taking almost as long as the [...]