Four curly clues, drawn from recent puzzles, continue to befuddle long after the answer’s been confirmed.
Peace upon the browser who can enlighten us in any of these offerings below. The first two hail from the Financial Times, care of a setter called Armonie. The next is a recent Times puzzle. While the last, I recall, [...]
“There are no dull stories, only dull journalists,” said scintillating journalist, Gideon Haigh at last week’s freelance convention.
One of several fine quotes to arise from the confab, as you’ll savour below. Not surprising the core challenge implicit in every workshop, every keynote, every foyer coffee was the next horizon. Where’s journalism heading? What’s the craft’s [...]
Below, the perverse links between two verbal cousins, as first shown in the earlier post, Plume & Plumber:
+ If you think of radicals as being fundamentalists, then you’ll get the root connection – which also accommodates the radish.
+ I like this one. Monsters are what we’re warned about. Cave-Dad warned cave-boy about the monstrous [...]
Horoscope and sceptic stem from the same root – the Greek to see.
So does senate and senile (from senex – in Latin – meaning old man).
In the meantime, furnace and fornicate go hand-in-hand, thanks to the red-light archways (or fornix) of old Rome.
Such verbal quirks are hiding in a cute book I found last week, [...]
Clue doctors, crossword pundits, polymaths – your nous is needed once more to unpack this lot of baffling clues. The first two hail from the one puzzle, namely Times Number 8319, appearing in The Australian in early March.
The last stumper was crafted by Cincinnus, alias Brian Greer, a nimble setter for the Financial Times. I’ve [...]
What’s that noise? That drumming sound? Oh – rain.
After two months of heat and drought, Victoria is learning how to operate brollies again. The yellow grass is reviving. Gutters laugh. Tyres hiss. And the fires across the state, we hope, have finally met their match.
Early last week I had the privilege – if that’s [...]