Cassowary Crossing

For puzzle fans, try Australian Style, the biyearly mag of Macquarie Uni’s Linguistics Dept, and look for a link called Rubicon. Once you cross over to this site, you realise, there is no going back.

If this post was in colour, imagine a test pattern.
For some odd reason my Word Press toolbox is a few spanners short. Despite my best efforts, I can’t seem to lodge a blog entry of any length, incuding a 300-word tribute to the late William Bud Tingwell. The veteran actor is being buried as I [...]

Entangled again in Arachne’s web. This Guardian setter is trickier-stickier than most of her colleagues, though after the GINGERSNAP fiasco – see the post marked Webster Original – my breath is less bated in the hope of having these five latest clues illuminated.
RUMBAS, the first answer, is less a Please Explain, than a question. Are [...]

‘As Gregor Samsa woke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.‘
A beetle? A cockroach? Depends on which entomological school you come from. But most readers agree that Franz Kafka’s opener in his novella, Metamorphosis is among the world library’s best, as first sentences go.
Stephen Romei’s lively [...]