While the last post – Return To Oz – continues to gather a stellar list of films, and their comic screening venues, the time is right to direct your attention to something that combines all those ingredients: wordplay, silliness and a piece of classic footage.
I stumbled on this historic gag last night, doing the [...]
True story. The 2006 dunny-doco called Kenny had its world premiere in a little Gippsland town called Poowong. A gala event to inspire this week’s Brainstorm (you’ll notice I’ve created a new Category for these weekly medal-scrabbles).
Your challenge is simple, with the length and breadth of Australia your playground, what other cities, towns and suburbs might inspire [...]
Solving an American crossword on the weekend, and the clue read: Of the good old days?
Looking at the grid, I saw this: P R E __ I O U S
Easy right? I put in PREVIOUS and moved onto the next clue. But then I hit a rock. The cross entry wouldn’t fit, and after a [...]
In 1901, Australian women were entitled to vote for the first time.
In 2008, Kevin Rudd PM said sorry to indigenous Australians for years of anguish.
Last year, David Hicks was freed from Guantanamo Bay.
And this morning, once more prompted by the will of the Australian people, the Fairfax crosswords have been returned to their customary slots.
In the [...]
Here’s a new challenge. After your mercurial solving of the clues in Huh 11 - with only a VNECK left in mothballs – can you add to a maddeningly short shortlist?
The rot began with Margaret Atwood. Surfing the literary blogs last night I spied the Canadian’s new novel – a followup to Oryx and Crake – called The Year of [...]
Your brand-new chance to out-compile the compiler. Seven clues drawn from a batch of British sources, all of which need a little ray of light.
Series of dramas with monarch and pistol = DERRINGER [Times 8452]
For Spooner, essential father leaves here = TEA CADDY [Paul]
The Mae West Club = LIFE PRESERVER [Times 8466]
Investing in nothing, no merchant [...]
Eerie to solve a post-humous crossword. Almost a month since Albie Fiore, the artful dodger dubbed as Taupi, clued his last puzzle, and yet more recently the Financial Times threw the solving public into mass nostalgia. The crossword’s byline was Satori – the man’s other alias – and the clues displayed his signature elegance. From the [...]
Quick crosswords get a bad name. And the wrong name too.
Since when does a clue like BIG (5) equate to quickness? Unlike a cryptic which offers two angles on the one solution – definition and wordplay – the ill-dubbed Quick gives you one, and only one.
GIANT? LARGE? GRAND? JUMBO?
Nor can you rule out GROWN or [...]
At the risk of opening a can of words [see the Eggcorn post from a few weeks back], I’m wondering about the wording of a recent Times clue, namely:
Did run round Britain and won, luckily (6)
Without taxing the grey cells too heavily, we can see the answer is FLUKED, where FLED ['Did run'] embraces UK ['Britain'], giving [...]
Once upon a time I wrote stories like you comb your hair – dumb habit. A reflex of the hand. Going one step further, over in England, I defected from a rugby tour to find a bedsit with a coin-operated heater, just so as I could scribble some characters into life.
While few of those adolescent [...]