The word pig probably comes from the Old English picg and once only meant ‘young pig’. Adult pigs were called swine. A hog was a castrated male. A boar is the tusked, Eurasian wild pig from which our domestic pigs are descended.
To go the whole hog means to do something as completely as possible, [more…]
You may remember our competition last year in which you were asked to tell us about your favourite puzzling spot. The selected winner received an incredible ‘ultimate cruise’ to the value of AU$10,000.
The lucky recipient of the cruise voucher, plus the additional $2,000 spending money was Stephanie McCarthy of South Australia. [more…]
Whether you are a mother yourself or you are lucky enough to still have one, now’s the time of year when we honour mothers and also, to look at the word ‘mother’. It comes from a very ancient source – the Sanskrit language. You could say Sanskrit is the mother of many languages. Their [more…]
Basic scanning
Look at the grid, bearing in mind the fundamental rule that each row, column and 3×3 box must contain one instance only of each of the digits from 1 – 9. The other side of this is that if a digit is already in a row, column, or 3×3 box, it can’t appear [more…]
Much has been written about William Shakespeare, especially this month as we celebrate the anniversary of his death, 400 years ago. He was born on 23rd April 1564 and died on his birthday in 1616, at the age of 52.
Although his original plays and poetry are peppered with words like ‘doth’, ‘thee’ and ‘wherefore’, [more…]
Has it ever struck you as odd that Easter is represented by a rabbit sitting in a basket of chocolate eggs? For a start, rabbits don’t lay eggs, and furthermore, why are they made of chocolate?
Many of the words associated with Easter are connected to the Northern hemisphere springtime and predate Christianity. The name [more…]
