When my children were young, one of their favourite authors was the novelist Roald Dahl, born in Wales of Norwegian parents. His popularity has only increased since then, and some of his stories have been turned into films and musicals.
You may have noticed some of our crossword clues use these titles, such as The [more…]
Christmas is a celebration for everyone, and probably the best-known religious festival in the world, whether you’re a Christian or not. Around the world, there are very few places that don’t have some Christmas activities. In China, although it’s not a public holiday, the major cities have Christmas trees and lights in shopping centres, [more…]
We sometimes use legal terms in our crosswords, because they are useful words to know. While I hope you are never involved in a lawsuit, you probably are familiar with some of the words below:
The plaintiff is the person who brings a case against another in a court of law.
The defendant is [more…]
The great thing about names is that if you don’t like yours, you can change it. Most names have another form, a shortening or nickname, which is known officially as a hypocorism, from the Greek hupokoristikos, ‘to use child-talk’.
Mary was probably one of the most popular names for girls in the past. To tell [more…]
If you are one of those people (like me) who makes lists, you will be interested to hear that Peter Mark Roget was such a man. If he hadn’t been, we might not have the wonderful reference book known as Roget’s Thesaurus
Roget was highly qualified in several fields. He was a physician, scholar and [more…]
Our distant cousins don’t necessarily look like us so we shouldn’t be surprised that in the world of vocabulary, word families have relatives who share a common ancestor, but have distanced themselves from each other.
The Latin word sanguis meaning ‘blood’ gives us both sanguinary ‘bloodthirsty’ and sanguine ‘happy’. Perhaps this is a hint about [more…]
Some parents or grandparents call their children lambs, or chickens – affectionate and loving terms. Many of us call our children kids.
Kid comes from a very old Norse word for a baby goat. The word has been borrowed and applied affectionately to small children for centuries, maybe because baby goats are so cute, [more…]
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…]
