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Crossed Wires April 2011

Wills and Kate
“When I am king, dilly, dilly, you shall be queen..” as the song goes. Titles of kings and queens sometimes crop up as crossword clues, so here’s some royal trivia.William and Kate will be tying the knot this month and her surname will officially be Windsor. Kate will be known as [more…]

Never too late to learn

Regardless of what some people might say, our computer is simply another source of reference. It’s no different to any other, whether it be a dictionary, a thesaurus or an encyclopaedia, or whatever, so if I’ve got one and it finds an answer for me, I win, and I learn something new in the [more…]

Crossed Wires March 2011

A Penny For Your Thoughts
Which of the following countries: Algeria, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Serbia or Tunisia has the dinar as its currency?

The answer is all of them.

The dinar sometimes crops up in our crosswords, and may be clued as Middle East currency. It comes from the Roman coin denarius which means 10 [more…]

Hello – March 2011

Names of well-known music bands and singers often crop up in crosswords, and the origins of some names are quite interesting.

Uriah Heep is named after an insincere fawning character in Charles Dickens’ novel David Copperfield and the rock band Utopia is named after Thomas More’s 1516 novel, his view of an ideal world.

60s band [more…]

Newsagent in Focus – Warrick Hosking

Warrick Hosking, NewsXpress Gympie. How long have you been a Newsagent and what awards have you won...

Help the Lovatts boys raise money for cancer research

The 'Ache and Brake to Wallis Lake' - help the Lovatts boys raise money for cancer research...

Hello – February 2011

As crossword solvers, you will be only too familiar with the synonym, the most common form of crossword clue, a word that means the same as another. Big and large, small and little, topic and theme or field and paddock.

But it’s been said that there’s no such thing as a completely synonymous synonym [more…]

Luckier than most

Well golly gee what can we say
Another prize from Lovatts has come our way!
The first prize last year was out of the blue,
The prize this year is just tickety-boo!
The compilers of puzzles are both clever and wise,
With so many prizes we just can’t believe our eyes!
We haven’t written this poem to brag or to [more…]

Puzzle addict and dictionary collector

You have indicated that you enjoy getting feedback so here is some. People who buy your books probably do so for many different reasons. I began years ago with Colossus. I wasn’t particularly good at crosswords then but, my son and I would sit and struggle through some clues at the breakfast table before [more…]