Nearly all the words associated with the classical music world come from the ancient Greek language, with a few Roman terms thrown in.
In the days of ancient Greece, the earliest form of drama was a series of odes, sung and danced by a chorus directly in front of the stage. This area became known [more…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
