Ban Ki-moon has been the ‘Secretary-General of the UN since 2007’ and featured in the Mega Mix contest No. 58 at 46dn. If you spelt WEIRD with the weird spelling of WIERD at 59ac then you had BAN KE-MOON.
Ban is the family name and Ki-moon his given name. In Korean families it is usual [more…]
The Demon didn’t fail to live up to its name and we could hear the brain cogs turning as you tried to find the answer to 67dn ‘Subjective reporting, … journalism’. Gung-ho didn’t fit, neither did genre. The answer (you may want to make note of this one for future reference) was GONZO. It [more…]
I thank you sincerely for your publications, especially the cryptic large editions. I cannot live without them. I have an over-active mind so your editions give me satisfaction instead of boredom. I use the small editions too, but mainly the large editions are my preference. I am your best customer. Thank you for producing [more…]
Regarding books one likes to read, in my late teens Mary Webb’s Gone to Earth was my favourite. I shed tears over it. Her other books were lovely also, and I read all Georgette Heyer’s Georgian and Reginey romances.
In later years, I was enthralled by Dorothy Dennett’s Crawford of Lymond (a Scottish saga) and [more…]
Cryptic clues have the ability to take you into a fantasy world where ageing can be reversed, where Sue keeps her horse in a backstreet and where Eisenhower put a ban on floral art. What fun!
In the Giant Cryptic contest ‘Why age son, when it can be reversed with a bouquet?’ at 7ac gave [more…]
We clue this variously as ‘Alfred the Great’s kingdom’, ‘Thomas Hardy’s fictional area’ or even ‘Prince Edward, Earl of …’. So what or where is Wessex? The story of Wessex is really the story of the beginning of England.
Wessex was the Kingdom of the West Saxons, founded around AD 500 by Cerdic. The kingdom [more…]
We like to think of ourselves, along with all you good readers, as a happy, puzzling crew, especially when it comes to matters of words; veritable comrades in clues!
The comradeship may have been stretched a bit thin at 9ac in The Demon when we had to disqualify a few entries because of the misspelling [more…]
Many years ago James and I travelled around Australia in a double-decker bus which had been converted into a home. Now we’re repeating history except that we’ll be in a motorhome and we’re about 30 years older.
We’re hitting the road next month to meet and greet our NSW puzzlers on The Lovatts Across & [more…]
Since asking for feedback about your favourite books, I’ve discovered that you puzzlers have a passion for reading.
Vanezza Kirkaldy loves to spend time in the library and re-reads good books. “One that really brought the tears was The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks” she writes. She also loves Frank Dalby Davison’s Dusty and Man Shy [more…]
