Christine Lovatt’s Hello Column
Christine’s Hello column appears monthly in Lovatts BIG Crossword magazine
Hello BIG December 2012
As I sit down to write about Christmas, as I do at this time every year, it occurs to me that my Christmas as a celebration is gradually changing.
As a child, it was about the Nativity scene, about singing carols, the delicious aromas in the kitchen where Mum was cooking turkey and mince pies. [more…]
Hello BIG November 2012
A mascot is a person or thing that is supposed to bring good luck, especially one linked to a particular organisation or event. Some of our clues for mascot include ‘Lucky emblem’, ‘Lucky symbol’ and ‘Team pet’.
The word mascot is derived from the French term mascotte meaning ‘good luck piece’, which ultimately came from [more…]
Hello – BIG October 2012
Crossword lover Dorothy Lyall recently asked me how I compile crosswords.
I start off with the black and white pattern of squares which we call a grid. This grid has to be carefully designed so that there are no two-letter words, not many very short or very long words (ie a reasonable number of words [more…]
Hello – BIG September 2012
When it comes to writing crossword clues, we have to be very careful when describing a word, especially when there’s another word with a similar meaning. Fortunately the other word is usually of a different length and wouldn’t fit the clue space.
However, we try to be as accurate as possible, and there are some [more…]
Hello- BIG August 2012
We hear some amazing real-life stories from our readers.
Here’s the story of Lynette Anesbury, who used our crosswords to retrain her brain.
Lynette has been doing crosswords since she was ten. A family friend introduced her to crosswords in the paper. They started having races to see who could finish the newspaper crossword first. She [more…]
Hello- BIG July 2012
The word cutlery comes from the Old French word coutellerie (related to today’s French word couteau ‘knife’) yet the words knife, fork and spoon are all from Old English. The knife was by far the earliest of the cutlery items.
The word knife comes from the Old English cnif, and the first knives would have [more…]
Lovatts supports the Alzheimer’s Australia ‘Mind your Mind’ campaign
It is a sad reality that nearly all of us know a person living with dementia and have witnessed the effects this has not only on them, but on their carers, family and friends.
This disease can happen to anybody. Though it is more common after the age of 65, people in their 40s, 50s [more…]