Here you'll find a variety of puzzle themed items and pieces of information to hold your interest. Learn about some of the wonderful words and phrases in our everyday language, find out about the health benefits of crosswords and puzzles, be entertained by Christine's Hello column… and there's much more on offer. The latest submissions appear below. Thanks for dropping by and we hope you enjoy your visit.
Hi,
With words ending in either ‘er’ or ‘or’, is there any rule which determines which is the correct usage?
Or is it merely happenchance like so much of our language?
I am an avid fan of your puzzles, so thank you for them.
Progression of Multiple Sclerosis has depleted the use of my writing hand, so over the past year I have taught myself to use my left.
Oddly enough, the squares of the puzzles have been a great help, enabling me to re-size the letters [more…]
Sibyl’s prophecy for a Stinker
A simple spelling mistake caught out some Stinker-lovers at 1dn. ‘Prophetess’ needed SIBYL not SYBIL. Sibyl’s were depicted as old women who lived in caves making prophecies. The most famous was the one who assisted Aeneas in his journey to the underworld.
Another often misspelt name caught out others of you [more…]
Magnificent Monster
The Double Monster is one of your favourite contests, combining the fun of cracking the code in the Monster Starhunt, with the challenge of unravelling the clues in the Monster Colossus.
With so many clues to solve it is no surprise when a few errors appear.
At 33dn the clue ‘False doctrines’ needed HERESIES and [more…]
Keeping the judges honest
Judging the competition entries always results in much discussion around words and meanings. Sometimes things get a little heated, but we always come to a decision and are as kind as we can be, while still being fair to all entrants. This month’s entries provided much brain-stretching for our team.
At 1dn [more…]
Teeing up the clues
In the Cashwords, for ‘Arranged, … up’ at 170dn, we accepted both TEED and TIED. Tee comes from the sporting world. A tee is a stand for a ball, perhaps the best known being the golfer’s tee. A golfer tees up and tees off.
Arranged can also be to tie up, [more…]
Akimbo is a stance with hands on hips and elbows turned out, usually showing impatience or defiance.
Akimbo is an old word that is only heard in this phrase, or very occasionally and more recently, as ‘legs akimbo’. Another such example is ‘aback’, which only occurs in ‘taken aback’.
In Middle English akimbo appeared as kenebowe [more…]
Argy-bargy is British slang with the meaning ‘noisy quarrelling’.
The word appears to come from an earlier form, ‘argle-bargle’, which originated in Scotland. The first part of the doublet is a modification of the word ‘argue’ and the second part is nonsense rhyming. Oxford lists the plural as argy-bargies.
This type of playful language is known [more…]
Thank you very much for my third win on the “Large Print Crosswords” competition! What’s even luckier is that I have received a different prize every time – first was the Collins Large Print Dictionary, second was the Collins Large Print Dictionary & Thesaurus (‘cos you’d run out of the dictionaries, lucky me!) and [more…]
