Christine Lovatt's Desk

Welcome to Christine's Desk

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.

Dust if you Must!

I have always loved poetry and over the years have collected poems of all sorts. The other day, I decided to have a good clean out and came across this poem. I thought you might get a laugh at ‘my version’ on the bottom!! Hope you enjoy it.

Lesly Adams
Avonsleigh, Vic
P.S. I don’t think I [more…]

THE EYES HAVE IT!

Thank you so much for selecting me as a Super Sudoku prize winner. I was very excited since I don’t tend to win anything in raffles or sweeps or whatever – in fact, the last thing I can remember winning was a side of lamb back in 1971.  That was more of a problem than [more…]

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…]

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…]

All referenced up

Thank you for the prize of a Bradford’s Crossword Solver’s Dictionary for MEGA 65 Stinker.

Along with a couple of earlier winnings from Lovatts competitions of a Collins English Dictionary,and a Collins English Dictionary and Thesaurus, hopefully I’ll be able to continue submitting successful entries.

Patrick Hooper

A Little Lovatts Ditty

I’m sat here with my Lovatts mug, crossword books and pen,
dictionaries, reference books, and my Oxford little gem,
white out, pencils, rubbers too, all to help my aim,
to finish both The Stinker and The Demon once again.

Love your crosswords.
Pauline Allen
Eaglescliffe.