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.

Lovatts gets brain exercising

Thank you very much for the biggest prize I have won from lovatts, it’s wonderful.  From Colossus, I won a stainless steel Breville Cafe Roma espresso/cappuccino machine.
I enjoy doing my favourite crosswords, Baffler and Cryptic, something to get your brain matter exercising. As a senior, I have bought Lovatts for years, and can’t wait [more…]

Biggest prize I could ever win

Thank you so much for my prize in the August Demon (my birthday month too), Collins – Dictionary & Thesaurus book.
You have absolutely no idea how ecstatic I was to not only receive the beautiful prize which I have already used for the next Demon but the feeling of achievement knowing I completed the [more…]

Star Grazing — Starhunts celebrities (Issue 52)

» Code Cracker Starhunts Issue No.52 – now on sale! More infoTo learn more about some of the celebrities appearing in this bi-monthly issue of Code Cracker Starhunts, please make a selection:

Abigail Breslin
Gerard Butler

Jonah Hill
Sofia Vassilieva

Virginia Madsen
 

» Abigail Breslin
Abigail Breslin, born April 14, 1996, began her acting career at the age of three, making commercials. [more…]

Weird Spells – MEGA! 58 Contests

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…]

Gung-ho Gonzo! – August BIG Contests

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…]

Can’t live without cryptics

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…]

Books I loved

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…]

Fantastical! Crossword & Puzzle Collection 69 Contests

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…]

Wessex

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…]