Welcome to my Desk, where you’ll find all sorts of items to hold your interest. Unlike my real office desk, which is cluttered with books, files, news cuttings and the remnants of my lunch, this Online Desk will be efficient and easy to navigate.
Learn some of the tricks of solving those weird cryptic crosswords on my tutorials page.
If you wonder about the origins of some of our wonderful English expressions, Words & Phrases is the place to find out more.
Read about the puzzling but positive effect Lovatts has on your health in Puzzles & your Health. We’d love to hear from you, so write a letter to Christine’s Mailbag. You might want to comment on my regular column @ Christine’s Hello.
There’s something for everyone here, so come on in!
Latest Posts
Heroes & Highwaymen
You’ll meet some very interesting but deadly characters within the clues of our crosswords. For instance, the answer to the clue ‘Legendary Swiss archer’ is William Tell.
While there is no definitive evidence that he ever existed, some accounts attest that this folk hero was real and lived with his family in a Swiss village in the 14th century. He was a [more…]
Mind and Manners
Almost the first words we teach our children when they are learning to talk is please and thank you – “Say the magic word!” These words are so basic to our lifestyle we couldn’t imagine not using them regularly. The English word please is short for ‘if it pleases you to do this’, similar to the French s’il vous plait ‘if [more…]
Family Ties
Words are like us, they have families. Etymologists hunt down the DNA of our vocabulary, so that we can find out their ancient ancestors from all around the world and we learn that we end up with words that have changed both spelling and meaning over the years but still retain similarities.
Words that sound similar sometimes seem to come from different [more…]
The Art of Celebration
Thousands of years ago, people in Egypt used a dark powder as an eye cosmetic. This powder was made up of substances such as crushed antimony, burnt almonds, lead, oxidised copper, ochre, ash and malachite and was called kohl, from the Arabic al-kuhl, ‘al’ being ‘the’ in Arabic. In fact there are several words in the English language starting with ‘al’ [more…]
Uniquely You
One of the occupational hazards of this job is that I’m constantly flicking through the dictionary, on a mission to find something, only to get waylaid by fascinating words and meanings.
Just now, at the risk of sounding utterly self-absorbed, I looked up the nearest word to my name Christine. Christingle is a Christian service for children, held shortly before Christmas, in [more…]
What’s In A Name?
It is a glorious thing, apparently, to have something named after you or for your name to become a word.
Many a royal personage has an eponymous country. The Philippines is named after King Philip II of Spain and Mauritius is named after Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange. Explorers such as Amerigo Vespucci (America), Capt James Cook (Cook Islands) and Christopher [more…]