By the time you read this, I will have (hopefully) played my first hand of bridge in five weeks. No bridge and very little BBO vugraph of interest — the withdrawal pangs were coming with painful regularity, so to take the edge off I turned to reading. Bridge Tips by World Masters, in which Terence
One of the most reliable methods of frustrating chess computers is to play 1 d4 but then avoid the well-trodden paths of the Queen’s Gambit, in favour of delaying central occupation with c4. Instead white aims for an early e3, possibly supported by the queenside bishop fianchetto, or Bf4. The former is known as the
In Competition No. 2963 you were invited to submit a poem about the North or the South or one comparing the two. -Tennyson’s lines ‘bright and fierce and fickle is the South,/And dark and true and tender is the North’ (from ‘The Princess: O Swallow’), which inspired this challenge, produced a wide-ranging and exhilarating entry
Definitions in ten clues contain a misprint; corrections spell out a theme word. Unclued lights are four pairs of words of a kind, each relating to the theme word in a different way. Elsewhere, ignore one accent. Across 11 Like some parasites? See ten in rotten tree house (12) 12 Statesman needs iron, regularly
Round the perimeter run the titles of three songs from the musical Guys and Dolls, epitomised by SKY (28) Masterson and SARAH (11) Brown, and NATHAN (19) Detroit and Miss ADELAIDE (39): A BUSHEL AND A PECK, IF I WERE A BELL and SIT DOWN YOU’RE ROCKIN’ THE BOAT. First prize P.L. Macdougall, London SW6
White to play. This is from Palucha-Skettos, Bhubaneswar 2016. Here White destroyed the black position with a typical tactical thrust. Can you see it? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 6 September or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please
