Puzzles & games

Bridge

Bridge | 6 April 2024

Easter always zips by if you’re a bridge player and enter the EBU’s Easter Festival. There are four events to choose from and I chose them all. My favourite is the Swiss Teams and we normally do rather well. Not this year unfortunately. In the final match we played Simon Gillis’s team and I rather

Chess

Menchik Memorial

Vera Menchik was 38 when she was killed by a German V1 flying bomb that landed on her home in Clapham. Born in Moscow in 1906 to a Czech father and an English mother, she was in her teens when her family settled in England. Aged 21, she won the first women’s world championship, and

Chess puzzle

No. 795

White to play. Menchik-Graf, Women’s World Championship, Semmering 1937. Which brilliantmove provoked instant resignation? Beware: there is a tempting option which falls short. Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 8 April. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks

Competition

Spectator Competition winners: John Donne on Tik Tok

In Competition No. 3343 you were invited to submit a sermon on a subject of contemporary relevance in the style of a well-known writer. This challenge drew a medium-sized entry, mostly of great merit, pronouncing on subjects that ranged from the evils of mobile phones to deep fakes and potholes. Frank McDonald’s Alexander Pope –

Crossword

2648: Thus at an end

Eight unclued lights are of a kind. Their unchecked and mutually checked letters can be rearranged to spell ‘LIKE IMPIOUS MYTHIC LOCH NESS MONSTER’. Ignore an acute accent and two hyphens.         Across    7    Tax cuts regularly have an effect (3) 11    TT race practice (3,3) 13    Lunatic on motorway initially infuriated by a

Crossword solution

2645: Old comrades – solution

Unclued lights were characters in DAD’S ARMY which was set in WALMINGTON-ON-SEA. First prize John and Di Lee, Axminster, Devon Runners-up Andrew Garth, Ley Hill, Buckinghamshire; Val Urquhart, Butcombe, Somerset