It’s exceptionally rare to pick up an 11-card suit. You might think it would happen at least once in a lifetime. But according to Tom Townsend, who’s a genius at calculating odds, you can expect to hold one every 2,722,762 deals — that’s once every 287 years if you play a 26-board duplicate every evening.
The World Team Championship in Astana, Kazakhstan, finished last week with a victory for Russia but with an outstanding team silver medal for England — our best result for decades. The final scores at the top (out of 18) were as follows: Russia 16, England 13, China 12, India and USA 11, Iran and Azerbaijan
In Competition No. 3090 you were invited to submit a recently discovered lost poem by a well-known poet that makes us see him or her in a new light. Step forward, Philip Larkin, flower arranger, Slough fan John Betjeman and knickers-on-fire Emily Dickinson. Congratulations all round are in order this week, but I especially admired
All unclued entries are, unusually, not all unclued; all are different and there are no proper nouns. A repeated cryptic clue fixes not only once such entry, but also the central 2×2 block and, as a result, another such entry. Ignore one accent. Doc writes: we welcome Cheese-Cracker to the compiling team. Across 1
Albert Finney, a fine ACTOR (13), died on 7 February 2019. His legacy includes SATURDAY NIGHT (10) and SUNDAY MORNING (9), and TOM JONES (1), THE DRESSER (27/24) and SKYFALL (28). BYTE (20), FAR (17) and LINEN (40) give an anagram of ALBERT FINNEY. LINEN was to be shaded. First prize Andy Wallace, Coventry Runners-up John
Black to play. This position is from Sasikiran-McShane, Astana 2019. Black’s queen is attacked, his knight is vulnerable and b7 is also under pressure. How did Black solve his problems? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 26 March or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct
