When did we change from being a nation of curtain-twitching old biddies into one of full-on super-snitches? First a retired teacher (male) reported Dominic Cummings to the police (I mean — can you imagine actually doing that?) for getting into his own car with two members of his own household and driving 260 miles to
Twenty years ago, I was an avid fan of the cult TV programme Robot Wars. Teams of contestants would design and nurture their metal offspring, and then set them to fight. The goal of these remote-controlled battles was to cripple the enemy robot, or eject it from the arena. They sliced, bashed, torched, shoved and
White to play, Stockfish–AllieStein, TCEC Season 16. Stockfish found a beautiful knockout blow in this game against a different neural net engine. What did it play? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 8 June. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal
In Competition No. 3151 you were invited to imagine famous authors reflecting on their struggles with DIY. Highlights in a terrific entry included John Osborne on grouting, A.E. Housman on the torture of cutting your own hair and several accounts of W.B. Yeats’s botched attempts at sorting out the plumbing (‘things fall apart’). I much
The same word appears as seven headwords in Chambers. Unclued lights (including two pairs and one of three words, one of two) indicate the meaning of six of them. The word (4) will appear in the completed grid and must be shaded. Across 9 Half-dead ryot’s thirsty (4)11 Fit PM adopts Latin not a little
Unclued lights suggested a section of the international radio communications alphabet: Bravo (VILLAIN: 6), Charlie (DIMWIT: 16), Delta (DEPOSIT: 19), Echo (MIMIC: 15A), Foxtrot (DANCE: 38), Golf (GAME: 36) and Hotel (BOARDING HOUSE: 1D). ZULU appears in the third row and was to be shaded. The title suggests ‘alpha’. First prize Geoffrey Peake, Stalybridge, Cheshire
