Last modified on Mon 18 Jan 2021 05.35 EST
We’ve recently been sharing recommendations of events involving puzzles and sundry cryptic activities. Most have involved solving; now it’s time for some setting.
As longtime solvers know, the Guardian setter John Halpern uses the name Paul rather than something fanciful as a tribute: Paul was John’s brother; he died aged 27. As another kind of tribute, Paul the setter is hosting a series of events over the next couple of months where famous faces create themed puzzles in real time and those of us looking on make a charitable donation.
Participants include Susan Tully, Will Shortz, Sophie Winkleman and Alastair Hignell … and also the comedians Rob Deering, Dave Gorman and Simon Evans. Let’s speak to the last of these, who has chosen the Lake District as his theme and Farms for City Children as his charity.
James T Gorman, retired pharmaceutical salesman who was an advocate of Multiple System Atrophy awareness, dies
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When Voodoo grew too-too so-so
By David Astle
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Required reading when there’s disorder. That was a clue from mid-year, and the message felt on point. Fires, plague,
The Very Excellent Mr Dundee – 2020 has been a lavish shemozzle, and this clue knew it.
Cryptic crosswords, my own required reading, can occasionally deliver that eerie topicality. Because RIOT ACT, the answer, pales to the clue’s prescience. The surface narrative leaves a deeper impression than the answer itself. Same for a second pun I met in August: Stay-at-home worker? Baseball is the allusion, the gag alluding to UMPIRE, yet the clue’s scenario packed the stronger swat. Four short words had evoked a city of employees banished to their kitchen tables, the junk rooms, the virtual synods of videochat, as if the mystery setter had glimpsed our future.
Fresh from enjoying its best performance on record in its new Channel 4 home, BAFTA winning
Taskmaster reveals the next line-up of contestants featuring in Series 11 of the hit comedy entertainment show landing in 2021. The news arrives as
Richard Herring is crowned the Series 10 Champion, completing the line-up for the next
Champion of Champions which will also air in 2021.
Yet more of the UK’s most elite comedy minds are throwing themselves at the mercy of the
Taskmaster, scrapping for points, prizes, and the eternal glory of being crowned a
Taskmaster Champion. Series 11 will see actor
Charlotte Ritchie (
Jamali Maddix (
Lee Mack (
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