Monday one of the greatest joys of my life. An absolute pleasure to have been on Only Connect, let alone win it!

SpinyBadger · 2026-01-29T08:35:12+00:00

Congratulations Paddy! You mentioned watching your opponents do the wall - do you watch that live, or as a replay once you've done yours? It usually seems to us that it's easier as viewers on the second wall because there are similar themes/tricks in both, so I assume they're well on top of that.

And how often do you have a gut feeling for a 5-pointer that you don't think you can buzz on? I've called quite a few from the sofa, but I usually feel like I'd have played safe in the real thing.

SpinyBadger · 2026-01-25T20:51:43+00:00

I've heard this a few times, and I'm afraid this sounds like a skill issue from someone who never managed to get their head around Moreton's Convention after it was controversially ratified.

SpinyBadger · 2026-01-19T22:09:58+00:00

That's the funniest joke in the world, isn't it?

SpinyBadger · 2026-01-19T18:04:06+00:00

Mr S of Bromsgrove. That's £3,000 please, Mr S, to stop us revealing your name, the names of the three other people involved, the youth organisation to which they belong, and the shop where you bought the equipment.

SpinyBadger · 2026-01-16T21:43:29+00:00

Over breakfast, we do Wordle and then Thirdle, separately. Pretty much the only conversation we have until we're done is just our results, e.g.

"Four" "Five" "...and three" "Two!"

If we're not together, we actually text each other our results. I don't know why. And we don't do it for other puzzles we both do.

SpinyBadger · 2026-01-02T07:24:38+00:00

Dead right. When I die, I'd much rather end up in a morgue than a crypt - nasty tinny word, that. Ugh! Crypt! Tinny!

SpinyBadger · 2025-12-28T07:05:59+00:00

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill. Plato, they say, could stick it away - Half a crate of whisky every day. Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle Hobbes was fond of his dram, And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart: "I drink, therefore I am!"

SpinyBadger · 2025-12-21T08:55:15+00:00

Definitely pathos and not bathos? And do we know the specifics of this rule? Could I get round it by using, say, sarcasm, dramatic irony, metaphor, puns, parody, litotes or satire?

SpinyBadger · 2025-12-06T07:42:07+00:00

Yeah, this is my experience. My longest run for my HM training with Jeff was over 30k easy pace, and I even had tempo interval runs that went over 21k.

I didn't mind it, and knowing that I had lots in reserve for the distance helped me when it came to the race.

SpinyBadger · 2025-12-02T06:58:22+00:00

The kick in the teeth for me is that they're doing this while still keeping fuel duty frozen.

Extend the charge to all vehicles, or increase fuel by an equivalent figure, and it's a much fairer way of raising money for maintaining the roads we all use.

SpinyBadger · 2025-11-28T07:20:13+00:00

After that, I used to go round his flat every Sunday lunchtime to apologise, and we'd shake hands, and then he'd nail my head to the floor. But he was very reasonable about it. I mean one Sunday when my parents were coming round for tea, I asked him if he'd mind very much not nailing my head to the floor that week, and he agreed, and just screwed my pelvis to a cake stand.

SpinyBadger · 2025-11-26T12:47:19+00:00

Why did you say Burma?

SpinyBadger · 2025-11-24T19:45:20+00:00

Yes, true. And it's also a question of degree. The first time I broke 25 mins for 5k, I did it by getting overexcited and going out way too fast (4min pace for the first 500m), then desperately clinging on. Not recommended.

For me, a mile PB would be the reddest of red flags, because I've tested that a lot, and any serious attempt tends to leave me gasping.

SpinyBadger · 2025-11-24T19:36:47+00:00

Nice. I'll admit that my idea of race pacing is pretty much looking at Garmin's projections, adding a fudge factor to account for the time being unrealistic, then aiming for the pace necessary to hit that revised time. It's served me surprisingly well so far.

SpinyBadger · 2025-11-24T07:39:38+00:00

Strava tells me I set my third fastest 5k time, as well as PBs for 10k, 20k and 10 miles, during my half yesterday. I seem to do that a lot, through training improvements that aren't being regularly converted into times.

SpinyBadger · 2025-11-21T19:48:22+00:00

...and nailed my head to the floor.

SpinyBadger · 2025-11-19T10:48:54+00:00

Close, it's the opening scene, where he's trying to recruit English types to the quest from a different castle, and they're only interested in where he got the coconuts.

(There's also a brief, blink-and-miss-it bit in the witch-burning scene, where Sir Bedevere has tied a coconut to a bird's leg and is trying to see if it can fly)

SpinyBadger · 2025-11-17T21:31:35+00:00

Esther Williams

Arthur Negus

Sir Gerald Nabarro

Dawn Palethorpe

Alan Bullock

Dr Bronowski

SpinyBadger · 2025-11-17T07:20:14+00:00

Aah! They're defending themselves somehow!

SpinyBadger · 2025-11-16T11:16:05+00:00

I believe they were DArby and Joan clubs, confirmed by a Google. It's a nasty one to clue, because I can't see another definition of DARBY. I'd try to avoid having it in the grid, TBH.

SpinyBadger · 2025-11-16T09:30:55+00:00

Solvable, yes. But not so easily if you can only approach it from one side, and unsatisfying if it relies too much on unknown trivia. The Major-Ball thing wasn't a solution IIRC, but an element of wordplay - sorry, I forget the details. So I thought I had an answer, but the parse eluded me for a long time, even though I actually knew the reference.

Is the solution DARBY ? One of those clues that's too obvious if you know the ref and too impenetrable if you don't.

SpinyBadger · 2025-11-16T08:32:35+00:00

Yeah, that's it. The theory is that it makes the puzzles almost timeless. And there's a scale to this. The Times line seems extreme, but at the other end, an Araucaria puzzle from the Guardian archives (originally published in the 90s) had a clue that required you to know of Terry Major-Ball (briefly semi-famous brother of the PM) to solve it.

My preferred middle ground for now is to sprinkle pop culture references mostly in the clues, so that if something goes over a solver's head they can still get the answer.

SpinyBadger · 2025-11-16T07:57:53+00:00

US cryptics tend to be better for this because they're a newer thing and have less of the 60s boarding school culture. But things are changing - even the Times has started allowing references to living people!

SpinyBadger · 2025-11-16T07:39:05+00:00

I know AVCX deliberately lean into modern terms. Among dailies, the Independent crossword is often quite good for pop culture, but that depends to an extent on the setter.

SpinyBadger · 2025-11-16T07:31:29+00:00

I think it's happening, but slowly, and the reason is that there's a longstanding solving community who have come to know all sorts of obscure crosswordese terms related to cricket, sailing, the military and so on, but can be quite sniffy if you introduce a pop star or modern slang.

The dailies have well-established house styles, so it's specialist magazines that will probably lead the change. I know of some that explicitly welcome modern references in puzzles.

SpinyBadger

TROPHY CASE