Covertly, CHAMELEONS hide as an anagram in each answer below. Favourite son, say, is CHOSEN MALE. Can you pick the other nine? Every contrived phrase has two words – one answer involving a possible hyphen. 1/ Dirt-free dwellings 2/ Outrigger wheels 3/ Include meat 4/ Beast of burden beamed 5/ Serious pain 6/ Mortgage plan 7/ Supermarket stud 8/ Shellacked [...]
Soon as I figure out the plug-ins, I’ll enable you Stormers a private postbox, so we’ll know for sure who solved the 24 clues of autumn, or at least made the most handsome and/or creative go of it. As it stands, honesty and glasnost are the best policies – and I hope you had fun [...]
The third wheel in the tricycle today, with Part Three of the Autumn Challenge. Below are eight clues culled from a season of solving. See how you fare, cracking them solo. (The Post section may give you some hints if fellow Stormers are feeling Samaritan.) The game’s extra challenge is to identify the eight-letter [...]
Part Two of the Autumn Challenge. Below are eight more clues hand-picked from the last season of solving. See if you can crack them solo, with help perhaps to arrive in the Post section before too long. The game’s extra challenge is to try and figure out the eight-letter word that the initials of [...]
This week, instead of our usual Brainstorm, I’ll be parading the pick of autumn’s clues in three lots of eight. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to see how many clues you can crack on your own steam, with no help of interlock or cross-letters. Not easy, as some of these little [...]
Twelve movies appear here as opposites. If Live Simple = Die Hard, you may find the rest more testing. 1/ Big Adults 2/ Difficult Pedestrian 3/ Pro Hide 4/ Yellow Periphery 5/ Tame Shares 6/ Boy Continuous 7/ Calm Cow 8/ Praised Down 9/ Pale Home 10/ Preserve Fact 11/ Alert Solid 12/ Yes Certainties SOLUTION NEXT WEEK BB258 [...]
Wish I could say I’ve been basking in the Bismarck sun…. Instead, have been buried in puzzles, papers, columns and stories, accounting for the late file of last week’s ebullient Brainstorm. I’ve tried to be fair, concealing names and inspecting clues on their twisted merits. Twice, where an island seems marooned for want of a true [...]
The footage is more like inch-age – some four minutes of podcast fame – but regular bloggerati on this site can get to see yours truly blathering on camera. Talk about performance pressure. Even in the anagram section I found myself with a surplus R that needed discreet ditching. But the skit was fun to [...]
Fetch the compass. Bleach the pith helmet. We’re entering virgin jungle this week, exploring the volcanic wilds of Papua’s Bismarck Archipelago, making clues where no setter has set foot before. Some nineteen islands make up the chain in the West Pacific, and below are nine of the more exotic in name, hand-picked for clueing: BAGABAG BALUAN [...]
To mistype is human. We all make slips at the QWERTY. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve tapped in ‘crytpic’ for its more meaningful twin. Though the timing of this ABC bungle is sweet. On Saturday, in my Wordplay column, I tackled the topic of typos. They seem to be in the air. First [...]