STOP PRESS: The latest Storm results and new Birdbrain are now up and running on the new website, davidastle [dot] com. So jump across and join the hubbub.

 □ Get a copy of that Puzzled book by that Astle fella. Sounds like a good read – if not a little wordy. (Copies hit the shops this weekend.)

□ Tune into the Conversation Hour this Monday – 30/8 – to hear this same bloke yakking about words and stuff on 774, after eleven.

□ Maybe meet this Astle character at the Melbourne Writers Festival in the next few weeks. Okay, so the Wordsmith session is booked out, but then you can enjoy his chat with Wave Watcher Gavin Preter Pinney, or a how-to session on feature writing.

□ Or, later next month, drop by the Wheeler Centre on October 6. If you ask real nice he may even scribble on your masthead.

 □ Then again, if you live in Sydney, why not have a crack at joining the Letters & Numbers circus? That’s right, auditions are slated for the Sydney CBD on Saturday 4/9. You wish to register, then call Laura soon on 03 9524 2517. You Melbourne types, keep sharp, and visit the L&N site often, as auditions recur regularly.

□ Get two copies of Puzzled, because this book is a destined hotcake. 

□ Or if you’re member of the Australian Crossword Club, then you get a discounted copy via their newsletter. Or if you’re a diehard DA Tripper, then compose a brilliant clue and snag a freebie. 

□ Now with the copy and sales record in hand, keep your eyes peeled on the Allen & Unwin website for your chance to win a free newspaper subscription and a stocking full of new books by composing more clever clues. Four major prizes up for grabs.

□ Get ready to make the jump from the Cassowary blog to the davidastle website inside the week with a hearty Geronimo, and enjoy the new playspace when you get there.

□ Pass the word about this new site too, coz it’s set to be a crossword and word person’s shangri-la, with your help and some fine-tuning. And this last Storm proved – the more the merrier.

□ Lastly, if you enjoy Christmas carols, and you live in Yemen with a mild case of dyslexia, then visit: www.oh.all.faithful.com.ye

BOTTLE OPENER = B

CENTRE OF GRAVITY = V

SECOND IN COMMAND = O

Avid solvers know these phrases by heart, all those crossword terms to indicate a single letter. In the land of cryptics, midnight isn’t 12, but G. While Central America is R.

As a setter, I’m forever on the hunt for fresh examples. Rifle butt, say, could give you an E, while Shakespeare’s maiden may indicate the Bard’s inaugural letter, an S.

Forget West. A better way to signal W is the phrase, last to know. While if the flavour is music, then don’t neglect Radiohead (R), Motorhead (M) or maybe even Beethoven’s Fifth (H).

That’s our challenge this week, Stormers. To compile an original alphabet with one term or phrase to signal each letter. Let’s ignore the usual abbrevs (like jack for J, or married for M), as well as those phrases offering more than one letter, such as RH for rough edges.

Instead, just one term to produce one letter, with the best example getting to occupy that letter’s slot in the final alphabet on the weekend (K). We may not achieve a eureka for every letter, but something tells me we’ll go close to completion (N). 

And please, don’t go overboard. Send in the cream only, as we all know the capital of Surinam is S, and the captial of Uruguay is U, etc. The challenge lies in attempting to use language freshly, rather then duplicating familiar forms.

So quick – S (Storm’s beginning)! Or not a Storm this week, but a thunderhead (T)!

If a punchy thinker is Sockrates, and a giant jail is a titanick, can you insert a new K behind a C to make nine more ‘partickular’ puns? You have each neo-word’s length.

1/ Odd kiss (9)

2/ Point with a rod (12)

3/Graduate from Hogwarts (12)

4/ Indulgent cards (9)

5/ Snooker story-teller (10)

6/ Extravagant pin (12)

7/ Extravagant grain (12)

8/ Bored of CSI (9)

9/ Bird loss (10)

SOLUTION NEXT WEEK

BB271 SOLUTION: Agate; segregate; surrogate; Colgate; (circum)navigate; aggregate; investigate, interrogate; propagate, conjugate; irrigate, sluicegate. (Other gates may close the deal.)

Glad to see my spam filter can now take a spell. What a brilliant overload this week. I loved how we found a Storm to combine Bolivian zoos with Egyptian vegos. No other slamdown saw Deliverance fans in Bhutan share posting space with Albanian story-tellers…as you can imagine.

Over 60 entries, and most pushed for the final cut. Credit alone must go to JD, Mr X and PRS – the pioneers to introduce the suffix extra of com, org and edu respectively. And they all used them wonderfully.

Since it is Election Day, you can forget my promise to present two categories – the LOL and WTF trios. Instead I’ve drafted an elite list of fourteen, being the cream of a splendid crop. (Of course, I attempted to make that twelve, but failed to wield Tally up the preferences and you’ll see dg has won the seat of honour in a countback, leading by a single vote over JD and Mr X.

A tally room tally-ho to Mauve for perhaps the wittiest, PRS for the edu-apercu and SK for a killer double in Eritrea. So, in order of appearance, the 14 best were:

Bolivian Burger chain – http://www.bigmac.com.bo [JD]

Finnish Association of Lounge Chair Manufacturers – http://www.RU.com.fi [Mr X]

Capitalist Society of Malaysia –  http://www.damned.com.my  [JD]

Confused Christians of Yemen –   www.oh.all.faithful.com.ye [Mauve]

The Memory Improvement Society of Ethiopia – http://www.dontf.org.et [Mr X]

When you and a friend from Antigua and Barbuda keep missing each other’s calls, go to – http://www.pho.net.ag [Mr X]

Cool Germanic blog site – http://www.suav.edu.de [PRS]

Israeli PM’s tax haven in Netherlands Antilles – http://www.shalom.net.an (yahoo)  [SK]

Those public servants in Eritrea know how to party…

http://www.getyourle.gov.er   and  http://www.monsterhan.gov.er  [SK both]

Cynics Society Of Bahamas – http://www.stopthe.bs [dg]

Okay Society of Quebec – http://www.commeci.com.ca  [dg]

Brits in Nauru – http://www.eh.gov.nr  [dg again]

Retiring Chancellor of Cook Islands Uni – http://www.lam.edu.ck  [JD]

Spam from Netherlands Antilles – http://www.biggerbiggerbigger.org.an  [dg]

More maelstroms Tuesday. May the least worst leader win.

Okay, I admit – I’m a little punch-drunk after so much quizzing. And all-work-no-sleep makes DA a curmudgeon. Nonetheless, even in the calm light of my first rest-day, I still reckon these six clues are partly smelly.

After each clue I’ve provided my gripe – though feel free to disagree. Am I being reasonable, or do you think I need to re-hit the cot? Dare you to create better clues.

1/ Slick democrat is worn out = TIRED [Armonie – an English crossword opting for an American spelling of TIRE?]

2/ City father’s promulgation (part America) = ROMULUS [Araucaria – so 'part' tells us to take out Letters 2-6 of 'promulgation'? Why not Letters 5-9, or 3-10?] 

3/ Among seraphim, pious Bantu warriors = IMPI [Mudd – hardly a plausible image]

4/ Mass of lymphatic tissue giving don ideas = ADENOIDS [Orlando – signpost issues] 

5/ One curate I wanted: I have lots = AUCTIONEER [Araucaria – see above]

6/ Conductors of a poem = ANODES [Please Araucaria, make up your mind: singular or plural?]

OK, here’s our challenge this week.

For every nation on God’s green earth, there is a web code. Australia has AU, of course, meaning most online addresses around this neighbourhood end that way. 

In Argentina, the equivalent is AR, while Portugal is PT, and Peru, PE. You can see the whole list here, a handy tool to help you create this week’s piece of wordplay.

Namely, using any of these suffixes, can you fashion a humorous or artful web address where the country’s code is seamed into the wordplay? 

For example, an Aussie patisserie: www.chocolategate.au 

A shonky Lisbon lawyer: www.venalandcorru.pt

Or you may be even cleverer, and tie in the COM element, so making the website of a Lisbon casino: www.bigspenders.com.pt 

It’s a nutty idea, and I’m not expecting an avalanche, but see where a list browse leads you. Many countries won’t bend easily (such as Rwanda’s RW, or Tunisia’s TN) though sometimes the art lies in choosing the most challenging.

Web Awards to the best 3 LOLs, and best 3 OMGs. For any further enquiries, please visit www.puzzlebure.au

A bit on the frantic side today and tomorrow – so will post a Brainstorm on Wednesday, just to prove that robots don’t run this blog.

In the meantime, with the Puzzled book due for release later this month, there is a scheduled ripple you can catch in various venues. Or a wave, as Gavin Pretor Pinney might call it.

I’ll be taking part in three sessions of the Melbourne Writers’ Fest at Fed Square – the first alas has already booked out on Sunday 29 August, at 4pm. I’m sharing a panel with two other verbivores – Kate Burridge and Ursula Dubosarsky – under the banner of A Wordsmith’s Dream. (Though if you can’t make the session, you’ll know where I’ll be, and maybe collect a signed copy of the new book.)

The other sessions occur on the weekend to follow:

Saturday, 2.30, talking about Gavin PP’s quirky marvel of a book, Wavewatching For Beginners. Find out more of this idle philosopher here.

The second session is harder-core, with a practical emphasis on feature writing. That session is slated for Sunday, September 5, at 2.30, sharing the bill with fellow scribes, Amanda Lohrey and Miriam Cosic.

(And if you can’t make any these sessions, or post-sessions, then you should beetle into the Festival whenver you can and maybe pick up a Puzzled postcard, with puzzle. A pretty simple puzzle too, I’m guessing, where four solvers stand to win a swag of Allen & Unwin books. Worth the saunter.)

Also at this stage, with many a slip between publicist and lip, I’m also booked to yarn on The Conversation Hour on ABC 774 on Monday, August 30. Keep your channel tuned.

For crossword nuts keen to catch up in the flesh, or perhaps to get a John Hancock on your flyleaf (Jeez that came out lewd), I may well be lobbing at the Wheeler Centre for a masterclass session on Thursday evening, September 23 – maybe. (What now looks likely is Wednesday, October 6 at the House of Wheels.)  Keep your mouse close to the ground.

All that, and the looming finals of the first quiz season currently in action, should explain why I need robots to implant a Brainstorm. Watch this window for a new game Wednesday.

Since GATE ends most scandals, does that make an extravagant scandal a PROFLIGATE? Or a seabird scandal a FRIGATE? So what GATES involve: 

1/ Quartz

2/ Apartheid

3/ Stand-ins

4/ Toothpaste

5/ Matthew Flinders

6/ Pebbles

7/ Cops (2 answers)

8/ Breeding (2 answers)

9/ Farm-watering (2)

SOLUTION NEXT WEEK

BB270 SOLUTION: Pat Cash, Lionel Rose, Shane Warne, Shane Heal, Lleyton Hewitt, Reg Gasnier, Mick Doohan, Rocky Elsom, Peter Senior, Casey Stoner

Leaf blowers. Cash registers. Sneezes, switches and Vegemite on toast: we ran the full range of sound FX last week, calling on such diverse words as dwindling and mellifluous.

To draft a Top Ten, I trusted my ears. Say each word, and see if you can hear the associated action. Xanadu (SB’s stem Christie stop) and anagrammatically (JD’s sprinkler) were very close, though in the end these ten below possess the highest fidelity. 

In ABC order, please give three strident hoorays to these technicians:

CHIHUAHUA: electric guitar pedal effect [SK]

CHURCH: a (paper) guillotine [JD]

CRUMPET: a stapler [SK]

CRICKET: pressing the button on a retractable ballpoint [Mr X]

CYCLICALLY: the sound of a glass smashing in the kitchen sink [SK]

HASHISH: windscreen wipers [JD]

PICNIC: a non-touch typist at the keyboard [Mr X]

POLYP: throwing a boulder into a pond [SK]

STRYCHNINE: breaking an egg into a cake mix [Mauve]

THWART: squeezing a pimple onto the mirror. [JD]

So booming applause to SK – a debut winner with four FX – and a shrill whistle for JD with a droll three. Quite clearly, the winner is the letter C, and the world of noise in general. Thanks for such a great clamour.