Our viewing habits remain the same. The quiz shows mentioned in last month’s round-up of recent trivia are still on series record, and my children and I watch many of them together. “Pointless” has been part of our family viewing for many years, and now so is “The Chase”. My 12-year-old son has recently become… Continue reading A trivia round-up for March 2017
The word “nutter” is never far from my mind. I used it last June in this piece (“Please don’t tell me the names of the murderers”); more about that later. I have been meaning to draft a Word of the Week piece about it for a while. Before last week’s events here in London my… Continue reading Word of the week: nutter
Since the start of the year I have been thinking even more than usual about trivia, quizzes and game shows. I posted a round-up of recent trivia in February and have now become a regular watcher of “The Chase”, to accompany the long-standing slots in my viewing habits taken by “Pointless”, “Only Connect”, “Mastermind” and… Continue reading Peri-Peri Chicken in a sandwich? Really?
Today is the Feast of the Annunciation. It commemorates, as you may know, the angel Gabriel announcing to the Virgin Mary that she is “with child”. For many years now we have been able to discuss this event with a memory from my daughter’s first Nativity Play at her primary school. The boy chosen to… Continue reading “Mary! You’re gonna have a baby!”
Recently, while I was hunched over a spreadsheet on my laptop at the kitchen table, my 10-year-old daughter asked, “Is that Excel?” It was. “Can I show you something?” she asked. In a blank cell, in a new blank workbook, she typed the following: =1+1 When she pressed Return the number 2 appeared in the… Continue reading Word of the week: BODMAS
JOMO: the joy of missing out. Last night I decided against a late-night celebration of St Patrick’s Day and was fast asleep before 10pm. I didn’t even have a symbolic beer to celebrate Ireland’s national saint. As I mentioned last year, in this piece about giving things up for Lent, St Patrick’s Day has become… Continue reading JOMO: no beer on St Patrick’s Day
At least one of the following things happens every day of my life: I notice yet another song on TV, radio or a playlist that rhymes “heart” and “apart”; I have to type a whole word on my phone that has not been anticipated by predictive text; I hear someone say “No pressure” in an… Continue reading “No Pressure”
In this piece from last year, about my daughter reading Ian Serraillier’s “The Silver Sword”, I noted that we had a copy of the book throughout my childhood, and I never even opened it, not once. The same goes for Clive King’s “Stig of the Dump”. Unlike Serraillier’s book, which I haven’t been able to… Continue reading “Stig of the Dump” and typefaces
Tony Blackburn is back on BBC Radio 2, our radio station of choice. I am very pleased about this. He’s on for an hour on Friday nights at 7pm and on Saturday mornings between 6 and 8am, broadcasting live. For the latter he has taken over the “Sounds of the 60s” slot from Brian Matthew… Continue reading Tony Blackburn
There was a lovely question on “The Chase” recently about numbers and Scrabble, along these lines: if the following numbers are spelt with Scrabble tiles, which one is the same as its Scrabble score? The options were: Ten, Eleven, Twelve. You’ll probably work it out but if you want to double check, the correct answer… Continue reading Board Games and Quiz Questions
The Compartments 