Aka Monday 29th
June - Sunday 5th July 2020
A very quiet week
this week, my copy of ’Fantastic Adventures’ arrived:
...which details unpublished British comics work, either from comics/magazines that were never published or
that were cancelled, like Revolver, and includes unseen/rarely work by Grant
Morrison, Alan Moore, Brian Bolland, Steve Yeowell and many more and I got some
New Comic Book Day gems:
…I also got what
could be the very last issue of Q:
…fingers crossed
that it isn’t as there are very few broad range (or at least relativity broad
range) music magazines out there and I went for a Long Walk on Saturday (and saw that the Lockdown is not stopping the "kids" from enjoying whippets!):
…and I did this
week’s G2 Crosswords:
…and Monday’s crossword seems to have things back to an even
keel, as we only had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 24). The
little grey cells hopped, skipped and jumped through the clues dishing out
answers like posies. But I’m a little annoyed that for ‘a gastropod’ we went
with ‘whale’, when the answer is ‘snail’. Facepalm! We went for the completely
opposite animal! But we did learn that ‘Oahu’ is ‘Honolulu’s island’…
…and things dip down with Tuesday’s crossword, as we had to
cheat on a quarter of the clues (six out of 23). It’s not that the grid was
particularly hard, just that for most of those six clues we just had no idea
what the answer would be. The only two we had a chance of getting was 1 across
‘pontificate (6)’, we got stuck thinking that it was related to thing about
something, considering something for as a way of delaying taking action and
didn’t think it was related to the ‘Papacy’! And ‘weep copiously’, we went with
‘bawl’, but the answer was ‘blub’. But we did learn that ‘mellifluous’ means
‘dulcet’, that ‘Ischia’ is a ‘heavily populated island in the Gulf of Naples’,
that ‘Rebecca’ is a ‘1938 novel, starting: ‘Last night I dreamt I went to
Manderley again’’ and that ‘Dvorak’ was a ‘Czech composer, d. 1904’. Lots of
learning today, will there be more tomorrow…
…things improve a tad with Wednesday’s crossword as we only
had to cheat on a sixth of the clues (four out of 25). The rest of the clues
were pretty straight forward to get, especially once we had intersecting
letters, like a stroll through the park for the little grey cells. Slightly
annoyed that for the clue ‘coach’ we went for ‘trainer’, which is so close, but
so far from the right answer of ‘teacher’. But hopefully this is the start of
an upswing…
…and maybe it is! As on Thursday crossword we only had to
cheat on a twelfth of the clues. The little grey cells just smashed their way
through the clues, leaving answers scattered in the debris. And we learnt that
Charley’s Aunt was a ‘farce staged in London in 1892, revived and adapted ever
since’ and that ‘Vandee’ is the ‘Department of France on the Bay of Biscay’
(and that on this clue Department effectively means County)…
…and Friday’s crossword dips down a bit, with us having had
to cheat on a seventh of the clues (three out of 22). This grid was a little
chewy and took the little grey cells a while to get through. Like we had a
slight mental block on 1 across ‘celebrity (9, 4)’ thinking that it had to be
‘something star’, when the answer was ‘household name’. A totally d’oh! moment.
Along with going for ‘dry run’ for the clue ‘test (3,3)’ and not bothering to
check if the intersecting letters matched the other clues. If we had, we might
have got the correct answer of ‘try out’…
…and Saturday’s crossword ends the week on a pretty good
note, as we only had to cheat on a thirteenth of the clues (two out of 26).
Most of the clues were pretty straight forward for the little grey cells. While
we had no way of knowing that the ‘Hermitage’ is a ‘museum housing collection
started by Catherine the Great’, we should have gotten ‘scrapheap’ from ‘where
unwanted items end up’ but we got stuck thinking around places like a
‘second-hand shop’, ‘jumble sale’ or the ‘kitchen draw’ and couldn’t get out of
that loop…
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