Days 3362 to 3368

Aka Monday 5th February to Sunday 11th February 2024

The big thing this week is that my nephew/niece has gotten a full-time care placement, which is great news, but the bad news is that it’s in Scotland! So, visiting is going to be less regular and getting there might be a problem and once there they’ll be so far away. A bittersweet moment, they’re going to get the full hep they need, but won’t be close to home…except there was an issue with the paperwork, so it was pushed back to next week…which also meant that I called off Sunday’s Morning Walk, partly as I felt rough when I woke up and it was rainy and cold looking outside, so I decided to go back to bed! Plus I want to save my energy for next week’s trip to Scotland!…more mundane things that happened this week is picking up some comic book beauties:

…collected some small Lottery winnings:

…and I did this week’s G2 Crosswords:

…and there’s not much to say as we kick off the first crossword week of February 2024, as the little grey cells kung-fu’d their way through Monday’s 21 clues, getting a clean sweep in double quick time!!! But will this last for the whole week? Let’s find out…and I did Tuesday’s G2 Crossword:

…and Tuesday’s crossword was so chewy! Didn’t think we were going to do very well, but in the end, we did do pretty okay, solving 91.30% of the clues (aka 21 out of 23). Slightly ticked off that we didn’t get ‘Laurel’ from ‘shrub or tree with shiny green leaves’, as it’s an obvs one in hindsight! But we did learn that an ‘Ammonite’ is a ‘coil-shaped fossil’…and I did Wednesday’s G2 Crossword:

…and the chewiness continues with Wednesday’s crossword! Again, didn’t think we’d do well with this one, but after being careful and not jumping the gun, we managed to solve 90.48% of the clues (a la 19 out of 21). We did make a slight cock up with ‘He’s a weakling’, we went with ‘millsop’, but we were one letter out as the answer is ‘milksop’ <shaky head emoji>. And we learnt that ‘Imperialism’ was the ‘foreign policy of Ancient Rome’, was is kinda super obvs in hindsight, but we just couldn’t get, but it need give us the key for a couple of the intersecting words…and I did Thursday’s G2 Crossword:

…the crosswords this week have been super chewy and Thursdays was the chewiest by far! After much effect the little grey cells managed to solve 86.97% of the clues (aka 20 out of 23), which is way better than I thought we’d do! But it does mean that we learnt that a ‘bully off’ is how you ‘start a game of hockey’ and that Karl Baedeker was a ‘German publisher known for travel guides’ and we’re like super annoyed that we didn’t get ‘where’ from ‘I Know ___ I’m Going!: 1945 Powell and Pressburger film’, as it’ super obvs that the answer is ‘where’, but I was sure that is was someone’s name and got lost in those weeds and missed the obvs answer…and I did Friday’s G2 Crossword:

…the chewiness continues with Friday’s crossword, I don’t know if we’re too sleepy or in a cognitive decline bleep or if the clues are tougher, but these grids have been tough! After grinding out the answers the little grey cells managed to solve 91.30% of the clues (also known as 21 out of 23). Somehow we missed ‘afoot’ from ‘going on’, which is annoying, but we did learn that ‘Igneous’ rock is created by volcanic activity…and I did Saturday’s G2 Crossword:

…and we end the crossword week with another super chewy crossword! Another one where our initial run through only gave a couple of answers! But, in the end we managed to solve 92.00% of the clues (aka 23 out of 25), but only after a lot of thinking time. The little grey cells were a tad burnt out by the end of it…which is probably why we didn’t get ‘errant’ from ‘wayward’ and ‘nicety’ from ‘subtle distinction’ (although I would say that it isn’t a very good clue, I would never think that they are synonyms for each other!)…hopefully the little grey cells will rest up over the rest of the weekend and be back to fighting fit form on Monday…and I did the Metro's cryptic crosswords: