Days 3537 to 3550

Aka Monday 29th July to Sunday 11th August 2024

This is going to be a quick canter through this fortnight! The biggest thing that happened this fortnight is that my nephew/niece got harassed by a stranger for “looking gay” and I’m not going to go into it, mainly because it makes me v angry. They were just being themselves, not bothering anyone and then this dick just ruins their day! So, getting back to more normal things, this fortnight I picked up some meagre National Lottery winnings:

…I got a few comics:

…including the issue of ‘Suicide Squad’ that had Grant Morrison as a character, which is a nice nod to his appearance in ‘Animal Man’ and his general ideas on superheroes and comics (it also came with a random issue of ‘Suicide Squad’ as well!)…my Chuck T’s completely died on me:

…and I got a few CDs:

…and some magazines:

…and I did the first week’s G2 Crosswords:

…and the new crossword week get’s off to a damn fine start. Monday’s grid was a chewy one, but the little grey cells solved 96.0% of the 25 clues. We only stumbled with one clue, ‘whopping’, which we read as ‘whooping’ and totally missed the obvs answer of ‘outsize’. I guess we were still a bit sleepy and misread that clue…but this a nice corrective to last week, which felt like it was full of 80% scores…

…and there’s not much we can say about Tuesday’s crossword as the little grey cells aced all 24 clues!!! A clean sweep, baby! Hopefully, this means that we’re back on track, no more sub-90% scores…

…and the little grey cells are still on tip-top form with Wednesday’s crossword, they solved 95.45% of the 22 clues, only missing that ‘Impiously’ means ‘in a manner disrespectful of religion’, which is nice to know…

…Thursday’s crossword was a bit half and half, some of the clues were straight-forward and easy to solve, while others were chewy and one we completely spaced one – ‘prefab’ from ‘house which can be quickly assembled’. In the end the little grey cells solved 92.31% of the 26 clues, missing ‘prefab’ and learning that a ‘Beluga’ is ‘a Sturgeon’, which is useful to know…

…Friday’s crossword was a tad chewier and took awhile to sort out, with the little grey cells solving 91.67% of the 24 clues. There were only two clues that stumped us, which means that we learnt that ‘inlaid, decorative wood’ is called ‘Marquetry’ and that the Yemen is a neighbour of Saudi Arabi and Oman, which is useful geography knowledge to know…

…and Saturday’s crossword ends this crossword week on a damn fine note, as the little grey cells solved 95.83% of the 24 clues. There were a few chewy clues, but the little grey cells soon puzzled their way through to a solution. The only clue we couldn’t solve was who was the ‘son of Edward III and father of Henry IV’, our history knowledge is a little lacking (but not as bad as our geography knowledge) and we could only get ‘John of _a_n_’, we couldn’t get to the full answer of ‘John of Gaunt’. But a damn solid end to a damn solid crossword week, roll on next week…and the Quick Cryptic went well too:

…and I did the second week’s G2 Crosswords:

…and Monday’s crossword gets this crossword week off to a grand start, as the little grey cells solved 95.24% of the 21 clues. They soared through the majority of the clues, like they were nothing, only getting stumped by not knowing that the ‘Magnolia’ is a ‘tree which may have white or pink flowers’, which is nice to know…

…and the grand start continues with Tuesday’s crossword, as we only missed out one of the 23 clues. Which means that the little grey cells solved 95.65% of the clues…but, but we should have got a clean sweep, ‘cos we should have gotten ‘kamikaze’ from ‘self-destructively reckless’, so obvs in hindsight…

…and thing stake a massive dip with Wednesday’s crossword! It was a v chewy grid and the little grey cells could only solve 80.95% of the 21 clues. Not a good performance, especially as we should known, or been able to work out, three of the four clues we missed – ‘nigh’ from ‘near, ‘in spades’ from ‘to a high degree’ and ‘overt’ from ‘unconcealed’, especially when we had the intersecting letters. Maybe it was down to the hot weather? But we did learn that ‘Clio’ is the ‘Muse of history’…

…and it’s a total switch around with Thursday’s crossword as the little grey cells aced all 23 clues and got a clean sweep! An Illuminati clean sweep baby!!! A nice comeback from yesterday’s disaster. Whoop, whoop….

…and the little grey cells are on a roll, as, once again, they aced all 23 clues for Friday’s crossword!!! Another Illuminati clean sweep baby!!! I think we can say that we have bounced back from Wednesday’s poor, poor performance…

…and we end this crossword week on a v high note, as, for the third time in a whole, the little grey cells aced all the clues!!! All 25 of them! A perfect, in both ways, end to the crossword week, whoop, whoop……and the Quick Cryptic went well too:

...and i also did some Metro Cryptic Crosswords as well: