But the Dog Was So Very Comical.
Concerning a cryptic utterance; a system for remembering camels' humps; some puzzling walls; and an unhelpful son.
Nurse
Yesterday, a man held the door for me, and as I went through, I distinctly heard him murmur the word 'Nurse'.
I looked up at him in surprise. He looked back in surprise at my surprise. I looked around. No nurses. In fact, no-one else nearby, medically trained or otherwise. I looked down at myself. No, not accidentally dressed as a nurse. I looked at him again. He wasn’t on the phone, he didn’t have ear-buds in. Besides, I could tell, without knowing quite how I could tell, that he’d been speaking to me. I was completely baffled. Then… I realised that I’d also spoken to him. I’d done it so automatically that I hadn’t even noticed. But- of course- as I’d reached the door he was holding, I’d murmured a barely vocalised 'thank you', more like 'ng-gew'.
And he had responded with a similarly mimimal 'No worries.'
Or… 'Nurse.'
News and Ads
John Finnemore Among Others
I and my ever-changing favourite Souvenir Programme cast member will be bringing our two-person show of sketches, a Double Act, and a Since You Ask Me to the little-known town of Oxford on the 17th January. They don’t have a theatre there, bless them, but they’ve said we can do the show in the old fire station.
Commentary Box, on:
Re: the Great Panjandrum, Kay says:
So the panjandrum thing made me think of jam pans and the tangle one gets into when thinking three pints of juice will fit in a five pint pan. But then three pounds of sugar has to be added and that makes the five pint pan too small so all is decanted into a ten pint pan. Which then boils over and there is swearing and sticky cleaning to be done so the massive chutney pan has to be brought out and dusted down and used for the mixture which finally produces 12 jars of jam.
This, I consider, is a jampandrum.
To which Dr Bob replies:
Whenever I make jam I find that, once I've filled all the proper sized jars, I'm always left with a small amount of jam (say around 50ml) that's too big to spread between the existing jars, but too small to bother using a whole new jar just to store that tiny bit.
From now on I'll start calling this quantity of preserve the jampandram.
Both these excellent new words make me happy, and so too does the knowledge that my readers make their own jam. (Assuming we can extrapolate from this sample size of two. And surely we can.)
Sketch Book
I’ll go back to putting illustrated Souvenir Programme sketches on YouTube soon. In the meantime please accept three camels.
Don’t even think about trying to tell me two of them are actually dromedaries. A dromedary is a type of camel. Oh, but do you know the excellent mnemonic for remembering how many humps dromedaries and bactrian camels have? Dromedaries have one, like this: D. And Bactrians have two, like this: B. You’re welcome.
Between These Four Walls
Let’s have another puzzle. ‘Where do you get the ideas for your puzzles?’ a lot of people never ask me. It’s hard to say. It’s not like I’m constantly getting brilliant ideas for new puzzles, like the creative brains at the New York Times. In 2022, for instance, they had the brilliant idea of buying the successful word game Wordle from its inventor. Then in 2023, they followed this up with an idea all of their own: a game they call Connections, in which players are given a grid of sixteen apparently unconnected words, and have to resolve them into four linked groups. Genius! And of course because this was their own, original idea, they didn’t have to pay anyone for it.
Well, as I say, I can’t hope to hit such creative heights myself, so instead I’m just going to rip off the Connecting Wall round of the BBC quiz show Only Connect, which was first broadcast in 2008.
I have five Only Connect style walls for you to solve, two on this side of the Great Divide, and two on the other. The first person to solve all five should just put in the comments a certain phrase relating to the entire puzzle. You’ll know it when you find it. The second person can then explain it, and in that way we get a first and second place. Ok, here are the first two:
The Lion Wall:
The Water Wall:
Beyond the veil: why Samuel Foote didn’t get his mother out of prison; and two more walls. But first, perhaps the most formidable wall of them all - The Pay Wall.
Love,
The Airport