Well, about nine-and-a-half hours, to be exact. Then we’ll be nice and tidy for a month, twelve hours ahead, having sprung forward, until the UK falls back, and the gap expands to thirteen. This means that by November, all the UK puzzles will be two hours later to download. Puzzles which I now get at 11 a.m. NZ time will only become available at 1 p.m.

A fair amount of stuff done today – puzzles hither and yon, and, marvellous to relate, a new puzzle up on the site from one of my boxfiles that I don’t seem to have visited much – the year 2007. This time you get a Beelzebub puzzle from early in that year, and it predates the fifteensquared blogging of the puzzle, which only started in August 2007. Maybe one from further down the boxfile in a few weeks.

Since the last update I have proofread an Inquisitor which appears this weekend – apologies for not being able to get that on the list. The newspapers work to various timescales which are further complicated by staff holidays and the like, so I can’t always get a decent forewarning for the blog. It’s rather a neat one, I think.

What there is coming up in what looks like being a quiet month: the usual daily on 4 October, but the following week Phiday in The Independent will be Tuesday 8 October, one day after I appear in The Times.

 
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Meaning a broken computer – indeed it is to be replaced and relegated after repair to the status of backup.

That will take over the weekend and the tribulation involved in getting a puzzle up on the site via the iPad does not bear thinking about. Besides, I have The Researcher’s First Murder, John Finnemore’s follow-up to Torquemada’s Cain’s Jawbone, to peruse. 

So a quick listing of forthcoming puzzles and I shall get back to producing yet another new schedule for the site.

There’s a Times Quick from Pedro on 17 September while Pangakupu re-emerges in the Guardian on the 20th. That’s the same day as a Phi in the Independent, of course, and the Friday Independent appearance repeats a week later.

By then I should certainly be up and running again. 20th September also sees a neat thematic puzzle in the Church Times (editorial plug).

And, to be fair, it has been fairly vernal. The overnight thunderstorms have abated, and the usual spring gales have swept in, and it’s a good drying day. And a baking day, and a using up these vegetables that have grown too early day (the broccoli is already looking set for the uprooting phase).

This time there’s an Independent puzzle from 2011 that has an unusual Nina, as it relates to the Nina-hunters themselves. It’s probably about time I did another one as the pseudonyms of the fifteensquared bloggers I deployed reveal the passing of time: some are still there, but others no longer contribute. The site continues to be well worth a visit, and they even blogged the puzzle itself (but, as always, solve it yourself first).

A fairly heavy cruciverbal weekend, including the wrangling of a complex IQ grid to completion – I’m now at the stage of looking at it, feeling pleased, and then panicking that I might not have quite worked out all the complexities correctly. I shall be brief and merely note forthcoming puzzles as the usual Friday Independent appearances (6 and 13 September), the Times (9 September) and a Telegraph Toughie from Kcit on 12 September.

And, of course, a Church Times puzzle on 6 September, which also marks my first formal appearance as editor there. Lead times mean that I have been doing various bits of puzzle preparation over the last few weeks and, indeed, the first puzzle for November began its path to publication today. Everything seems to be going well so far – do take a look.

This weekend has somehow run away from me, with puzzles being submitted and appearing, and an orchestral concert in the mix. We used to go to them a lot, but Covid rather changed the pattern and we fell out of the habit. But the prospect of a concert with both the Korngold Violin Concerto and Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber was a bit too much to resist. Shame the weekend coincided with the first really wet days this winter, but the garden is lapping it up. Spring ‘officially’ starts in a fortnight, but no-one seems to tell the weather that.

I’ll content myself with a list of forthcoming puzzles. The immediate week is very busy.

• August 18: Transfiguration by Kcit in the Enigmatic Variations series
• August 19: Pedro in The Times
• August 22: Pangakupu in The Guardian
• August 23: Phi in The Independent
• August 24: The Times
• August 30: Phi in The Independent

Fingers crossed for more time for the next post.

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