A lockdown post

New Zealand has followed many other countries into lockdown, accompanied by our first really intense autumn storm, so everything feels faintly apocalyptic.  Apologies for limited updates over the few weeks – finding myself acting manager of my team in the middle of all the rearrangements rather constrained my time.

I’m now working from home for the next few weeks though at present my employer is racing to provide a sufficiency of technology to enable remote working.  I hope to get more stuff up on the site over the next month.  Feel free to download puzzles to fill your additional leisure hours.

One issue I’m considering is printing off puzzles for solving.  I shall not be doing that quite so often to conserve ink – our stationery stores are closed, and the question of online ordering is moot, as some couriers are not operating either.  I’m also suspending my practice of printing for an archive of my puzzles, and of printing off working copies, moving work in progress increasingly online.  This will mean some changes in practice which may not revert when lockdown is lifted – we shall see.

By chance I bought new cartridges barely a week ago but all those black squares use up ink (even in grayscale).

Postal entries are also a no-no.  I managed to get the latest Listener despatched during the week, dodging between the queue of people standing 2m apart.  (Our postbox is outside a pharmacy operating a “one in, one out” policy.) More practically I am nearly out of stamps, and all shops selling them are now shut.  I note that the Spectator has already moved to online-only entries, and I rather imagine the EV will see an upturn in e-entries as well.  Maybe others will follow suit.

i will try and get a puzzle up every week for the duration. But you will have plenty from me this week not on the site: Spectacular is appearing in the April Magpie, there’s a Telegraph Toughie on April 2 and a Church Times puzzle on April 3.

Keep well.