快猫短视频

Give us a clue

The devil鈥檚 chessboard. The nonsense square. The nightmare grid. These are all names we just made up for that most reviled occupier of newsprint real estate: the cryptic crossword.

Unlike a conventional crossword clue, which is child鈥檚 play to parse even if the answer is elusive, the average cryptic clue sounds like the sort of mistranslated guide book phrase one cold war spy would whisper to another to verify their identity.

You know the sort of thing. 鈥淭wo ants at sea, swimming (6)鈥� or 鈥淪trange sort of luaus the United Nations leads (7)鈥�. And those are just ones published by 快猫短视频.

So it was a real surprise to find that the Australian branch of animal rights organisation PETA had come up with a cryptic crossword clue that not only made good logical sense, but was sufficiently timely to use as the headline for a recent blog post.

The headline in question, sent to us by occasional 快猫短视频 puzzle contributor David Bodycombe, was: 鈥淐oronavirus Outbreak Is Linked to Eating Animal Flesh鈥�. The answer, should you wish to play along, is 11 letters long and printed at the bottom of the page, along with answers to the 快猫短视频 clues.

Child鈥檚 play

It is usual for children to go to parties dressed as astronauts. It is less common for astronauts to go to space wearing children鈥檚 fancy-dress costumes. But that, at any rate, was what Iran鈥檚 minister for information, Mohammad-Javad Azari Jahromi, appeared to suggest in a tweet last week. According to a story in The Times, Azari Jahromi tweeted a picture of a shiny spacesuit, embroidered with the Iranian flag, before the launch of a satellite.

All very patriotic and aspirational. The trouble was that the spacesuit bore a remarkable resemblance to a children鈥檚 costume available for 拢15 on Amazon. The giveaway? Two faint outlines on the front where NASA logos had been removed. The minister鈥檚 online credibility rapidly crashed. As, reportedly, did the satellite.

Block party

Feedback鈥檚 efforts to provide news you can use were buoyed this week by news from reader Colum Joyce. Based in Brussels, the capital of what he refers to as Brexit-Free Europe, he has been putting our weekly missives to good use. Inspired by a previous story about Simon Weckert, the German annoyance artist who shuts down roads by simulating traffic jams with the help of a wagonload of smartphones, Colum has sought to replicate his success.

鈥淚 live on a 鈥楻at Run鈥� street,鈥� he says. 鈥淎fter reading about the trolley guy and his mobile phones we did a 鈥楴eighbourhood Jam鈥�.鈥� Colum鈥檚 neighbours contributed 228 phones to the war on traffic, encouraging drivers to find alternative routes from 5 o鈥檆lock in the evening to near on midnight. Was the initiative a success? 鈥淲e had a BBQ in the street,鈥� says Colum. We鈥檒l take that as a yes, then.

Sendhervictaurus

British identity is a multi-faceted thing. The best thing about it is how many ways there are of expressing it. Being polite. Tutting loudly in a queue. Being a dinosaur.

That last one may seem surprising but it comes endorsed by no less an authority than the Natural History Museum. In a press release issued last week, the museum announced: 鈥淏ritish dinosaurs to feature on UK money for the first time.鈥�

The three coins in question, 50p pieces featuring Megalosaurus, Iguanodon and Hylaeosaurus, reflect the sort of diverse multispecies society that Britain has always been home to. Perhaps this is the glorious past that some of the UK鈥檚 more reactionary politicians are keen to embrace. And let鈥檚 be honest, the country could do worse. Those early inhabitants of the sceptred isle had nothing to fear from global pandemics, superintelligent AIs, foreign hackers or wars. The worst that happened to them was that after a few million years the sky fell in. Given how things are going, residents might be inclined to take that offer themselves.

The law has teeth

Don鈥檛 irritate a dentist. Anybody who has the opportunity to point a drill at your gums is a powerful enemy to make. Especially when they have the strong arm and upper incisors of the law on their side.

According to the BBC, a court in Australia has ruled in favour of a dentist who asked Google to reveal the name of an anonymous client who left a negative review. Matthew Kabbabe 鈥� who sadly breaks Feedback鈥檚 laws of nominative determinism by not being a skewered foodstuff 鈥� felt maligned by a user called CBsm 23 who urged future customers to stay away.

Well, nobody else is going to be maligning the good dentist鈥檚 name any time soon. Under the order, 鈥淕oogle will be required to pass to Kabbabe any personal details such as any names, phone numbers, location metadata and IP addresses linked to the account鈥� that posted the review.

A sensible ruling to prevent malicious attacks, or a chilling suppression of free speech? Feedback is unsure, but our mocking one-star reviews of 快猫短视频鈥榮 cryptic crosswords need to come down fast.

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Send it to 快猫短视频, 25 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ES or you can email us at feedback@newscientist.com