Earlier today I set you the following three puzzles, loosely inspired by my new book, the Football School Encyclopedia. (To see why here’s the original post.)1. Dogged deliveryA house is surrounded by a five-foot-high wall. Its front door can only be reached b... More »
Four years ago, Mark Hornby and his sister Andrea faced a situation that will be familiar to many adults with ageing parents. Their mother, Margaret Wallace, then aged 79 and living alone in a large house just outside St Albans, was becoming increasingly frail... More »
When I’m not writing about maths and puzzles, I’m working on my children’s book series, Football School, which uses the sport as a lens to the world. Researching the Football School Encyclopedia, the latest book in the series, I discovered the following geomet... More »
NASA is heading to a world unlike any yet explored by humankind – a large asteroid believed to be made almost entirely of metal.It will take six years, after the successful launch today, for a spacecraft to reach an asteroid called Psyche that could open new w... More »
Healthcare charities and patient groups are calling on NHS England to reintroduce Covid-19 precautions for staff, amid fears that clinically vulnerable patients and medics will be put at risk this winter.Since Covid safety measures were dropped earlier in the ... More »
It may feel like we should all be done with Covid-19, but sadly Covid-19 is not done with us. At the moment, cases in England are rising again, with a 10% rise overall in hospital admissions and the greatest increase in the north of England. With testing reduc... More »
Scientists say they have found evidence that people may experience “long colds”, acute respiratory infections with long-term symptoms.Some of the most common symptoms include coughing, stomach pain, and diarrhoea more than four weeks after the initial infectio... More »
Earlier today I set you the following questions that the authors of Headscratchers, a new puzzle book, suggest are perfect for discussion and solving in licensed premises. The first one, in particular, leads itself to heated debate.Here they are again with sol... More »
Pubs are for drinking, socialising – and doing puzzles. Or so claims Headscratchers, a new compendium of puzzles from New Scientist magazine, from which today’s cranium-ticklers are taken.The first is a classic pub puzzle. (An inn-igma? a bam-booze-ler? A conu... More »
At the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the fight against the disease was described by heads of government and public health bosses on primetime television.Countries would receive daily updates collated from data that had been analysed by the world-leading viro... More »
It’s little known to the throngs of tourists who gawp at the wonder of the Great Lakes but at the meeting point of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, a combined system that forms the largest lake in the world, there is a 70-year-old pipeline, battered and dented by... More »
A record-breaking number of “uber-rare” North American songbirds have arrived in the UK this week, blown over the Atlantic in the aftermath of Hurricane Lee.More than a dozen species of small songbirds – one of which has never been seen in the UK before – were... More »