Hello - March 2010

 

Have you ever seen how much muscle is lost after a broken bone has been in a cast for several weeks due to lack of use? Similarly our brain needs to be exercised to stay in tip top condition.

Countless research studies tell us that our mind needs to remain mentally active to avoid the deterioration of brain function. Luckily, by solving crosswords, playing chess or learning a new skill, we create new pathways within our brain and can improve our neurological health.

Physical activity such as gardening or walking is another way to protect against cognitive decline, increasing blood flow to the brain and promoting cell growth. A ‘brain-healthy’ diet including protein for supplying your brain with amino acids, unsaturated fats for neurone membranes and carbohydrates to fuel neurone functioning is also important. Of course, don’t forget plenty of fruit and vegetables to supply your brain with antioxidants that protect your neurones! Finally, managing your stress and getting plenty of rest to recharge will improve your mental alertness and memory.

Regardless of age, it is never too late to sharpen your brain and expand your mind. If you can live by these golden rules, you’ll be solving Demons and Stinkers in the blink of an eye.

So laugh, learn, read, solve crosswords, eat healthily and take note of the words of George Bernard Shaw, “We don’t stop playing because we grow old - we grow old because we stop playing.”

Happy puzzling!

Hello - February 2010

There are probably more quotes about love than any other topic, and why not, when love is what makes the world go round?

With St Valentine’s Day this month, there’s no better time to read what famous people have said about love:

“It’s easy to halve the potato where there’s love”
Irish proverb

“You can’t blame gravity for falling in love”
Albert Einstein

“If you would be loved, love and be lovable”
Benjamin Franklin

“When you are in Love you can’t fall asleep because reality is better than your dreams”
Dr Seuss

“Love: a temporary insanity, curable by marriage”
Ambrose Bierce

“Better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all”
St. Augustine

“To love another person is to see the face of God”
Victor Hugo

“A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous”
Ingrid Bergman

“At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet”
Plato

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Christine’s Hello - Jan ‘10

To celebrate the New Year, we bring you a brand-new puzzle called Concept-Cross.
In our November issue of Big, we tested the waters and asked you puzzlers for feedback. Now that we’ve read your replies, we’re in no doubt that this puzzle is going to be a big hit.
The clues are written in a slightly tongue-in-cheek style, which will bring a smile to your face when the answer comes to you. 

Here are some of our readers’ comments:

“I thoroughly enjoyed the new challenge - Concept-Cross. Once I got on the roll I just kept rolling. It was quite different and ‘ fantabulous’ for your puzzling addicts.” - Billie Halpin

‘We love the new Concept-Cross in the BIG - please give us some more. A very nice mix of knowledge and quasi-cryptic clues. We are not so good at the Editor’s Challenge ones where there is a theme - we get all the clues in due course between the two of us, especially the cryptics, but then can’t always work out the links ! But the Concept-cross is just right. More, please ! Thanks for your continued inventiveness.” - Professor Eileen Byrne

“The new puzzle was great fun - loved the twists to some of the answers! Hope it becomes a regular! Thank you!” - Elizabeth Benedict

“In a short phrase - I LOVE IT! Sneaky tricky but great! Yes please a regular feature of BIG.” - Diana J Stubbs.

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE SAMPLE HERE

We often get letters complaining there are not enough days in the month, especially from those of you who like to tackle The Demon. We can’t add more days to the calendar but we have decided to give you an extra week to complete your BIG contests. This will mean that the draw for prizes will take place later and because of our printer deadlines, the winners’ names will have to appear three issues later instead of two, as they have done up until now. Don’t worry though, as the solutions will still appear two issues later so you can check your answers.

All at Lovatts wish our readers the very best of health and happiness for 2010.

Happy New Year!

Christine’s Hello - Dec ‘09

Christmas is just around the corner and feasting is one of the most pleasurable ways to celebrate the season.

Turkey, ham and mince pies spring to mind when I picture my table on Christmas day, however there are many forms of ‘Christmas fare’ eaten around the world.

Kiviak is a gastronomical Christmas treat from Greenland and is made from the raw flesh of an auk which has been buried under a stone in sealskin for several months until it’s achieved an advanced stage of decomposition.

In Lithuania a twelve-dish Christmas Eve supper is traditional, the twelve dishes representing the twelve Apostles or twelve months of the year.

Portuguese families eat a special meal of salted dry cod-fish with boiled potatoes at midnight on Christmas Eve, followed by the ‘consoda’ on the morning of Christmas Day, when extra places are set at table for the souls of the dead. Food is offered to these souls to bring luck to the family during the forthcoming year.

In Belgium, Christmas breakfast is a special sweet bread called ‘cougnolle’ in the form of baby Jesus and the special Latvian Christmas Day meal is brown peas with bacon sauce, small pies, cabbage and sausage.

People eat rice porridge or Yule porridge on Christmas Eve in Finland. A particular tradition is hiding a whole almond in the porridge. The one who eats the almond will be married the following year. In the evening, Finns eat a traditional Christmas dinner including a casserole containing liver, rutabaga (swede), carrot and potato, with cooked ham or turkey. Some families serve a salad made from boiled beetroots, carrots, potatoes, apples and pickled cucumber called ‘rosolli’ and is often served with herring.

Happy Puzzling!

Hello - October 2009

Many years ago James and I travelled around Australia in a double-decker bus which had been converted into a home. Now we’re repeating history except that we’ll be in a motorhome and we’re about 30 years older.

We’re hitting the road next month to meet and greet our NSW puzzlers on The Lovatts Across & Down Under Puzzle Tour, to celebrate the 200th issue of Lovatts BIG, doing puzzle workshops and talking on country radio.

We’ll be driving through the country towns of NSW, from Wollongong to Wagga Wagga, and from Gunnedah to Gosford. View tour updates and my daily blog here

We’ll be travelling around courtesy of the wonderful crowd at Around Australia Motorhomes, and what better way to see Australia? Look out for our van, which will be decorated with Lovatts signage. Listen out for us on your local community radio station - you might even win a prize pack. We are also hoping to meet some of you at local newsagencies.

We will be conducting puzzle workshops for the wonderful CWA members who do so much to improve the lives and welfare of women and their families, particularly in rural and remote Australia.

We may go further afield in the future, so I would like to ask readers from other Australian states, who are members of a community group, to let us know if they would like us to include it on the wish list for the tour.

Don’t forget to follow us on our adventure through our daily blog ‘The Daily Dirt’  and Twitter.

Happy Puzzling!

Hello - September 2009

Since asking for feedback about your favourite books, I’ve discovered that you puzzlers have a passion for reading.

Vanezza Kirkaldy loves to spend time in the library and re-reads good books. “One that really brought the tears was The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks” she writes. She also loves Frank Dalby Davison’s Dusty and Man Shy and has just re-read Mists of Avalon and The Pillars of the Earth.

Non-fiction is favoured by Warwick Bint, such as the travel book Beyond the Blue Horizon by Alexander Frater, which he found immensely readable, humorous and enlightening. Also, Fate Is The Hunter by Ernest Gann, Stranger In The House by Julie Summers and books by Bill Bryson.

Sharyn Murdoch-Daly is a collector of Erle Stanley Gardner and John Creasey books. In a recently read John Creasey book, she enjoyed coming across interesting words, such as thraldom and calumny.

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame is Felicity Curtis’ favourite book. She gets it off the bookshelf whenever she wants a really good read, whereas Ruth Marsh got hooked on Chamomile Mourning by
Laura Childs from her Tea Shop Mystery series and read the rest of the series. As well as the stories, Ruth liked the recipes in the back of the books.

Horse-lover Hilary Ward rates Black Beauty by Anna Sewell as her favourite and still has the book she was given as a child, while Judy Parry lists Forever to Remain by E V Timms as her choice. As a child she
also loved all the Coles Funny Picture Books and like Felicity, The Wind in the Willows because her father used to read it to her. A Tale of Two Cities made an impression on Maureen Nund. Her other favourite is To Kill a Mockingbird.

You can read more comments on our Lovatts website under my May column. Meanwhile, I can’t wait to get back to my novel To Serve Them All My Days by R F Delderfield, one of my favourite writers.

Happy Puzzling!

Hello - August 2009

Now that winter’s here, how tempting it is to stay at home and rug up warm and cosy. Wrapped up in a duvet*, perhaps. What if you could actually wear your duvet?

Sounds too good to be true, especially if you’re one of those hothouse plants that really feels the cold, but a small Australian company called Lazypatch has made your dream come true.

Jonathan Charlton got the idea from a friend Simon Rhoden, a cystic fibrosis sufferer who needed to keep warm while spending time resting on the couch. In fact, a percentage of the Lazypatch profits go in his memory to the Simon Rhoden Foundation, to support others with cystic fibrosis.

Jonathan, from Melbourne, was working in the media industry and knew nothing about the clothing trade. However, with encouragement from his family, he experimented over four years until he had a product he was happy with.

You can see these duvet suits on the front and back cover of the August edition of  BIG Crossword magazine because we’ve got 5 suits to give away as special prizes this month.

If you would like to buy one anyway, visit their website www.lazypatch.com and you’ll be able to stay warm on the couch, however low the temperature plunges.

We believe in supporting small Australian businesses like this one, where hard work and enterprise have come up with an original Australian invention.

Happy Puzzling!

*With the word ‘doona’ trademarked by Pacific Brands, Jonathan has to be careful to always use the word duvet in relation to his suit

Hello - July 2009

When James and I first started compiling crosswords, back in the 70s, we found that nearly all crosswords used those odd words that you only ever see in crosswords – such as ambo (an oblong pulpit), arras ( a wall hanging to conceal an alcove), eyot or ait (isle in a river) or umiak (Eskimo boat rowed by women).

These vowel-rich words are necessary as building blocks, to link words up on a grid. But we decided to experiment and instead of using obscure words that you might never need to use in normal conversation, we would use famous names as clues. Politicians, actors, scientists, inventors, sports stars – as long as they were well-known, they could find themselves in one of our crosswords.

At the time, it was thought to be quite a bizarre move in crosswording circles, with many a muttered criticism of “You can’t do that! – it’s just not done!”

However, it got the green light with our puzzlers, which is the most important thing, and soon after this, that most flattering of compliments – imitation.

Many crosswords now use famous names, along with photos, and we have discovered through our readers it has been very useful as an educational tool, learning not just about the English language but also about the movers and shakers of the world, whether famous or infamous, who have made their mark.
In the pages of our BIG crosswords, you’ll find various clues about the eminent and you can also have fun recognising the photos of comedians, rulers, authors – even the odd escapologist or spoon-bender. Irish actor Pierce Brosnan once said: “Fame is like a big piece of meringue – it’s beautiful and you keep eating it, but it doesn’t really fill you up.”

However, we like to think our crosswords fill your mind with useful information plus the satisfaction of solving them. And anyway, even if he wasn’t so good-looking, Pierce would always be a star in my book. In fact, he has been a star in my book of Starhunts.  Many of you love these code-cracker style puzzles which feature a celebrity as the answer. We often receive mail asking about more information on these famous people, so our Webmaster has started a new section of our website dedicated to the celebrities who have appeared in our puzzles.  You can find it under christines-desk/star-grazing.

Happy Puzzling!

Hello - June 2009

We’ve often called our puzzles ‘food for thought’ and highlighted the links between a healthy mind and a healthy body.

Now we’ve gone a step further and invited lifestyle guru Annette Sym to give us the lowdown on healthy eating.

Annette, as well as being an excellent cook, is an Australian public speaker and author. You may have seen her Symply Too Good To Be True cookbooks for sale in your local newsagents.

I’ve known Annette for many years and I find her utterly inspiring. She’s bright and bubbly, full of commonsense ideas about feeling healthy and she has a wealth of tantalising recipes to tempt your palate.

In the June issue of BIG Magazine, twenty-two lucky puzzlers will win one of Annette’s personally signed cookbooks, and another even luckier puzzler will win the Symply Too Good To Be True Prize Pack - including 5 personally autographed Annette Sym Cookbooks, a motivational double-CD set; a CD-ROM menu planner, an 8-week journal, a set of measure spoons and an apron.

You can read all about Annette on the inside back cover of June BIG, and find that you can have a healthy body AND mind.

Do you have a delicious healthy recipe you’d like to share?

Happy Puzzling!

Hello - May 2009

We recently had a letter from a reader querying one of our clues about her favourite book Rosy Is My Relative by Gerald Durrell.

Lynne Watts writes: “This book is my favourite and I have kept my tattered copy for 30 years, recently my daughter found me another in an old shop and they have pride of place in my bookcase. I recommend this book to your readers (if they are lucky enough to find a copy) It will give plenty of smiles and lots of laughs.”

Another reader, Patricia Rudorfer, tells us about reading Minerva Lane by Judith Glover. The setting was the Wolverhampton area of England in the 1800s. She came across an unfamiliar word - tranklements - which I have written about in Crossed Wires.

Reading is one of the most popular hobbies, whether it’s to while away time while travelling, or in a doctor’s waiting room, or as a form of escapism - to escape stress by inhabiting another world.

One of the side effects of this is that we increase our vocabulary, improve spelling and grammar, learn interesting facts and expose our minds to the thoughts of others.

Expanding the mind, learning about new concepts - there are so many reasons to pick up a book.

My sons Patrick and Dominic loved Roald Dahl’s stories and Kitty read all the Harry Potter series. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell was one of my childhood favourites, and in my teens and 20s, I devoured Leon Uris’s novels such as Exodus and Trinity.

James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific and The Drifters were next, followed by The Killing Anniversary by Ian St James and The Pillars Of The Earth by Ken Follett.

When I asked my husband James for his favourites, he came up with The Magus by John Fowles, The Power Of One by Bryce Courtenay and The Prince Of Tides by Pat Conroy.

I’d love to know what your favourite books were - or still are now. I’ve always thought that reading is the most fun you can have - if you’re not doing puzzles, of course.

Please post some comments on how you feel about reading .

Happy Puzzling!