Puzzles, posts, news and general word-chat.

Diabolically Arcane

Bingo. You’ve reached David Astle dot com, a carnival of words, puzzles and more words. Welcome aboard, and have fun.

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Latest Lowdown

18 April, 2016

The blog has been a little low-pulse lately - a symptom of my own personal mayhem off-screen, with multiple radio gigs and several speaking engagements around the traps. That won't change in the long run with plenty more festival spots looming. Sydney Writers' Fest is soon, while Melbourne & Brisbane bods will get their chance to wordify with yours truly. Can't wait.

Meanwhile, this week marks your chance to enjoy some word-magic from the talented habitue known as CB, alias Chris Black of Melbourne. CB will be our next setter in the guest grid series, his Q&A and puzzle slated for uploading tomorrow. Prepare your neurons, good people, as CB's clues belong on the daring boho edge of libertarian.

To limber the limbic system, here's a sneaky conundrum courtesy of NPR Radio (a classic RASS - Redundant Acronym Syndrome Syndrome): 

The initials of bail, nail and mail sit adjacent on the keyboard’s bottom row. So what five words (again four letters in length, and again with their last three letters identical) own initials that form a consecutive block on the keyboard’s middle row?

(And while you're snooping QWERTY, can anyone else discover a set of words that can exchange an equivalent string of adjacent letters?)

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Recent Comments

Riddledom Rave

If you missed my riddle chat with Richard Fidler, then feel free to slurp the podcast at http://ab.co/1I9t1x5

Text-speak is creeping into Scrabble. Where do you sit?
OBVS I'm fine with it
Entrenched stuff - like LOL and OMG - but no more.
Words With Friends, maybe. Scrabble, no
Let the 'real' dictionaries decide first
Just the handy stuff, like FAQ and EUW
I mean, WTF?! No way
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