Things have been getting a bit serious on the blog lately, so here’s something ridiculously geeky – in the “You wasted your lunch hour on that?” sense – to lighten the mood.

Just to show that sudokus don’t have to use numbers – any set of discrete symbols will suffice – Christopher Lee stars in a puzzle far, far away… it’s SoDooku!

Pix via Google Image Search; puzzle from Sudoku Generator – rather than the traditional method preferred by The Guardian, where, beginning at sunset, an elderly Japanese man calls out numbers at random while being beaten with a broom of bamboo, this continuing until a puzzle with only one solution has been formed which is then etched into a marble tablet, sanctified in holy water and flown to Farringdon. That sounded like too much effort.

Conspiracy nuts will be overjoyed: London Underground Bombing ‘Exercises’ Took Place at Same Time as Real Attack. (Via.)

“I will ‘blog for victory’ on the 10th of August by writing a post about the need for House of Lords reform, and link to the Elect the Lords campaign website but only if 20 other bloggers will too.”

Yesterday, for the first time in months, I completed the daily Guardian cryptic crossword – all on my own, without a dictionary or Google, and before I’d even reached the station for the train journey home. I was suitably flushed. Even better, it was set by the crème de la crème of setters, Araucaria, and featured a signature Very Long Answer. This anagram – 8 words comprising 33 letters – once solved provided a useful hoard of checked letters, which enabled me to solve my favourite clue from the puzzle:

Mary’s third keeps dog in order — good news about her and another James? (4,5,4)

And the answer is…

BOTH DOING WELL

The explanation: Mary Queen of Scots’ third husband was James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell; “dog in” order = doing; and “good news about her and another James?” refers to Mary and her son, James VI, and therefore an expression for mother and child.