alanconnor.com/log

A Paddy O’Connell interview is intense. Listen from 24:15. Book is here.

Really enjoyed hearing @alanconnor.bsky.social talk about 188 WORDS FOR RAIN on Radio 4. People often trot out the dubious truism about the Inuit having umpteen words for snow to me, but it seems we Brits have cornered the market for rain!

— Ann Morgan (@annmorgan.bsky.social) 16 February 2025 at 09:36

Good times with James Peak for this documentary.

And an Everyman puzzle to match.

Radio 4, 7 April 2024, 1915

I’m right at the end of today’s episode:

For every Shipping Forecast area, you find the places on the map indicated by various clues. Join the places to form the shapes of letters. Join the letters to form a sea shanty.

Out 5 November from your local bookshop / Penguin / Waterstones / Amazon etc.

It also gives a flavour of what it’s like to be in each of Dogger, Fisher, German Bight…

• BBC Books / Ebury Publishing
• ISBN: 9781785945106
• 240 pages; 216 x 135 mm
• Goodreads · LibraryThing
• Previously: Two Girls, One on Each Knee: The Puzzling, Playful World of the Crossword; The Joy of Quiz

I wrote for this Radio 4 programme, which was invented by @captainward and which you must listen to:

I’ve written a feature for the BBC News Magazine about how pub quizzes can survive the smartphone era.

“Text-messaging Is Destroying the Pub Quiz As We Know It, noted the Super Furry Animals in 2001. Little did they know that the pub quiz of 2011 would start with the host insisting: ‘OK, iPhones away, please. Yes, very clever – and Androids. All phones away.’

“Cheating has always been possible in pub quizzes. But while once the dishonest quizzer had to pop out to phone a friend, or wait for a text message reply, phones with fast internet access have taken cheating possibilities to a new level.”

• Related: a piece by me for the BBC about Google getting us to teach it to see.
• Sadly, I was only able to talk to Stuart Jeffries, who sets the King William’s College Quiz, after publication. Perhaps next time.
• The last time I talked quizzes for the BBC was in this report by the excellent Chris Vallance for Broadcasting House on Radio 4.

• Photo taken at Bekenscot Model Village.
• One type of question which there wasn’t room for was the Blurred Cover. Below are four best-sellers. But what are their titles and authors?